of the absence (1) of anomaly (shudhūdh) in the very definition of a ṣaḥīḥ ḥadith (2), and the same applies to a ḥasan report.

What is reliably transmitted from the early masters of ḥadith—ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mahdī, Yaḥyā al-Qaṭṭān, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn (3), ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī (4), al-Bukhārī, Abū Zurʿah, Abū Ḥātim, al-Nasāʾī, al-Dāraqutnī, and others—is that they weigh the competing narrations whenever an addition is involved (5) or anything else. No one of them is known (6) to have accepted every addition outright.

Even more astonishing is that many later Shāfiʿīs state unreservedly that the addition of a trustworthy narrator must be accepted, although the explicit wording of al-Shāfiʿī himself indicates otherwise. In the midst of his discussion of the criteria by which a transmitter’s accuracy is judged he says:

“When he narrates alongside (7) one of the ḥuffāẓ—those who have committed the text to memory (8)—he should not contradict him; and if he does contradict him and his version is found to be shorter, that is evidence (9) for the soundness of his source. But whenever he contradicts what I have just described, that harms his ḥadith.” (10)

End of his statement.