Was it not their duty to profit from the learning of this ḥadith specialist, reconsider their verdict that the report is only āḥād, and interpret the Qur’anic verse in its light, narrowing the verse’s scope accordingly? This, notwithstanding the fact that the noble verse in question speaks about the night prayer, not about the obligatory recitation within the prescribed prayers.

The second illustration concerns the ḥadith on the descent of Jesus (peace be upon him) at the end of time, which is likewise recorded in both Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim. Years ago the Council of al-Azhar asked me about it, and one of its members answered in al-Risālah magazine that it is a solitary report whose chains revolve around Wahb ibn Munabbih and Kaʿb al-Aḥbār.

The reality, attested by scholars versed in the Prophet’s ḥadith, is that the report is mutawātir. I personally tracked its lines of transmission back to the Prophet ﷺ and found that roughly forty Companions narrated it from him; the isnāds of at least twenty of them are sound, and several of those Companions transmit it through more than one reliable route preserved in the two Ṣaḥīḥs, the Sunan, the Musnads, the Maʿājim, and other ḥadith collections.

It is remarkable that none of these chains contains any mention whatsoever of Wahb or Kaʿb. I once prepared a two-page summary of this investigation and sent it to al-Risālah in the hope that it would be published as a service to scholarship, but it never saw the light of day.