Yet despite this, the annotator of Musnad Abī Yaʿlā could only criticize me, after stating that this ʿImrān’s hadith is good, by saying:
“Shaykh Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī has accused him in al-Ṣaḥīḥah of omitting al-Ḥasan from the chain of transmission and changing Ziyād ibn Ribāḥ into ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ribāḥ, but I do not think he was correct in this accusation!”
That is what he said—may Allah set him aright. Criticism based on mere conjecture, unsupported by evidence, is not permissible, for conjecture avails nothing against the truth, and because it is the falsest of speech, as the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said. This is the first point.
Secondly: Does he not know that one of the categories in hadith studies is the anomalous hadith: that which a trustworthy narrator relates in contradiction to one who is more trustworthy than him, or to a greater number of narrators? Here, the contradicting narrator is fewer in number and weaker in retention, though his hadith is good by the annotator’s own admission. If this is not anomalous in his view, then one of two things must be the case: either he does not know the anomalous hadith, or he is opposing the principles of the hadith scholars. Both are equally bitter.
- There is also a small booklet entitled Exerting Effort in Verifying the Two Hadiths on the Marketplace and Asceticism, written by Abū ʿAbd Allāh ʿĀdil ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Saʿīdān, with an introduction by the eminent Shaykh Muqbil ibn Hādī al-Yamanī. In its mere 63 very small pages, he concluded that the two hadiths referred to are weak. As for the hadith on the marketplace, the response to it will come, Allah willing, in the seventh volume of this Silsilah, under no. 3139.
As for the hadith on asceticism, it is the one that follows in this volume under no. 944. What may be said here is that the man has not been fair to me, nor indeed to some of the narrators of the hadith. The explanation follows:
- As for the first, whoever compares my documentation of its sources there and my comments on the narrators with complete