Saʿīd ibn al-Muʿallā al-Anṣārī al-Zurqī. Al-Nasāʾī impugned him, and Abū Ḥātim said: “Weak.” As for Ibn Ḥibbān, he included him among the reliable narrators in al-Thiqāt (7/482)! Al-Dhahabī said in al-Kāshif: “There is disagreement over his reliability.” I say: This amounts to nothing. He included him in al-Mughnī, mentioning Abū Ḥātim’s weakening of him and al-Nasāʾī’s criticism, without referring to Ibn Ḥibbān’s declaration of his reliability—which is correct in this case. For this reason, al-Ḥāfiẓ stated decisively in al-Taqrīb that he was “weak.” In al-Iṣābah, he said: “Abandoned.” See al-Ḍaʿīfah (6371).

Once you have understood the foregoing, the agreement of these Companions—may Allah be pleased with them—in transmitting these explicit hadiths concerning the withdrawal of the recitation of certain Quranic verses is among the strongest proofs of their integrity, their faithful discharge of the scholarly trust, and their freedom from bias. This stands in contrast to the proponents of caprice, who do not submit to the scriptural texts but impose their rationalistic interpretations upon them, as has already been seen in the case of some commentators.

These hadiths are not contradicted by Ibn ʿAbbās’s reply when he was asked, “Did the Prophet leave behind anything?” He replied: “He left nothing but what is between the two covers.” Al-Bukhārī recorded it (5019). He meant only that part of the Quran which continues to be recited, as stated in al-Fatḥ. Evidence for this is that Ibn ʿAbbās was among those who narrated something of this, as indicated by his statement in the preceding hadith (2909): “Allah and His Messenger spoke the truth: Had there been…” Then al-Ḥāfiẓ said (9/65), at the end of his commentary on Ibn ʿAbbās’s hadith: