al-Rabiʿ, al-Muzani, al-Buwayṭī, Ḥarmala, and others like them. If anyone else of comparable—or even greater—standing(1) transmits from him something that contradicts their narration, such as Abū Thawr, Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam, or al-Zaʿfarānī, they pay it no attention and say, “Those men know his school better; his school(2) is what they have reported from him, not what these others relate.” Indeed, even the report that al-Tirmidhī records from him in his book with the soundest chain, or that Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr and other compilers of juristic opinions cite, is not placed on the same level as what those close disciples conveyed, and they usually do not even regard it as a genuine point of disagreement.

• Likewise, the adherents of Aḥmad: whenever a single narrator alone reports something from him, they scrutinise it and remark, “So-and-so transmitted this on his own,”(3) and they hardly grant it full standing as a narration—save with considerable indulgence—nor do they let it oppose what the majority have transmitted from him. Their books attest to this: they say, “Abū Ṭālib alone transmitted this,” or “So-and-so—no one else narrated it from him.”

Thus, if a report comes from him through someone other than ʿAbd Allāh, Ṣāliḥ, Ḥanbal, Abū Ṭālib, al-Maymūnī, al-Kawsaj, Ibn Hāniʾ, al-Marwadhī, al-Athram, Ibn al-Qāsim, Muḥammad b. Mushayš, Muthannā b. Jāmiʿ, Aḥmad b. Aṣram, Bishr b. Mūsā, and their peers among his leading companions, they find it highly unusual, even if the transmitter is himself a reliable, authoritative imam.

Yet they(4) are the most cautious of all in conveying his doctrine and in accepting the transmission of whoever reports from him