“We do not accept Saʿīd ibn al-Muṣayyib’s view concerning the outsider (muḥallil); the muḥallil is not obligatory.”(1)

Yet Mālik—who was among the scholars most conversant with Ibn ʿUmar’s ḥadiths—never cited a single word from him on the matter of the muḥallil.(2)

How, then, could this ḥadith have been in the possession of ʿAmr ibn Dīnār from Ibn ʿUmar, while none of those eminent students transmitted it and the report is found only with someone whose narration is not admissible as evidence?

Moreover, it is unknown that any of the leading jurists relied on this ḥadith to prove the requirement of the muḥallil—not al-Shāfiʿī, nor Aḥmad, nor Abū Ḥanīfa, nor anyone else who stipulates the muḥallil.

Likewise, none of the Six Imams of ḥadith recorded it in their compilations, nor did any of the Four Imams, and even al-Ḥākim himself—despite his well-known leniency—did not include it in what he claimed the two Ṣaḥīḥs had overlooked,(3) though its indication of the necessity of the muḥallil is far clearer than the indication(4) found in the ḥadith of Sufyān ibn Ḥusayn!

So how could all these imams have overlooked it—or consciously set it aside? Customarily such unanimous omission is inconceivable, given their knowledge of every text bearing the same purport.(5) Allah, exalted is He, grants success.