about this, and he replied:

“There is no one from whom I have narrated to you whom Ayyūb does not surpass,” or words to that effect.

This was also al-Shāfiʿī’s earlier position. Indeed, it is reported that he was asked: “If Sufyān narrates a hadith from Mansūr, from ʿAlqama, from ʿAbd Allāh, is it not to be used as evidence?” He replied: “If it has no basis in the Hijaz; otherwise, no.”

Al-Shāfiʿī later retracted this position and said to Ahmad ibn Hanbal: “You are more knowledgeable about hadith than we are. When a hadith is authentic, inform me of it so that I may follow it, whether it comes from Syria, Basra, or Kufa.” He did not mention Mecca or Medina because he already accepted their reports as evidence.

As for the hadith scholars, such as Shuʿba, Yahyā ibn Saʿīd, and the compilers of the Sahīh and Sunan collections, they distinguished reliable narrators with precise retention from others. They therefore knew which narrators in Kufa and Basra were unquestionably reliable, and that some of them surpassed many of the people of the Hijaz. No scholar doubts the likes of ʿAbd Allāh ibn Masʿūd’s companions—ʿAlqama, al-Aswad, ʿUbayda al-Salmānī, al-Hārith al-Taymī, and Shurayh the judge—or those who followed them, such as Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī, al-Hakam ibn ʿUtayba, and their peers. They were among the most reliable narrators and the most precise in their retention.

For this reason, Muslim scholars came to agree on accepting as evidence whatever the hadith specialists judged authentic, regardless of the city from which it originated. Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī compiled Mafārīd Ahl al-Amsār (Reports Unique to the Scholars of Each City), in which he records the reports transmitted exclusively by the Muslim scholars of the Sunnah in each city.