For this reason al-Nasāʾī held that a man’s ḥadīth (1) should not be set aside until everyone (2) concurs in abandoning it (3).
[Caution against laxity in disparagement and commendation]
Whoever speaks in this discipline must beware of being lax in issuing disparagement and commendation. If he (4) declares a narrator reliable without careful verification, he is like one who establishes (5) a ruling that has no real foundation, and it is feared that he may fall under the warning directed at “one who relates a ḥadīth while thinking it to be false” (6).
Conversely, if he (7) disparages without due caution, he has launched an attack against a Muslim who is innocent of the charge, branding him with a mark (8) of dishonor whose stigma (9) will remain with him forever.
The affliction (10) sometimes enters this field through caprice and corrupt motives—though the statements of the early authorities are for the most part free of such blemishes—and at other times through mere contrariety
(1) Manuscript A reads al-nazr (consideration).
(2) Manuscript H reads al-jamʿ (collection).
(3) Ibn Mandah, Shurut al-Aʾimma, p. 73, relates: “I heard Muhammad ibn Saʿd al-Bawardi in Egypt say: It was al-Nasaʾi’s practice to transmit from every narrator whom the scholars had not unanimously agreed to abandon.” The author, in al-Nukat 1/75, adds: “Al-Nasaʾi said: In my view a man is not abandoned until all critics concur in abandoning him. Thus, if Ibn Mahdi declares him reliable while Yahya al-Qattan, for example, deems him weak, he is not discarded, because Yahya and those of similar rigor are known for their strictness in criticism.”
(4) Manuscript J reads fa-in ʿaddala, whereas D has min.
(5) B and T read kal-mutathabbit (like one who is cautious).
(6) Reported by Muslim in his Muqaddima 1/8; al-Tirmidhi, no. 2662; and Ibn Majah, no. 38.
(7) J and L have jarah (with a single r), while the adopted reading found in D and M is jarraha (with a doubled r). Al-Qari, Sharh Sharh al-Nukhba, p. 738, explains that the form with tashdid means “to attribute a narrator to deficiency.”
(8) T reads miʾsam (with a hamza replacing the ya), H has bi-maysam (with a fatha on the mim), and the preferred vocalisation, supported by J, W, Z, H, T, Y, and L, is maysam (with a kasra on the mim), meaning a branding iron—used metaphorically for the mark it leaves (al-Qari, Sharh Sharh al-Nukhba, p. 739).
(9) In K the word ʿadatan appears, which is a scribal corruption.
(10) Manuscript M inserts the particle qad.