that this was prescribed with respect to prophets and angels, and even righteous people and those thought to be righteous, even if they were not righteous in reality. Yet no hadith traced back to the Prophet concerning this is found in any of the Muslim collections relied upon for hadith—neither in the two Sahīh collections, nor in the Sunan collections, nor in authoritative Musnad collections such as the Musnad of Imam Ahmad and others. Such reports are found only in books known to contain many fabricated, falsely attributed hadiths invented by liars. These liars are distinct from those who may make mistakes in transmitting hadith without deliberately lying: reports from the latter are found in the Sunan collections, the Musnad of Imam Ahmad, and similar works. As for those who deliberately lie, Ahmad did not transmit from any of them in his Musnad.

For this reason, the hadith master Abū al-‘Alā’ al-Hamdānī and Shaykh Abū al-Faraj Ibn al-Jawzī disagreed over the question: Does the Musnad contain any fabricated hadith? Abū al-‘Alā’ denied that it contained any fabricated hadith, while Abū al-Faraj affirmed that it did, explaining that it contained hadiths known to be false. There is no contradiction between the two positions. In Abū al-Faraj’s terminology, a “fabricated” hadith is one for which there is evidence establishing that it is false, even if its transmitter did not deliberately lie but merely made a mistake. For this reason, he included many hadiths of this kind in his book on fabricated hadiths.

A number of scholars disputed many of the reports he included, saying that there was no evidence establishing their falsity. Indeed, they demonstrated the authenticity of some of them. Nevertheless, most of what he included in his book on fabricated hadiths is false by scholarly agreement.