al-Iḥsān—both editions published by al-Muʾassasah, which he frequently cites in his annotations to Mawārid al-Ẓamʾān, claiming to have critically edited them himself—and Hadith 6489 of al-Ḍaʿīfah. Thus, in these examples and others, he is as previously described. It is enough that al-Walīd used an ambiguous “from” transmission between the two shaykhs and did not explicitly state that he had narrated it directly. If this indicates anything—as people say nowadays—it indicates only inexperience!

12—End of Hadith 332

I then saw the hadith in the Musnad of Abū Yaʿlā, published with annotations and source documentation by our brother Ḥusayn Salīm al-Dārānī al-Dimashqī. I found that he had fallen into a grave error, which had to be pointed out lest those without knowledge be misled. For, in 7/467, he attributed it to Mālik, the two Shaykhs, Abū Dāwūd, and Aḥmad! Yet none of them contains this hadith. The reason for this is simply giving attention to source documentation without understanding, or even carefully considering, the hadith being documented. This is because the version in Abū Yaʿlā has an additional opening, worded:

“If the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, had seen of women what we see, he would have forbidden them from the mosques, just as the Children of Israel forbade their women. We used to see ourselves praying ...”

This first portion of the hadith is the one to which his aforementioned source documentation applies. As for its other portion, which I attributed only to Abū Yaʿlā, none of them narrated it at all in the places to which he referred! Rather, they—and the remaining compilers of the Six—recorded a similarly abbreviated version, worded:

“... they could not be recognized in the darkness before dawn,”

without any mention of “the faces of some [of them].”

It is referenced in Ṣaḥīḥ Abī Dāwūd (no. 450) and al-Irwāʾ (1/278).

I say: Thus, he made two opposite errors: he attributed to them what they do not have, and failed to attribute to them what they do have! This, then, is how source documentation should be done! So how, I wonder, can his critical editing be?!