that they deliberately (1) lied. Nor do they realize that when we say, “It was narrated by al-Bukhārī and Muslim,” this serves as an indication to us that its authenticity is [established] (2), not that it (3) is authentic merely because al-Bukhārī and Muslim narrated it. Rather, the hadiths recorded by al-Bukhārī and Muslim were narrated by other scholars and hadith specialists besides the two of them (4), so numerous that only Allah can count them. Neither compiler was alone in transmitting a single hadith; indeed, every hadith was narrated by groups of transmitters before their time, during it, and afterward. Even had al-Bukhārī and Muslim never existed, nothing whatsoever would have been lacking from the religion. Those hadiths would still have existed with chains of transmission sufficient to accomplish the intended purpose—and more.

Our saying, “It was narrated (5) by al-Bukhārī and Muslim,” is simply like our saying, “It was recited (6) by the seven reciters.” The Quran has been transmitted through mass transmission; these seven were not alone in transmitting any part of it. Likewise, in authenticating hadiths, the leading hadith scholars did not merely defer to al-Bukhārī and Muslim. Rather, the great majority of what the two judged authentic had already, before their time, been regarded by leading hadith scholars as authentic and accepted as such. Similarly, both during their lifetime and afterward, the leading scholars of this discipline examined (7) their two books and agreed with them (8) in judging as authentic (9) what they had judged authentic, except for a few instances—around twenty hadiths, most of them in Muslim—over which a group of hadith masters criticized them; and these