ibn Munabbih and Kaʿb al-Ahbār. I found this hard to accept, for I had never encountered such a claim. Yet I said to myself: “Perhaps this applies to some of the chains, but the shaykh is exaggerating!” To verify this, I set about tracing the hadiths concerning his descent, peace be upon him, to their original sources in the books of Sunnah—those that narrate hadiths with their chains of transmission, such as the six major collections and others. Eventually, I gathered a great many hadiths on the subject, through chains from more than forty Companions that collectively established mass transmission. I was utterly astonished to find no mention whatsoever of Wahb or Kaʿb in any of these chains, not even the weak ones!

I then became certain that the shaykh—may Allah pardon him—had written from memory, without consulting a single one of the aforementioned books of Sunnah! At the time, I wrote a detailed treatise refuting his fatwa and intended to send it to “al-Risālah” magazine. However, one of our companions, a distinguished man of letters who frequently travelled to Egypt, advised me not to send it, because they would not publish it: first, because of its length, and second, because Shaykh Shaltūt was considered above criticism there—especially from someone who was neither Egyptian nor well known to them!

He said: “If you must send it, then abridge the treatise as much as you can and send it to them. Perhaps they will publish it in the magazine, though I do not think they will.” And so it proved: I abridged it to a page and a half and sent it, but it was not published!!

A detailed refutation of those who take this approach belongs elsewhere. It suffices here that the scholars and masters of hadith agree on the mass-transmitted status of the hadiths concerning the Dajjāl and the descent of