of this kind, and he also related it as a statement of al-Rabī‘ ibn Anas himself.

Abū al-Faraj al-Maqdisī narrated, through al-Sharīf al-Mazīdī, a similar hadith from ‘Umar, from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, explaining the letters alif, bā, tā and thā.

Then Ibn Jarīr said:

“Had the reports narrated from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, concerning this possessed sound chains of transmission, their explanation would not have been set aside in favour of another. Their chains, however, are unsound, and reports of this kind cannot legitimately be used as evidence. Muhammad ibn Ziyād al-Jazarī, who transmitted the report of Mu‘āwiya ibn Qurra through Furāt from him, is not trustworthy in his transmission. ‘Abd al-Rahīm ibn Wāqid, whose narration from al-Furāt differed from his, is unknown and unrecognized among the scholars of transmission. Ismā‘īl ibn Yahyā, who narrated from Ibn Abī Mulayka, is not trustworthy in his narration, and the scholars of transmission do not consider it permissible to use his reports as evidence.”

I say: This Ismā‘īl ibn Yahyā is known as al-Taymī, a Kufan known for lying. The reports Ismā‘īl ibn ‘Ayyāsh narrates from non-Syrian transmitters cannot be used as evidence. Rather, he is weak in what he transmits from the people of the Hijaz and Iraq, unlike what he transmits from his Syrian teachers. He is accurate in preserving the hadith of his own region but makes frequent errors in the hadith of those others. The scholars of hadith transmitters agree on this. ‘Abd al-Rahmān ibn Wāqid cannot be relied upon as evidence, by agreement of the scholars, and Furāt ibn al-Sā’ib is also weak