Such a report is one that is graded ḥasan li-ghayrihi (fair by virtue of supporting narrations), the very category that al-Tirmidhī repeatedly cites in his Sunan and discusses in the ʿIlal appended to it (10/457). My own books are filled with this class of ḥadith and with reminders about it—especially the volumes entitled al-Ṣaḥīḥah—as are the biographical compendia, whose authors consistently differentiate between a weak transmitter who may be used for corroboration and another whose weakness is too severe to allow such use.

The examples he produced differ completely from the ḥadith of Asmāʾ that Ibn Ḥajar employed and on which our colleague sought to rely, for two reasons:

1. Those examples are extremely weak and therefore unfit to serve as supporting evidence.
2. The scholars who recorded them immediately followed them with a statement declaring just how weak they are.

How can this be compared to the procedure of Ibn Ḥajar—may Allah have mercy on him—which the critic rejected? Ibn Ḥajar did not declare the chain weak; had he done so, the comparison would still fail, for that chain is not severely weak.

As for the critic’s answer, it only confirms his ignorance of this discipline, for he did not explain why scholars point out a report’s weakness and what benefit that yields. Part of the answer has already been stated: when the weakness is slight and the report comes through multiple routes, the chains reinforce one another and the ḥadith must be acted upon—as is the case with the report now before us. If, however, the report remains solitary and its weakness unrepaired, it is gharīb, and acting upon it is impermissible; indeed, it may not even be transmitted except with a clear note of its weakness. This is the very point at which most authors fall short, for they transmit weak ḥadiths without flagging their weakness, exactly as al-Tuwajirī did with the ten earlier examples, while he and others ignored the strengthening of this ḥadith through its various chains.

⦗90⦘