“Ahmad narrated this in his Musnad” is a manifest lie. For [this] (1) Musnad of Ahmad is extant, and, by Allah’s will, numerous copies of it (2) are available, yet this hadith is not found in it.

Even more blatantly false is his claim that something similar (3) is found in the two Sahīh collections. It is not found in either of them; rather, they and the Musnad contain material that contradicts it. There is no doubt that this man and others like him are ignorant of the books of the scholars: they neither study them nor know what they contain.

I have seen one of them compile for them a book (4) containing hadiths drawn from various works and attributed at times to the two Sahīh collections, at times to Ahmad’s Musnad, and at times to al-Maghāzilī (5), al-Muwaffaq—the preacher of Khwārazm—al-Tha‘labī, and others like them. He entitled it “Choice Reports in Refutation of the Sects.” Another man compiled a book for them entitled “The Mainstay”; its author was named Ibn al-Bitrīq.

Despite the many lies in what these men transmit, they are nevertheless in a better state than Abū Ja‘far Muhammad ibn Alī—who wrote for them—and others like him. Such men relate lies whose falsity could remain hidden only from one of the most ignorant of people. I have found much of what those men attributed to the Musnad, the two Sahīh collections, and other works to be baseless and without any reality. They attribute to Ahmad’s Musnad material that is not found in it at all.

Ahmad did, however, compile a book on the virtues of Abū Bakr, Umar, Uthmān, Alī, [and others] (6), and in that book he may relate material not found in the Musnad. Yet not everything