As for the report transmitted by Muʿtamir ibn Sulaymān from his father, it should first be understood that al-Hākim’s authentication and endorsement of reliability, when he alone provides them, cannot be trusted even in lesser matters. How, then, can they be trusted in a case such as this, where his endorsement is invoked against what the scholars agree is established to the contrary in the authentic collections? Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of hadith and its scholars would not invoke al-Hākim’s endorsement against something whose contrary is established in the authentic collections.
The scholars agree that al-Hākim is so lenient and permissive in grading hadiths as authentic that his authentication is indisputably less reliable than that of al-Tirmidhī, al-Dāraqutnī and others like them—let alone that of al-Bukhārī and Muslim. Indeed, it is less reliable than that of Abū Bakr ibn Khuzaymah, Abū Hātim ibn Hibbān al-Bustī and others like them. Even the authentication of the hadith master Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wāhid al-Maqdisī in his selected collection is better than al-Hākim’s. Anyone who knows hadith has no doubt that his book is better in this respect than al-Hākim’s. Al-Tirmidhī’s grading of a hadith as sound is sometimes equivalent to, or more reliable than, al-Hākim’s grading it as authentic. Al-Hākim frequently grades as authentic hadiths that are unquestionably fabricated and entirely baseless. So much for that.
It is well known that Sulaymān al-Taymī and his son Muʿtamir used to recite the basmalah aloud. It is the report attributing this to Anas, however, that is rejected. How could it be otherwise, when Anas’s trustworthy, thoroughly reliable students report the contrary from him? Indeed, Shuʿbah asked Qatādah about this, saying:
“Did you yourself hear Anas mention that?”
He replied, “Yes,” and related it to him in explicit wording incompatible with reciting aloud. Shuʿbah’s transmission from Qatādah of what he heard from Anas is of the utmost authenticity and of the highest