narrated fabricated hadiths from his father; any hadith specialist who examines them will readily see that the responsibility for them lies with him.”

I say: ‘Abd al-Rahmān ibn Zayd ibn Aslam is weak by their unanimous agreement and makes frequent mistakes. Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Abū Zur‘ah, Abū Hātim, al-Nasā’ī, al-Dāraqutnī and others declared him weak. Abū Hātim ibn Hibbān said: “He would unknowingly distort reports, until such errors became frequent in his narrations: presenting disconnected reports as fully traced back to the Prophet and attributing reports that stopped at Companions to the Prophet. He therefore deserved to have his narrations abandoned.”

As for al-Hākim’s declaring this hadith and others like it sound, this is among the things for which the leading hadith scholars criticized him. They noted that al-Hākim declares hadiths sound which hadith experts regard as fabricated lies. For example, he declared sound the hadith of Zarīb ibn Barthamlī, which mentions the Messiah’s appointed trustee. The experts unanimously agree that it is false, as al-Bayhaqī, Ibn al-Jawzī and others have explained. Likewise, he declares many hadiths in his al-Mustadrak sound although the leading hadith scholars regard them as fabricated. Some are reports whose attribution stops at a Companion, yet he traces them back to the Prophet.

For this reason, hadith scholars do not rely merely on al-Hākim’s declaration that a hadith is sound, even though most of the reports he declares sound are indeed sound. Among scholars who authenticate hadiths, he is like a trustworthy narrator who makes frequent mistakes, although he is more often correct than mistaken. No scholar who authenticates hadiths has weaker judgments of soundness than his. This is unlike Abū Hātim ibn Hibbān al-Bustī, whose judgments of soundness are superior to al-Hākim’s and carry greater weight. The same applies to the judgments of al-Tirmidhī, al-Dāraqutnī, Ibn Khuzaymah, Ibn Mandah and others like them among scholars who authenticate hadiths.