, he said: “The ninth category: one from whom only one person has narrated and who has not been declared reliable; he is denoted by the term ‘unknown.’”

However, I note that his statement concerning the seventh category—“and who has not been declared reliable”—does not apply to this Harun, for Ibn Hibban explicitly declared him reliable, as did, implicitly, those who authenticated his hadith. This is why I previously judged his chain of transmission to be good.

In light of what has preceded, the arguments to which the one claiming weakness has clung fall into the abyss, and the hadith is more likely established—at the very least—as good on the basis of this chain of transmission.

As for his blustering over four pages (18–21), which he filled with what his self-admiration and conceit dictated to him, it is not worthy of a response, even if time permitted; for it adds nothing beyond what he had already clung to: Abu Hatim’s statement, “Unknown,” and al-Hafiz’s statement, “Unknown in status.” The answer to this has already been given, praise be to Allah.

Yet on p. 18 there is something that must be presented to the readers, for it will reveal the nature of this disparager of authentic hadiths: namely, that he errs—at the very least—in perceiving tangible things, which both the righteous and the wicked can see. So how, then, can he perceive intangible matters, which can be seen only through the insight of the heart possessed uniquely by sincere believers? He alleged that I and others had erred in my earlier statement concerning al-Hakim’s authentication: “Al-Dhahabi concurred with him.” May Allah guide him, he said:

“This is a grave error. They blindly followed al-Manawi in Fayd al-Qadir, claiming that whenever al-Dhahabi remained silent about a hadith, he had concurred with al-Hakim!”

Here, then, for the noble readers is an image of the hadith from al-Mustadrak, with al-Hakim’s authentication of it and al-Dhahabi’s concurrence encircled at the bottom of the page, so that they may know who truly deserves to be described as one “gravely mistaken.”