Thereafter, any item belonging to this category that is left undefined is identified either through the transmitter himself, through the person from whom he narrates, or by means of clarification found in another chain. Allah knows best.

Type Fifty-Five
Al-Mutashābih (Ambiguous Similarity)
This type is a combination of the two that precede it. Al-Khaṭīb even wrote a separate treatise on the subject. It arises when the two men share the same personal names or nisbahs, while similarity and dissimilarity are found in their fathers’ names, or the reverse.

• There are many people called Mūsā ibn ʿAli—with a fatḥah (a-sound) on the ʿayn—whereas Mūsā ibn ʿUlayy ibn Rabāḥ al-Miṣrī, with a ḍammah (u-sound) on the ʿayn, is a different person; some nevertheless pronounce his father’s name with a fatḥah. It was also said that the form with the ḍammah is a nickname, while the one with the fatḥah is the given name.

• Likewise, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Mukhramī—vowelled with ḍammah, then fatḥah, then kasrah—takes his nisbah from Makhram in Baghdad and is well-known, whereas Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Mukharmī, whose nisbah is to Makharimah, is little-known; he narrated from al-Shāfiʿī.

• Another example is Thawr ibn Yazīd al-Kalāʿī and Thawr ibn Yazīd al-Daylī; the latter is cited in both Ṣaḥīḥs, while the former appears only in Muslim.

• Among the tābiʿīs is Abū ʿAmr al-Shaybānī—Saʿd ibn Iyās—spelled with a dotted letter (shīn). Comparable to him among the linguists is Isḥāq ibn Marār, whose name is pronounced like Ḍirāb; others say like Ghazāl, and yet others like ʿAmmār. There is also Abū ʿAmr al-Sībānī—Zurʿah, the father of Yaḥyā—spelled with an undotted letter (sīn).

• Finally, with a fatḥah on the ʿayn, ʿAmr ibn Zurārah refers to several individuals, among them Muslim’s teacher Abū Muḥammad al-Nīsābūrī, whereas with a ḍammah (ʿUmar ibn Zurārah) it denotes the narrator known as al-Ḥadhathī.

Allah knows best.