Perhaps his excuse was that, when he made that statement, he was not aware that the hadith appeared in any of the sources; indeed, perhaps he had not consulted them at all. It is established from more than one Maghribi scholar that they had no knowledge of certain important primary works authored by Eastern scholars. Ibn Hazm, for example, was unfamiliar with al-Tirmidhi and Ibn Majah, or with either of their books. It has also become clear to me that al-Hafiz Abd al-Haqq al-Ishbili was in the same position: he likewise had no knowledge of the Sunan of Ibn Majah or the Musnad of Imam Ahmad. I have observed that he frequently cites Abu Ya‘la and al-Bazzar, but never cites Ahmad or Ibn Majah. This is in his book al-Ahkam al-Kubra, which I am currently preparing as a critical edition, by Allah Most High’s permission.

It is therefore not far-fetched that Abu Bakr ibn al-‘Arabi was like them in this regard, even though he travelled to the East. Allah knows best.

But if the excuse I have mentioned may be entertained in the case of Abu Bakr ibn al-‘Arabi, then what excuse is there for the eminent Islamic writer, Professor Muhibb al-Din al-Khatib, who commented on Ibn al-‘Arabi’s statement in al-‘Asimah as follows:

“... The statement which they attributed to the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—and which they claimed that ‘A’ishah mentioned when they arrived at those waters, has no place in the reliable compilations of Sunnah...”

That is what he said. It is as though—may Allah forgive us and him—he did not trouble himself to search for the hadith in the reliable compilations of Sunnah, or even in certain dependable books of history, such as al-Bidayah by Ibn Kathir. Had he done so, at the very least, he would have known where this hadith appears in those reliable compilations, or at least in some of them. Instead, he thought well of Ibn al-‘Arabi and imitated him, and thus came to reject this authentic hadith. This is one of the evil consequences of imitation without proof or evidence.

Yet, despite being so far from what is correct and deviating from sound scholarly verification, this is insignificant beside the statement of our friend, Professor Sa‘id al-Afghani, in his comment on the earlier statement of al-Hafiz al-Dhahabi in Siyar al-Nubala’: “This hadith has an authentic chain of transmission”:

“I have some reservation about the authenticity of this hadith, and there must have been a reason why the compilers of the authentic collections omitted it,”