Example Fifteen:
Hadith no. 178, p. 279:
“Seek Laylat al-Qadr in the last night of Ramadan.”

The compiler placed this hadith under the section “From authentication to weakening” and cited Shaykh al-Albani’s words: “…yet it has a strong corroborating narration from Abu Bakrah which I documented in Mishkat (2092); whoever wishes may consult it. Because of that corroboration I transferred it from Silsilat al-Ahadith al-Daʿifah and Daʿif al-Jamiʿ al-Saghir to Sahih al-Jamiʿ, no. 1249.”

Two remarks must be made about this:

1. This hadith does not appear in the printed edition of Daʿif al-Jamiʿ, nor in any part of Silsilat al-Daʿifah. Its grading as weak is found only in Shaykh al-Albani’s personal manuscript, from which the compiler seems to have taken it. As noted earlier, such instances do not fall within the scope of this study, which is restricted to ahadith carrying two different rulings in two printed works.
2. When the Shaykh says, “I transferred it to Sahih al-Jamiʿ,” it follows that, if the compiler wished to include the hadith in his book, he should have placed it in the section “From weakening to authentication,” not the reverse, as he in fact did.