ibn Saīd, Abd al-Rahmān ibn Mahdī, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al-Bukhārī, Muslim, Abū Dāwūd, and others like them with absolute certainty. They are firmly convinced that these men do not deliberately lie in transmitting hadith. They likewise know the mendacity of Muhammad ibn Saīd al-Maslūb, Abū al-Bakhtarī al-Qādī(1), Ahmad ibn Abd Allah al-Juwaybārī, Attāb ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Attāb, Abū Dāwūd al-Nakhaī, and others like them, whom they know deliberately(2) tell lies.

As for error, no one but a prophet is protected from being left to persist in it. Nonetheless, hadith scholars know that men such as al-Zuhrī, al-Thawrī, Mālik, and others like them are among those least prone to error, making only minor mistakes that do not impair the hadith’s essential purport. They also know men below this rank who err at times, yet whose predominant qualities are sound retention and accuracy. They possess evidence by which they identify the mistake of one who errs.

Below these are people who err frequently. Hadith scholars do not rely on such narrators as proof when they alone transmit a report; rather, they compare their hadith with other reports and use it as corroborating evidence. That is, they examine what these narrators have transmitted and ask: “Has anyone else narrated it?” When there are multiple transmission routes and the wording is the same, while it is known that the narrators did not collude and that, in the ordinary course, it would be impossible for the same error to occur independently in such a case, this is evidence to them that the hadith is true.

Hence Ahmad said:

“I record a narrator’s hadith to use it for corroboration, for example that of Ibn Lahīah and others like him. He was a learned and devout man, and a judge, but his books were burned, so he began narrating after