hear him—whether a Successor or a Companion. Thus, a mursal report is one that a Successor, or a Companion who never heard the Prophet ﷺ directly, attributes to him. For example, were Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr to relate a hadith from the Prophet ﷺ, we would designate it mursal, because he certainly did not hear him: Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr was born in the year of the Farewell Pilgrimage.

Nevertheless, the scholars have maintained that the Companions’ mursal reports are authoritative. As for the Successors, they are not all alike: some have their mursal narrations accepted, while others do not. Those who have been examined and shown to send reports only from a Companion—such as Saʿid ibn al-Musayyab, who is said to transmit solely from Abu Hurayrah—have their mursal reports deemed sound. For the remainder, the report itself is scrutinised: if it comes through several independent chains and the Muslim community has received it with acceptance, it is ruled authentic. A case in point is the hadith of ʿAmr ibn Hazm stating that the Prophet ﷺ wrote to the people of Yemen a document mentioning the blood-monies and zakat, which includes the clause, “that no one may touch the Qur’an except one who is ritually pure.” (1)

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When a hadith reaches us by two or more separate routes, and it is known that the narrators did not collude, and that such agreement could not have arisen accidentally, the hadith is recognised as sound. It is like someone relating an incident, giving precise details of the words spoken and the actions performed, and then another person—known not to have conspired with the first—relates the very same words and actions. One is then certain that the incident really occurred, at least in broad terms, for if each narrator had fabricated it, whether intentionally or mistakenly, it would be virtually impossible for both to reproduce all those particulars without prior coordination.