the Sahih collections—a description that, according to the scholars, does not establish a hadith’s authenticity, as I demonstrated in the introduction to my book Sahih al-Targhib (1/39–47) and elsewhere. Likewise, when the one documenting its sources says, “Its chain contains So-and-so, who is weak,” they assume that the hadith itself is weak. Indeed, some of these very source-documenters may share this misconception, due to their ignorance of the established principle in hadith methodology: the weakness of a chain does not necessarily entail the weakness of the hadith text. That weak narrator may have a corroborating narrator whose report strengthens it, or the hadith may have a supporting report that lends it strength, as I indicated in documenting the following hadith, no. 1901, p. 525.

This is a fact known to everyone who has practised this discipline, is a hadith master with broad knowledge of texts, chains, and corroborating reports, is familiar with the narrators and their circumstances, and perseveres patiently in research and impartial criticism. You will find this fact plainly evident in all my books, especially this series—and this volume in particular. It will become quickly and clearly apparent to the reader upon consulting the index, “A—Topics and Benefits.”

Moreover, declaring a hadith defective on account of a weak narrator may merely rest on reliance upon a less sound judgement, made by some leading authorities of narrator criticism and accreditation, that the narrator was weak, while others may have declared him trustworthy, and their accreditation may be the stronger view. Thus, authenticating and declaring hadiths weak is a precise scholarly process. It requires, on the one hand, sound knowledge of hadith science and its principles and, on the other, scrupulous care and thorough familiarity with the hadith’s various routes and their chains. This is something that the vast majority of those engaged today in documenting hadith sources can neither accomplish nor do well. If you see one of them offering detailed verification and an extensive treatment of the matter, it is, in most cases, plagiarized and falsely appropriated. The fair-minded among them attribute the verification to its author, but they are few.

The esteemed readers will see in this book many examples demonstrating the deficiency we have mentioned in tracing the various routes and in critical verification—a deficiency that has led some contemporaries to declare authentic hadiths weak. For one example, see the end of the discussion of the hadith concerning the Prophet’s family (no. 1761), where reference is made to