biographical entry when I commented on the hadith in the notes to al-Kalim al-Tayyib (p. 73). At the time, I was away from my home and my books, and so I claimed there that no biographical entry for Hilal appeared in al-Tahdhib or elsewhere! This was an oversight on my part, by which Allah Most High tests whomever He wills among His servants. Some spiteful and envious people who seek out the slips of the believers seized upon it, making as much noise over it as they pleased—especially Shaykh Habib al-Rahman al-Aʿzami and Shaykh Ismaʿil al-Ansari. The latter wrote a commentary about it in al-Wabil al-Sayyib, spanning approximately two pages (236–237) in small print, from which the reader gains nothing concerning the authentication or weakening of the hadith—apart from quotations from certain biographical works, something even a beginner in this field can do—together with some errors which this is not the place to explain.

The point is that this oversight prompted me to re-examine this Hilal: was he Abu Tumah, or someone else? I therefore returned to the early sources upon which later scholars rely for biographical notices, such as al-Bukhari, Ibn Abi Hatim, and others. I found that the latter listed Abu Tumah in the section on agnomens in al-Jarh wa-al-Taʿdil (4/2/398), saying: “...the Quran reciter of the people of Egypt; he heard Ibn ʿUmar, and the two sons of Yazid ibn Jabir, ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿIsa, and Ibn Lahiʿah narrated from him.”

This wording suggests that he distinguished between Abu Tumah and Hilal, for several reasons. First, he gave Hilal a brief biographical notice under the section on names, in the same volume (p. 77), saying: “He narrated from ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAziz, and ʿAbd al-ʿAziz ibn ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAziz narrated from him.”