and provide an example, that we may understand exactly what both you and he are saying.”

308 – He answered, “Very well. If those same four men you used as an illustration were all to narrate, and their narrations agreed that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ had declared something forbidden or permissible, I would take the agreement of their reports—together with the fact that their homelands are far apart, that each one took the knowledge from someone other than the person from whom his companion took it, and that the transmitter who brought it to us received it from someone who had not taken it from his own companion—as proof that, when their reports tally in this way about the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, error is impossible.

309 – I said to him, “So in your view tawātur is not established by four individuals who live in a single town, nor even if the inhabitants of that town accept their reports, until the Medinite narrates from a Medinite, the Meccan from a Meccan, the Basran from a Basran, and the Kufan from a Kufan—each chain ending with a Companion of the Prophet ﷺ different from the Companion to whom the chain of his colleague goes back—and then they all unite in narrating from the Prophet ﷺ, for the reason you have just described?”

310 – He replied, “Yes; for if they live in one town they could agree among themselves to fabricate the report, whereas such collusion is impossible when they dwell in different lands.”

311 – I said to him, “What a sorry foundation you have laid against the very man you have appointed as your imam in matters of religion, when you set it up at the outset only to tear it down yourself!”

312 – He said, “Then show me what flaw follows from it.”

313 – I said to him, “Consider this: were you to meet one of the veterans of Badr—the foremost of the Companions, whom Allah praised in His Book—and he related to you a report from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, by your criterion his report would afford you no proof and would impose no obligation upon you. If that is so, is it not even more fitting that those who came after them should have their solitary reports rejected, since they are inferior to the Badri Companions in every virtue, and whatever possibility of error you admit concerning those who are greater and more numerous is surely even more likely in those beneath them?”