Accordingly, it falls under the ruling of a mursal (gap-in-chain) report once it has corroborating evidence—a point that will be elaborated shortly. One of the more telling examples of the ignorance displayed by certain would-be scholars is that, after declaring the narration of Saʿīd ibn Bishr from Qatādah from Khālid ibn Durayk from ʿĀʾishah to be extremely weak, he then went back and relied on that very same narration in order to undermine this sound mursal report of Qatādah. He said:

“Qatādah has narrated the ḥadith from Khālid ibn Durayk on the authority of ʿĀʾishah. It is therefore quite possible that he dropped both Khālid and ʿĀʾishah and related it as a mursal report, since Qatādah was a mudallis (one who practices concealment in transmission).”

Such are the words of al-ʿAdawī in his al-Ḥijāb (p. 72), and al-ʿAnbarī echoed him in his pamphlet (p. 25).

Reflect on this: he confidently affirms Qatādah’s narration from Khālid—even after having pronounced it gravely weak—then uses it to reinterpret the sound transmission of Hishām from Qatādah. Is this not the very epitome of “playing both sides of the rope” or “measuring with two sets of scales”?

We, on the other hand, have preferred this mursal narration of Qatādah because its chain is strong, in keeping with the principles of ḥadith criticism. Yet we maintain that this preference does not undermine our case in the least, for the mursal and musnad versions reinforce each other in wording, and both are further supported by the third ḥadith from Asmāʾ bint ʿUmays cited earlier in the book (p. 58). Al-ʿAdawī treated that report exactly as al-Sindī did with the ḥadith of ʿĀʾishah: he declared (p. 70) that it was severely weak and then listed three defects—none of which, in fact, substantiates his claim. ⦗86⦘