Thus he spoke—may Allah guide him! He is quite bold in declaring authentic hadiths weak, driven by excessive caprice and ignorance of this noble discipline. For no one knowledgeable could impugn the authenticity of this chain of transmission, whose routes all revolve around Simak ibn Harb, from ‘Alqamah. This is because there is consensus that Simak ibn Harb was truthful and trustworthy. They did, however, criticize his retention in general; yet the hadith masters pointed out that this criticism is not unrestricted, but applies only to those who heard from him late in his life, as Ibn al-Mubarak and others stated.
Indeed, they deemed weak his hadiths specifically from ‘Ikrimah. For this reason, Ya‘qub ibn Shaybah gave the definitive clarification concerning him, saying:
- “His narration from ‘Ikrimah in particular is inconsistent.
- In his narrations from ‘Ikrimah, he is acceptable, but not among the meticulous narrators.
- Those who heard from him early, such as Shu‘bah and Sufyan—their hadiths from him are authentic and sound. What Ibn al-Mubarak said, in our view, applies only to those who heard from him late in his life.”
Al-Hafiz al-Dhahabi endorsed this in al-Siyar (5/248), commenting afterward:
“I say: This is why al-Bukhari avoided including his hadiths. Al-Bukhari did cite him in suspended form as corroborative evidence. There are several hadiths from Simak ibn Harb, from ‘Ikrimah, from Ibn ‘Abbas; they do not meet Muslim’s conditions, because he refrained from narrating from ‘Ikrimah, nor do they meet al-Bukhari’s conditions, because he refrained from narrating from Simak. Nor should they be deemed authentic, for Simak was criticized only on account of them.”
I say: His reasoning in deeming Simak’s narration from ‘Ikrimah weak strongly indicates that he considered his narration from anyone other than ‘Ikrimah to be strengthened. This is the approach followed by Imam Muslim in his Sahih, as well as those who followed his pattern among the compilers of authentic collections, such as Ibn Hibban and Abu—