and Muslim, he says, has adduced the authority of Abd al-Majid ibn Abd al-Aziz, while all the remaining transmitters are unanimously deemed upright; the real flaw, he adds, lies in Shuʿbah’s report from Qatadah, for Qatadah—despite his eminent rank—used to employ tadlis and would take reports from just anyone.’ So he claimed! His remark is aimed at the preceding report from Anas in which the basmalah is recited quietly. Yet this purported flaw carries no weight, because Qatadah explicitly stated that he had heard it directly from Anas, nullifying al-Hakim’s objection. There are, in fact, further points that must be taken against his assessment: First: Muslim did not rely on this Abd al-Majid as an independent authority; he cited him only alongside another transmitter, as shown in Tahdhib al-Tahdhib. Ibn Hajar writes in al-Taqrib: ‘Truthful, though he makes mistakes.’ Moreover, Abd al-Razzaq corroborated his wording in the versions preserved by al-Daraqutni and al-Bayhaqi. Second: The narrator Abd Allah ibn Uthman is not unanimously accepted as authoritative, contrary to what al-Hakim’s phrasing suggests. Al-Bukhari cites him only in suspended form, and the critics differ over him—though Muslim did treat him as reliable. Ibn Maʿin and others declared him trustworthy; al-Nasaʾi, in one statement, agreed, while in another he said, ‘He is not strong.’ A similar judgment is related from Ibn Maʿin. Ibn ʿAdi remarks, ‘His hadiths are fair.’ I say: the sound conclusion is that he is reliable and usable; at the very least his reports are hasan and may be cited as evidence—unless he contradicts someone stronger, which is precisely the case here. We have already shown that numerous authorities transmit, through multiple chains, from Anas that the Prophet ﷺ used to recite the basmalah silently. How, then, could Anas plausibly narrate Muʿawiyah’s practice in a manner that conflicts with what he himself related from the Prophet ﷺ and from the Rightly Guided Caliphs? Moreover, none of Anas’s well-known students are reported to have