of the people of Iraq as you would the reports of the People of the Book: neither affirm nor deny what they say.” Another was asked: “Is a report transmitted by Sufyān, from Mansūr, from Ibrāhīm, from ‘Alqamah, from ‘Abd Allāh authoritative evidence?” He replied: “Not if it has no basis in the Hijaz.”

This was because they believed that the people of the Hijaz had accurately preserved the Sunnah, so that none of it had escaped them, whereas inconsistencies had arisen in the hadiths transmitted by the Iraqis that warranted withholding judgment. Some Iraqi scholars likewise held that hadiths transmitted by Syrian narrators should not be accepted as authoritative evidence. Most scholars, however, do not consider this a basis for declaring a hadith weak. Whenever its chain of transmission is sound, the hadith constitutes authoritative evidence, whether it comes from the Hijaz, Iraq, Syria, or elsewhere.

Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī compiled a book on Sunnah reports transmitted uniquely by the people of particular cities. In it, he identifies the Sunnah reports peculiar to each city that are not transmitted with chains of transmission by people elsewhere, including Medina, Mecca, Taif, Damascus, Homs, Kufa, Basra, and others. There are further reasons besides these.

The fourth reason:

A scholar may stipulate conditions for accepting a solitary report from a trustworthy narrator with an accurate memory, while other scholars disagree with those conditions. For example, some stipulate that the hadith be checked against the Quran