in this series and elsewhere much of their ignorance and their overstepping the bounds with regard to the Sunnah by declaring hadiths authentic or weak. Allah is the One whose help is sought.

Now let us consider what is in their “Refinement” that confirms the foregoing description of them, without going into detail in criticizing them, due to the limited space. I say:

What strikes the discerning reader familiar with their four large-volume al-Targhib is that their Refinement, which “contains authentic and good hadiths,” as they stated in the introduction (p. 6), consists of only one volume! Its total number of hadiths is only (1284), out of the (5580) hadiths in the original al-Targhib—that is, less than a quarter! Does this reflect, or even come close to, the actual number of authentic hadiths in al-Targhib? It certainly does not. This is made clear by the fact that the aforementioned total approximates the number of hadiths in the first volume of my own Sahih al-Targhib wa al-Tarhib; it exceeds it by only about (200) hadiths. That is one volume out of what I estimate will be three volumes, since the remainder is still in print—that is, a ratio of one out of three.

Another example confirms this ratio: the total number of hadiths which they declared authentic or good in al-Targhib, from the Book of Sincerity—the first book in it—reached (71) hadiths; whereas their number in their Refinement is (21)! That is likewise one-third. Thus, they have cast aside approximately three-quarters of the hadiths they declared authentic in this single book. So how many hadiths will they have cast aside from the other books?! Undoubtedly, they will amount to nearly two thousand—or even more, were it not for the repeated hadiths in the original, for these are among what they omitted. This is further supported by the fact that the number of the final hadith in my Sahih al-Targhib, in the proof copy before me, is (3691). It may increase slightly, or decrease, after the final proof has been corrected.