—even though that narrator may be one of the reliable masters of ḥadith. They do not restrict themselves to any single transmitter when determining his doctrine(1), as some other groups do; rather, whenever a report is soundly established from him, they ascribe it to him—even while deeming it “anomalous” whenever it clashes with what his close companions have related.

If this is the method adopted in transmitting the legal schools of the scholars—although it is permissible, and indeed happens, that a mujtahid may issue a fatwa according to one view and later rule differently because his ijtihād has changed, and although nothing in the lone transmitter’s report necessarily proves him mistaken, for those imams are often found to have given divergent answers on many issues—then how much more should it apply to the ḥadith masters in relation to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ,(3) whose words are never contradictory or inconsistent?

Are they not more justified than you in rejecting a ḥadith—or an additional clause—whose narrator(4) has opposed, singled himself out from, or produced an anomalous version against the consensus of transmitters?

All the more so when the motives and efforts of the community were fully mobilised to preserve his ﷺ sayings and to scrutinise their transmitters—efforts far greater than those devoted to recording the imams’ madhhabs and distinguishing narrators on their behalf.

Furthermore, when someone outside an imam’s own school—despite being precise, meticulous, and possessed of sound memory—reports from him something that contradicts what his disciples have transmitted, you say, “The companions of the school know their imam’s position better and preserve it more accurately.” Why, then, do you not say the same about a shaykh’s ḥadith when it is his own companions who transmit it