he has merely trained himself in the idiom of people’s discourse, become acquainted with the rudiments of their inquiries, and memorised much of the worthless chaff they collected, while the very soul of those investigations is blocked off from him. This may be due to low aspiration, self-satisfaction, and a complacent reliance on what the early scholars transmitted because of the esteem they hold in people’s hearts. Such men are the most numerous and the lowest in rank, for they enjoy neither the distinctive merit of the elite nor the safety of the masses. Thus, the first category of the elite are unquestionably innovators; the second are outwardly upon innovation; and the third are to be judged innovators.

Within the elite there is a fourth category—a small band from the earliest generations and a handful from the later ones—who turned wholly to the Book and the Sunnah, walked according to their guidance, kept silent about whatever the two kept silent about, advanced and refrained by them, and abandoned the affectation of matters that did not concern them. Their principal aim was safety, and the survival of the Sunnah was dearer to them than the survival of their own lives. The delight of one of them was to recite the Book of Allah, to grasp its meanings by native Arabic instinct and by the transmitted exegeses, and to ascertain the authenticity of a prophetic ḥadīth, both in its wording and in its legal implication. These, then, are the true Sunnis; they are the saved sect. The entire body of common folk follows them, along with whomever your Lord wills from the three aforementioned categories of the elite, according to His knowledge of the extent of their innovation and their intentions.

When you have examined all that we have set out for you, the troubling question—that the bulk of the community would perish—no longer confronts you; for the most numerous are the masses, past and present, and likewise the elite of the early centuries. It may be that the two middle categories, and also anyone in the first whose innovation is slight, will be rescued by your Lord’s mercy from being enrolled among the innovators in the reckoning of the Hereafter, for your Lord’s mercy is more expansive for every Muslim. Nevertheless, we have spoken according to the purport of the ḥadīth and its corroboration, and shown that, although the sects are many, the total number of individuals belonging to those heretical sects may well not amount to one-thousandth of the rest of the Muslims. Reflect on this and you will be safe from believing that the ḥadīth conflicts with the reports concerning the virtues of this blessed community.

I say: This concludes the words of Shaykh al-Maqbilī, may Allah have mercy on him. They are solid words that attest to the man’s knowledge, virtue, and keen insight. From them you learn the immunity of the ḥadīth from the objection that, I believe, was Ibn al-Wazīr’s principal grounds for declaring it defective. All praise is due to Allah for enabling us to clarify the soundness