of the intermediate rank, not the highest, because he has some weakness. He therefore belongs to the category of narrators whose hadith may be adduced as evidence at the level of good hadith, provided that he does not contradict others or that an error on his part does not become evident. This is the meaning of his statement concerning him in al-Du'afa' (The Weak Narrators) (2/218): “Trustworthy. Al-Nasa’i said: ‘He is not particularly strong,’ and Abu Hatim said: ‘His reports are not cited as proof.’”
Likewise, in al-Tadhkirah (1/228), after relating some of the assessments of those who declared him trustworthy and those who declared him weak, he said: “I say: His hadith are found in the six canonical collections, but among his reports are rejected narrations.”
It is not hidden from the student of knowledge that the statement, “Among his reports are rejected narrations,” does not mean that his reports are themselves rejected. The former means that rejected narrations sometimes occur among his hadith, whereas the latter means that he narrates many rejected reports. Such a narrator is not cited as proof, unlike the former, whose reports constitute evidence when there is no contradiction, as we have mentioned. This is why Muslim cited him, whereas al-Bukhari narrated from him only as supporting evidence and in corroboration, as al-Hafiz explained in the Introduction to Fath al-Bari (p. 451).
Once you understand this, it will be easy for you to correctly understand al-Dhahabi’s statement, cited by the writer in paragraph 6: “This is a rejected report, and Yahya is not among the strong.” There is likewise a difference between al-Hafiz’s saying, “He is not among the strong,” and his saying, “He is not strong.” The latter negates all strength from him and is equivalent to saying, “He is weak.” The former, however—“He is not among the strong”—negates a particular degree of strength: namely, the strength of the leading hadith masters of proven precision. Accordingly, there is no inconsistency between this statement and his earlier statement: “Yahya, though trustworthy, has some weakness.”
As for his statement, “This is a rejected report,” I have not been able to discern why it should be regarded as rejected—Allah knows best—unless he meant that Yahya alone narrated it. In that case, it would cause no harm, especially since Yahya was not alone in narrating it, as has preceded and will follow. Thus, there is no basis for calling it “rejected.” Allah knows best.
- Al-Dhahabi’s statement, “I say: This is among Yahya’s rejected reports,” means that it is among his solitary narrations, as stated above.