“This hadith has already appeared as no. (81) and will appear as no. (1470). Imam al-Bukhari also narrated it, with additions beyond what is found here, in the books on minor ablution, supplications, and the oneness of God; but I have not found it in the Book of Etiquette. See Fath al-Bari (1/357; 11/109, 113, 115; 13/462). Perhaps the author was mistaken, since the hadith is found in al-Bukhari’s al-Adab al-Mufrad.”

Reflect, dear reader, on this source documentation: is it, first of all, the work of “a group of scholars,” or of ignorant people? Or is it the work of a single individual who does not know what his tongue is uttering or what his pen is writing—namely, the one who announced that the aforementioned critical edition was produced under his supervision, as demonstrated by his statement, “but I have not found it…”?! This is the first point.

Second: was his attribution of the critical editing of the new edition to “a group of scholars” merely a change of appearance for commercial gain—the kind plainly manifested when he inserted himself and others alongside me as editors of the book al-Tankil, as I explained in the introduction to its new edition? Or was it admiration and conceit over the alleged critical edition here, so that he attributed it here to himself rather than to them? The less bitter of the two is still bitter.

Whichever it was, this source documentation alone is the clearest proof that its writer is not even a student of knowledge, let alone a scholar. So how could it be the work of “a group of scholars”?! This is so for the following reasons:

First: the hadith is in Sahih al-Bukhari, as you have learned. Denying that it is found there, despite the readily available indexes through which it may be consulted, confirms what I have stated.

Second: the references he attributed to Fath al-Bari are not the result of his own effort, research, and investigation. Rather, they are among the many thefts that have become widespread in his writings and annotations. He took them from the Salafiyyah edition, for which Muhammad Fu'ad Abd al-Baqi, may Allah have mercy on him, exhaustively cross-indexed the hadiths. In the first cited location, concerning the hadith of al-Bara (1/357), he indicated the reference numbers for its various occurrences. Then along came this man, parading what he had not been given, and converted their numbers into page numbers.