Or because the report did not reach him with a continuous chain, but only in a broken form; or he was not certain of the exact wording of the hadith, even though trustworthy transmitters have conveyed that same report to others with an unbroken chain. It may be that another scholar knows that the narrator he deemed unknown is in fact reliable, or that the hadith has been related by narrators other than those he considered discredited, or that the chain is complete through a route other than the one he thought severed, and that some meticulous ḥadīth masters have accurately preserved its wording; or that the narration is supported by corroborating and parallel chains that attest to its soundness. Cases of this kind are exceedingly common, and among the Successors, their disciples, and the renowned Imams who followed them they occur even more—indeed, at least as frequently as in the first generation.

By that time the hadiths had spread widely and become well known, yet many scholars received them only through weak routes, whereas others received them through sound routes different from those. Thus the report serves as proof for the latter, even though it never reached the scholar who opposed it by that other path.

For this reason one finds more than one Imam suspending his verdict on the authenticity of a hadith, saying: “My view on this issue is such-and-such, and a hadith has been reported about it in such-and-such terms; if it is authentic, then that is my view.”

Third reason: deeming a hadith weak on the basis of an ijtihād in which another scholar has reached the opposite conclusion, together with