weak report. Once this is known, however, it no longer constitutes proof, by scholarly consensus—as with someone known to transmit the chain accurately at times and to err in it at others.

The books that transmit accounts and sayings of these shaykhs with chains of transmission—such as Hilyat al-Awliyā’ by Abū Nu‘aym, Tabaqāt al-Sūfiyya by Shaykh Abū ‘Abd al-Rahmān, Safwat al-Safwa by Ibn al-Jawzī, and similar works—do not mention this statement from Shaykh Abū Sulaymān. They do, however, mention the report transmitted from him with a connected chain, in which he said to Ahmad ibn Abī al-Hawārī: “O Ahmad, I have indeed been granted such a share of contentment that, were He to cast me into the Fire, I would be content with that.”

These words are transmitted from Abū Sulaymān with a chain of transmission. Accordingly, al-Qushayrī related them from him with a chain through his own teacher, Abū ‘Abd al-Rahmān. The other statement, by contrast, was not transmitted from him with a chain, and thus has no established basis as a saying of Shaykh Abū Sulaymān.