transmitted by narrators other than those he considered unreliable; or it may have been transmitted through a connected chain other than the disconnected one, with its wording accurately preserved by some of the hadith masters; or the report may have corroborating reports and supporting chains that establish its authenticity. This, too, is very common.

Among the Successors and their followers, down to the renowned imams who came after them, this was more prevalent than in the earliest generation—or was common within the first category. Hadiths had spread and become widely known, but they reached many scholars through weak chains, while reaching others through different, authentic chains. A hadith would thus constitute authoritative evidence through a chain by which it had not reached the scholar whose position differed from it. Hence, more than one imam made acceptance of what a hadith entailed conditional upon its authenticity, saying:

“My position on this issue is such-and-such. A hadith stating otherwise has been reported concerning it; if it is authentic, then that is my position.”

The third reason:

A scholar may consider a hadith weak on the basis of an independent assessment in which another scholar disagrees with him, even without considering any other chain of transmission. This applies whether he is correct, the other scholar is correct, or both are correct according to those who say, “Everyone who exercises independent legal judgment is correct.”

There are several reasons for this.

One is that one scholar may consider the narrator of a hadith weak, while another considers him trustworthy. Knowledge of narrators is a vast field. Yet the scholar who is correct may be the one who