The Judge went on to say:

Abu Hurayrah narrated from the Prophet ﷺ that he said:

"No prize money may be offered except in a contest involving a camel, a horse, or a wing."

The storyteller had inserted the words “or a wing”—a phrase he coined to please al-Rashīd—so the caliph rewarded him with a handsome gift. When the man had left, al-Rashīd remarked, “By Allah, I knew he was a liar,” and he ordered that the pigeons be slaughtered.

Someone asked, “What fault is it of the pigeons?”

He replied, “It was on their account that a lie was forged against the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.”

Because of this—and of other fabrications—the scholars abandoned his narrations; under no circumstances do they record his ḥadith.

I say: Had people confined themselves to what is authentically established in the Ṣaḥīḥs, the Musnads, and the other compilations circulated among the scholars and transmitted by the leading jurist-imāms, that would have sufficed them. They would also have avoided the Prophet’s warning when he said:

"Beware of transmitting reports from me except those you are sure of. Whoever deliberately lies about me, let him take his seat in the Fire."

His ﷺ threat of the Fire for lying indicates that he knew false reports would be attributed to him. So beware of what the enemies of the religion and the Muslim zindīqs have fabricated in the chapters of promise and threat and elsewhere. The most harmful of them are certain men reputed for asceticism; they forged ḥadiths—so they claimed—out of pious zeal. People accepted their inventions, trusting and relying on them, and thus were led astray and led others astray.

[Chapter: The proofs refuting those who impugn the Qur’an and oppose ʿUthmān’s muṣḥaf by alleging additions or omissions]

There is no disagreement among the ummah—and most plainly among the leading imāms of Ahl al-Sunnah—that the Qur’an is the speech of Allah Most High which Muḥammad ﷺ brought as his miracle, as already explained; that it is preserved in hearts, recited on tongues, written in the muṣḥafs; that its surahs and verses are known by necessity; and that it is utterly free from any addition to it or subtraction from it. Whoever asserts otherwise has violated the consensus, slandered the people, rejected what the Messenger ﷺ brought of the revealed Qur’an, and contradicted His statement:

"Say, ‘If mankind and jinn were to band together to produce the like of this Qur’an, they would never produce anything like it, even if they helped one another.’" (17:88)

Such a person thereby nullifies the sign of His Messenger