All of these variants are permissible; yet the soundest order is first to say, “he is the son of so-and-so,” or, “that is, the son of so-and-so,” then to add, “So-and-so, son of so-and-so,” and finally to give his full lineage without leaving anything out.

Ninth. Copyists have made a habit—mistakenly—of omitting the word qāla (he said) and its like between the men of a chain. The reciter must pronounce every such word. If the text reads, “It was read to so-and-so; so-and-so informs you,” or, “It was read to so-and-so; so-and-so narrated to us,” the reader should say, in the first case, “It was said to him, ‘so-and-so informs you,’” and in the second, “he said, ‘so-and-so narrated to us.’” Likewise, when qāla is repeated, as in “Ḥaddathanā Ṣāliḥ, qāla: qāla al-Shaʿbī,” scribes often drop one of the two words in error; the reader must pronounce them both. Should he omit qāla in any of these places, he is at fault, even though the audition itself remains, in all likelihood, valid. Allah knows best.

Tenth. In copies or fascicles that contain several ḥadiths all carried by a single isnād—such as the collection of Hammām from Abū Hurayrah—some transmitters renew the full chain at the beginning of every ḥadith, which is the safest course. Others mention it only with the first ḥadith, or at the start of each teaching session, and then append the remaining material with phrases like “and with this isnād” (wa-bi-l-isnād) or simply “and with it” (wa-bihi); this is the more common practice. Whoever hears the work in that fashion and later wishes to transmit a ḥadith other than the first with its chain may do so according to the majority of scholars, though Abū Isḥāq al-Isfarāʾīnī and a few others forbade it. On their view, the correct method is to clarify the matter, as Muslim does when he says: “Ḥaddathanā Muḥammad ibn Rāfiʿ; ḥaddathanā ʿAbd al-Razzāq; from Maʿmar; from Hammām, who said: ‘This is what Abū Hurayrah related to us,’” after which he cites several ḥadiths, among them: “The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said, ‘Indeed, the lowest seat allotted to any one of you…,’” and so on. Many compilers have followed the same procedure.