—an unaccustomed display of literary daring on his part—it is, in truth, an explicit statement that flatly contradicts the claim the man made in his “Weak Series” that the Shaykh had concurred with him. May Allah guide him.
- (74 – “Whenever a group of people sit together in an assembly without remembering Allah and without sending blessings upon their Prophet …”).
I documented the ḥadīth in that section through several chains from Abū Hurayrah, some of which are authentic, and a number of ḥadīth masters—al-Tirmidhī, Ibn Ḥibbān, and al-Ḥākim—ruled it sound. In spite of this, the aggressor took the liberty of removing it from Riyāḍ al-Ṣāliḥīn and inserting it into his “Weak Series” (52/527), faulting it with the remark:
“In it is Ṣāliḥ, the client of al-Tuʾāmah, and he is weak.”
This blanket judgment of weakness is a denial of the correct position upheld by the critical imams, early and late: the man was considered weak only because of the confusion that afflicted him in his later years, and anyone who narrated from him before that confusion produced sound, reliable ḥadīths. Among those who maintained this are Imām Aḥmad, Ibn Maʿīn, al-Dhahabī, Ibn al-Qayyim in Jilāʾ al-Afhām, and al-ʿAsqalānī. Indeed, three trustworthy transmitters related from him before his confusion, as will be shown shortly.
Further, Abū Ṣāliḥ al-Sammān corroborated him with a sound chain, and I add here that it meets the conditions of the Two Shaykhs, as Ibn al-Qayyim stated in al-Jilāʾ and as al-Sakhāwī wrote in al-Qawl al-Badīʿ (p. 113): “It is an authentic ḥadīth.”
Yet the aggressor cast doubt upon it with an argument unprecedented before him, simply because he could not find among its transmitters anyone who