He then repeated this point near the end of the book, saying (p. 222):
“We are not among those who authenticate hadiths through corroborating evidence.” (1)
The person referred to has proceeded upon this and other such notions—contrary to the scholarly principles established by the scholars of Islam. So which of the two was first to fall into such ignorance?! Was it a case of “Their hearts are alike,” or was one instructing the other, as Allah says: “Did they enjoin one another to do this? Rather, they are a transgressing people”?!
The point is that the person alluded to declared this hadith weak in his aforementioned collection of weak hadiths, no. 125, considering the individual transmission routes in isolation and without taking into account the strength that their combined evidence lends to the hadith. So what, one wonders, will his position be regarding the transmission route of the hadith at hand?! What I fear most is that he will concoct a hidden defect to which he can cling in order to impugn it, just as he did with some of the routes of the hadith of al-‘Irbad ibn Sariyah concerning the exhortation. For although he declared it weak through all its routes on the basis of that ill-omened rule—and although most of them are authentic—when I presented him with another route from Musnad al-Shamiyyin which he had not encountered, he acknowledged its authenticity in our presence, only to turn back on his heels thereafter, as you will find explained in Supplement no. 13, printed at the end of the second volume of the new edition of Silsilat al-Ahadith al-Sahihah.
And Allah is the One whose help is sought.