Some people of no moral share have counted this as a contradiction and inconsistency on the Shaykh’s part (1).

Yet whoever looks with the eye of fairness will number this trait among the Shaykh’s most outstanding virtues. The man devoted his life to reading and researching the works of scholarship, and anyone so engaged is bound to uncover new material that compels him to revise an earlier opinion.

Thus he might grade a ḥadith as weak, and years later—still immersed in relentless study—come across an additional route strong enough to serve as a supporting witness for that very ḥadith he had earlier judged weak. He then has no option but to declare the ḥadith authentic and publicly retract his previous ruling (2).

By contrast, the rigid remain frozen not only upon their own statements but also upon those of their earlier imams, refusing any discussion even when the evidence opposes them.

I have come across a slender volume entitled al-Tanbīhāt al-Malīḥah ʿalā Mā Tarājaʿa ʿAnhu al-ʿAllāmah al-Muḥaddith al-Albānī Min al-Aḥādīth al-Ḍaʿīfah aw al-Ṣaḥīḥah (Elegant Alerts on the Retracted Judgments of the Eminent ḥadith Scholar al-Albānī Concerning Weak or Authentic Narrations), compiled and arranged by ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ b. Yūsuf al-Gharīb.

I also found valuable words by the scholar Bakr Abū Zayd—may Allah preserve him—who, when discussing the status of Ṣāliḥ b. Bashīr al-Marrī and describing him as “discarded in ḥadith,” unfit for use in corroborating or follow-up chains, said:

“This agrees with what the eminent al-Albānī ruled in al-Ḍaʿīfah, contrary to what he stated in his commentary on Mishkāt al-Maṣābīḥ, where he relied upon him; so let this be corrected. This is no cause for clamour against the people of knowledge, just as the multiplicity of reports from a single imam concerning jurisprudential issues, the grading of one and the same ḥadith, or the ranking of a particular narrator is no cause for uproar.

“The two great ḥadith masters, al-Dhahabī and Ibn Ḥajar, have numerous examples of this, evident when one compares al-Kāshif and al-Mughnī—both by al-Dhahabī—or al-Taqrīb, al-Talkhīṣ, and al-Fatḥ, all three by Ibn Ḥajar. The excuses for such variation have been fully set forth. See also Rafʿ al-Malām by Ibn Taymiyyah.”