As for the former, Allah has made known the Reminder which He sent down to His Messenger and which He commanded His Prophet’s wives to remember, saying:

“Remember what is recited in your homes of Allah’s verses and wisdom,”

[and] (1) has protected it from the distortion that befell earlier revelations. Just as He has protected this community from agreeing upon misguidance, He has protected the wording of the revelation from alteration and safeguarded its interpretation so that the rightly guided, who adhere to the Sunnah and the community, do not go astray concerning it.

He has also protected the Sunnah of Allah’s Messenger—may Allah bless him and grant him peace, may Allah bless him and grant him peace—from false reports introduced into it, whether deliberately or mistakenly. He has done so through the hadith scholars and preservers whom He raised up, who scrutinized it and its transmitters and narrators, acquiring knowledge of these matters that others did not possess. Thus, they reached a consensus, protected from error, concerning the reports they accepted, for reasons that would take too long to explain here.

These scholars in particular, together with the community’s other scholars—and indeed its ordinary members—in general, possessed knowledge through which they safeguarded the religion against additions and omissions. For example, they knew that He had prescribed for them only five prayers each day and night, consisting of two, three, or four units; that He had prescribed no fasting for them other than the month of Ramadan, no pilgrimage other than pilgrimage to the Ancient House, and no zakat obligations other than its known prescribed dues; and other matters of this kind.

They also recognized the falsehood of what ignorant and misguided people might transmit from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, for they knew the falsehood of the claim made by some of the Rāfidah that the Prophet