because it agreed with the truth and helped endear him to Islam. Many people therefore began to take freely from what he related, while he himself went so far in transmitting such reports that much of them were not worth the ink with which they were written; some were certainly false, and some were sound because they were confirmed by the truth that lies in the Revelation we possess.

Al-Bukhārī said: Abū al-Yamān narrated to us; Shuʿayb narrated to us, from al-Zuhrī, who said: Ḥumayd ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān informed me that he heard Muʿāwiyah speaking to a group of Quraysh in Madinah. When he mentioned Kaʿb al-Aḥbār he said: “He was indeed among the most truthful of those who relate from the People of the Scripture, yet even so we would still discover him narrating untrue things”—meaning, without intending to do so.

Al-Bukhārī also transmitted—through al-Zuhrī, from ʿUbayd Allāh ibn ʿAbd Allāh, from Ibn ʿAbbās—that Ibn ʿAbbās said: “How can you ask the People of the Scripture about anything while your own Book, which Allah has sent down to His Messenger, is the latest of the Scriptures from Allah? You recite it pure and unmixed. Allah has already told you that the People of the Scripture distorted the Book of Allah and altered it: ‘They write the Book with their own hands and then say, “This is from Allah,” so that they might gain with it a small price.’ Will not the knowledge that has come to you restrain you from questioning them? By Allah, we have never seen any one of them asking you about what has been revealed to you.”

Ibn Jarīr narrated from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Masʿūd that he said: “Do not ask the People of the Scripture about anything—for they will never guide you, having themselves gone astray. Either you will reject a truth or you will affirm a falsehood.” Allah knows best.