otherwise one suspends judgment (1) regarding it, and when acting upon it is suspended (2) it becomes, for all practical purposes, like the rejected report—not because the attribute of rejection has been established, but because it simply lacks (3) any attribute that would compel acceptance. And Allah knows best (4).
(It may also occur (5) among them)—that is, among the single-chain reports subdivided into mashhūr, ʿazīz (6), and gharīb—that one of them conveys inferential knowledge by virtue of corroborative indicators, according to the preferred opinion, in opposition to those who deny this (7).
In truth, the disagreement is purely verbal: those who allow the term “knowledge” restrict it by adding the qualifier “inferential,” meaning knowledge that results from reasoning (8); whereas those who refuse to use the term confine “knowledge” to mutawātir reports and regard everything else as probabilistic. Yet even they do not deny that a report bolstered (9) by corroborating factors is weightier than one that lacks them (10).
Types of reports supported by corroborative indicators:
Among them is whatever the Two Shaykhs included in their two Ṣaḥīḥ collections (11) of reports that have not