Some transmitters have circulated a report about “Hilāl,” the young servant of al-Mughīra ibn Shuʿbah, claiming that he is one of the Seven. Yet the specialists unanimously judge this report to be baseless. It is true that Abū Nuʿaym included a number of these narrations in Hilyat al-Awliyāʾ, and that Shaykh Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī cited them in some of his works, but do not be taken in by that: those compilations contain sound, fair, weak, fabricated, and flagrantly false material—reports that every scholar agrees are invented. On occasion the author merely passes them on, following the practice of certain narrators who repeat whatever they hear without distinguishing the authentic from the spurious. The meticulous hadith scholars, however, refused to transmit such reports, for it is soundly established that the Prophet said:

“Whoever relates a saying attributed to me while knowing it is false is himself one of the liars.”