Nevertheless, he did not reject Abū Dāwūd’s explicit statement that al-Quraẓī heard directly from Ibn Masʿūd and the others mentioned with him. Rather, he strongly indicated that the contrary view should be regarded as tentative; for, after mentioning at the beginning of his biographical entry a group of Companions from whom he narrated, including those three, he followed this by saying:
“It is said that all of these reports are mursal.”
This is also the view of al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Mizzī in his Tahdhīb. For this reason, I find al-Ḥāfiẓ al-ʿAlāʾī, in Jāmiʿ al-Taḥṣīl (p. 329), commenting on Abū Dāwūd’s explicit statement of direct hearing by saying:
“This is the correct view ...”
He then cited this hadith in support of it, indicating that it is authentic and disproving the claim of anyone who might maintain that its chain of transmission is interrupted.
It occurs to one that the dissenter realized that what he had clung to was insufficient to establish an interruption in the chain, so he resorted to a remarkable device of which those hadith masters had not been aware: namely, invoking what they mentioned concerning the date of birth of Muḥammad ibn Kaʿb al-Quraẓī—namely, the year 40, according to the predominant view—and concerning the death of Ibn Masʿūd—namely, the year 33, according to the majority of views. Accordingly, he said (p. 99):
“Whichever of these views is correct, he was certainly born after Ibn Masʿūd’s death.”
I say: First establish the premise, then build upon it. The views stated concerning the date of his birth are unsupported assertions, with neither reins nor halter; relying on them is invalid in a matter such as this, and I am astonished by it. He rejected Qutaybah’s earlier statement, “I was informed ...,” on the grounds that it came from an unknown source and was therefore anomalous and unacceptable, because it establishes the connectedness of the chain of the hadith that he rejected. Yet now he has clung to a date with no chain of transmission, because it supports the interruption he alleges, and has used it to impugn the report of the trustworthy narrator—