rather the Syrians—both their caliphs and their scholars—agreed that the basmala should not be pronounced aloud. The report that ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAziz voiced it is baseless; it has no foundation. Al-Awzaʿi, the leading Syrian jurist, held the same position as Malik: he recited it neither silently nor aloud. Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyya writes in his Fatawa (1/85): “When a competent scholar reflects on these considerations and the like, he must conclude that the hadith of Muʿawiyah is either fabricated, with no reality to it, or has been altered from its original form.” If this is the state of that hadith—“the strongest piece of evidence relied upon in this discussion,” as al-Khatib al-Baghdadi said according to the citation of Nasr al-Maqdisi—then one may judge what the other reports are worth; they will be analyzed in detail below. Second chain: Muhammad b. al-Mutawakkil b. Abi al-Sari said, “I prayed behind al-Muʿtamir b. Sulayman more times than I can count—at Fajr and Maghrib—and he would recite aloud: Bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim both before and after the Mother of the Book. I heard al-Muʿtamir say, ‘I do not fall short in following my father’s prayer.’ My father said, ‘I do not fall short in following the prayer of Anas b. Malik.’ And Anas said, ‘I do not fall short in following the prayer of the Messenger of Allah.’” The report is recorded by al-Daraqutni (no. 116) and al-Hakim (1/233–34). Al-Hakim remarked, “All of its transmitters are trustworthy,” a judgment endorsed by al-Dhahabi. That, however, does not necessarily make the hadith authentic, for a report is not deemed sound until anomaly and hidden defect are excluded and the narrator’s precision is established—none of which is fulfilled here. Ibn Abi al-Sari has been criticized for poor retention; al-Taqrib describes him as “truthful but prone to many errors.”