the hadith that the Jews killed forty-three prophets in a single hour; I have documented it in the other series as no. (5461). Another is the hadith: “There are thirty substitutes in my Ummah; through them you are granted provision ...” Its chain of transmission is very weak, and it is documented there as no. (936). Also, the hadith concerning Allah’s Greatest Name in Al Imran: “Say, ‘O Allah, Owner of all sovereignty ...’” It is fabricated, as I have explained there under no. (2772). There are many other such examples; if they were all traced, they would fill a large volume.

Then this man al-Sabuni came to those hadiths concerning which Ibn Kathir had remained silent, and treated them as authentic merely by including them in his Abridgement and declaring in its introduction (p. 9) that he had confined it to authentic hadiths and omitted weak ones, just as he had omitted Israelite reports. Yet he is untruthful in all of this, as has preceded; and I have further clarified the matter in my documentation of the hadith referred to above, no. (5461). In this, he has surpassed everyone who has written in this noble discipline in ignorance, misleading others, and empty pretension, such that I know of no one comparable to him—unless the man called Izz al-Din Bulaq was truthful in what he said in the introduction to his book, which he falsely entitled The Way of the Righteous:

“He does not narrate contradictory hadiths, and he excludes weak or fabricated hadiths.”

In making this statement, he is an outrageous liar. For I studied this book closely on account of a particular occasion, examining its hadiths one by one, and I was appalled by the great number of weak and fabricated hadiths it contains, whose total exceeds four hundred hadiths. I was astonished at his audacity and brazenness in making such a sweeping claim. He is among the most ignorant—if not the most ignorant—of those I have seen write on the noble hadith, and I know of no one who equals him