who are specifically identified: such a report may yield certain knowledge to someone familiar with those channels, the circumstances of those transmitters, and the contextual indications and supporting factors surrounding the report, even though someone who does not share that familiarity may not attain certain knowledge of it. Thus, accomplished hadith scholars with profound expertise may attain complete certainty about reports that other scholars may not even consider likely to be true, let alone know to be true.

This rests on the principle that a report yielding certain knowledge may do so because of the number of transmitters, their qualities, the act of reporting itself, the transmitter’s own perception of the matter, or the subject matter reported. A small number of people may convey a report that yields certain knowledge because their religious integrity and accurate retention make them secure against lying or error, whereas a report conveyed by several times that number of other people may not yield certain knowledge. This is undoubtedly the truth, and it is the position of the majority of jurists and hadith scholars, as well as some groups of speculative theologians.

Other groups of speculative theologians and some jurists hold that whenever a report conveyed by a given number of people yields certain knowledge about one matter, a report conveyed by the same number yields certain knowledge about every matter. This is unquestionably false, but this is not the place to explain why.

As for the effect of contextual indications external to the transmitters in producing certain knowledge of a report, we have not discussed it, because those indications may yield certain knowledge even apart from the report. And if they