Fourteenth. If there is any weakness in what one has heard, he must disclose it at the moment he transmits the report. Thus, when the shaykh relates from memory during an informal review session, the student should say, “So-and-so narrated to us in review,” as the leading imams did. Some scholars even forbade students to carry away and transmit materials that were given only in such sessions. When a hadith comes through a trustworthy narrator together with one whose reliability is contested, or through two trustworthy narrators, the preferable course is to name them both; limiting oneself to one trustworthy name is not unlawful. If a student has heard part of a hadith from one teacher and part from another, and then quotes the entire text from both of them while indicating that some of it is from the first and some from the second, that is permissible. Thereafter each segment is treated as though it were transmitted from an unidentified single teacher; accordingly, no part of it may be cited as proof if either narrator has been criticized. It remains preferable to mention both of them, making clear that part of the wording is from one and part from the other. Allah knows best.
The Twenty-Seventh Category: The Etiquettes of the Hadith Scholar
The science of hadith is exalted; it befits noble character and praiseworthy traits, and it belongs to the sciences of the Hereafter. Whoever is deprived of it is deprived of great good, and whoever is granted it receives abundant virtue. Its practitioner must therefore correct his intention and purge his heart of worldly motives. Scholars have differed over the age at which one should present himself to teach it; the sound position is that whenever people have need of what he knows, he should sit to impart it, whatever his age may be. He should, however, desist from narrating if he fears confusion brought on by senility, anxiety, or blindness, and this varies from person to person.
Section. It is preferable that he not teach in the presence of someone who has a clearer claim to do so—whether because of age, knowledge, or some other merit. Some have even said that it is disliked for him to teach in a town where someone more deserving is present. And he should, when he is asked to