his statement in al-Taqrīb must therefore be read as an attempt to harmonise his two pronouncements and eliminate the seeming contradiction between them.

Once this point is understood, the weakness of the story becomes evident and it can no longer serve as valid proof. A further defect also came to my attention, namely the disagreement over Aḥmad’s version of it. Ibn al-Sunnī, in ʿAmal al-Yawm wa al-Laylah (p. 202), and al-Ḥākim (1/526) each transmit the ḥadīth through three separate chains from Aḥmad ibn Shabīb with no mention of the story at all. The same is true of the report of ʿAwn ibn ʿAmārah al-Baṣrī, who said, “Rūḥ ibn al-Qāsim narrated it to us,” a version also recorded by al-Ḥākim. Although ʿAwn is weak, his report is still preferable to that of Shabīb because it agrees with the narrations of Shuʿbah and Ḥammād ibn Salamah from Abū Jaʿfar al-Khaṭmī.

In short, the story is weak and repudiated for three reasons: (1) the poor memory of the sole narrator; (2) the divergence found in his transmission; and (3) his contradiction of the reliable transmitters who never mention the story in this ḥadīth. Any one of these factors would be enough to dismiss it—how much more so when all three are present together!

It is astonishing, and a sign of partisanship and caprice, that Shaykh al-Ghumārī cited the variants of this story in al-Miṣbāḥ (pp. 12 and 17) through al-Bayhaqī’s Dalāʾil and al-Ṭabarānī, yet offered no evaluation whatsoever—neither authentication nor criticism. The reason is plain: authenticating it is technically impossible, while declaring it weak is the truth, but …

Much the same was done by those who were not granted success in al-Iṣābah: they brought the ḥadīth with this very story on pp. 21–22 and then said, “This ḥadīth has been declared sound …”