base rulings on hadith and therefore need to strive to identify which are authentic and which are weak, and to assess their transmitters. The same applies to those who critically examine hadith and their transmitters, making the distinctions necessary for assessing hadith, as do Abū Ahmad ibn ʿAdī, Abū Hātim al-Bustī, Abū al-Hasan al-Dāraqutnī, and Abū Bakr al-Ismāʿīlī, and as Abū Bakr al-Bayhaqī, Abū Ismāʿīl al-Ansārī, Abū al-Qāsim al-Zanjānī, Abū ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, Abū Muhammad ibn Hazm, and others like them may also do. A detailed discussion of these matters belongs elsewhere. We have not mentioned those who transmit without chains of transmission—as in Wasīlat al-Mutaʿabbidīn (The Devout Worshippers’ Means) by ʿUmar al-Mallā al-Mawsilī, al-Firdaws (Paradise) by Shahriyār al-Daylamī, and similar works—for they rank below these groups, and what they relate contains a great deal of falsehood.

The point here is that, according to the consensus of those versed in the Prophet’s hadith, there is not a single hadith on this subject traced back to the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, that can be relied upon in a matter of Islamic law. Rather, those versed in hadith recognize the reports transmitted on this subject as fabrications, whether produced deliberately by their originators or through error. There are also reports from the early generations on this subject, most of which are weak.

Among them is the account of the four men who gathered at the Kaaba and made supplications: ʿAbd Allāh and Musʿab, the two sons of al-Zubayr; ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar; and ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān. Ibn Abī al-Dunyā mentioned it in Mujābī al-Duʿāʾ (Those Whose Supplications Were Answered), transmitting it through Ismāʿīl ibn Abān al-Ghanawī