books devoted to accounts of ascetics. Its reports are more reliably transmitted than those in al-Qushayrī’s Treatise, the writings of his teacher Abū ʿAbd al-Rahmān al-Sulamī, Ibn Khamīs’s The Virtues of the Righteous, and other such works. Abū Nuʿaym possessed greater knowledge of hadith, a larger body of narrations, and greater reliability in transmission than these authors. However, Imam Ahmad’s Book of Asceticism, Ibn al-Mubārak’s Book of Asceticism, and similar works contain more reliably transmitted material than al-Hilya.

These books, and others, inevitably contain weak hadiths and weak—even false—accounts. Al-Hilya contains some such material, but the other books mentioned contain more. The writings of Abū ʿAbd al-Rahmān al-Sulamī, al-Qushayrī’s Treatise, The Virtues of the Righteous, and similar works contain false accounts—and indeed false hadiths—the like of which is not found in Abū Nuʿaym’s writings.

However, the transmitted material in Abū al-Faraj Ibn al-Jawzī’s Safwat al-Safwa is comparable to that in al-Hilya. The material in both books is predominantly sound; nevertheless, both contain false hadiths and accounts. As for Imam Ahmad’s Book of Asceticism and similar works, they do not contain fabricated hadiths and accounts to the extent found in these other books. He does not transmit in his writings from anyone known to fabricate reports. Rather, they may contain material that is weak because of a transmitter’s poor memory.

Likewise, among the hadiths traced back to the Prophet, none is known to be a deliberate fabrication, just as none of this kind is found in his Musnad. It does, however, contain reports known to be mistaken, in which their transmitters erred. Such errors occur in most Islamic books: no book is free from error except the Quran.