Moreover, what merits attention is that the aforementioned hadith masters and scholars, in their writings on hadith terminology, generally followed the pattern established by their predecessors in composition—namely, Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ in his Muqaddimah—and rarely differed from him. As anyone who studies their works in this field knows, they are variously abridgers, summarizers, writers who add qualifications, or commentators. This issue is one in which they did differ from him: al-Nawawī’s aforementioned wording, which deems contemporaneity and the possibility of meeting sufficient, modifies Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s wording, which explicitly stipulates that an actual meeting must be established.

The scholars mentioned above followed this modification, and they confirmed it in practice by declaring authentic hadiths transmitted through chains in which it is impossible to verify that the narrators met one another at every level. This is nearly impossible, as anyone who has practised the discipline of tracing hadith sources knows—provided he is not a man of partisan bias. Here is the example before you: this hadith is narrated by Sālim ibn Abī al-Jaʿd from Sabrah, may Allah be pleased with him. Those mentioned previously declared it authentic, including the hadith master al-ʿIrāqī, who, in his commentary on Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s Muqaddimah, endorsed Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s stipulation that a meeting must be established. Yet I have found no statement from him agreeing with those who deem contemporaneity sufficient. Nevertheless, in practice he agreed with them when he declared this hadith’s chain of transmission authentic. For we have not seen anyone explicitly affirm that Sālim met Sabrah. Yet it is certain that Sālim was a Successor, lived during the time of the Companions, and narrated from a number of them. They explicitly stated that he did not hear from some of them, but Sabrah was not among those.

Despite this, the one who weakens authentic hadiths and corrupts the books of the imams through his annotations clung to the stipulation that a meeting must be established. In his annotation to Ibn al-Qayyim’s Ighāthat al-Lahfān (1/134), he said: “Its chain of transmission is weak, for Sālim narrated from Sabrah only this hadith, and he did not explicitly state that he heard it from him. He is known to omit intermediaries when narrating from a number of Companions. Therefore, his report of this hadith cannot be established unless he explicitly states that he heard it from him.”

It may thus be said to him: “First establish the premise, then build upon it! For you have no evidence for the condition mentioned except ...”