his marginalia on the treatise by the great scholar al-Izz ibn Abd al-Salam, Bidayat al-Sul fi Tafdil al-Rasul, which I later edited and annotated with useful notes. In those notes I exposed Shaykh al-Ghumari’s ignorance of this science, his negligence in tracing hadiths and grading them for authenticity or weakness, his blind reliance on al-Tirmidhi’s verdicts of hasan because he lacked the ability to investigate for himself, and his beautifying of certain weak reports. Out of spite and unjust retaliation he then authored the above-mentioned booklet, which deserves to be called Al-Qawl al-Maqdhaʿ (“The Scurrilous Word”) because of the abundance of insults, invective, name-calling, calumny, and slander it contains—some of which I documented in the introduction to volume three of Silsilat al-Ahadith al-Daʿifah (pp. 8–44). Among the points he took me to task for in that “Scurrilous Word,” raising a hue and cry and branding me slow-witted and weak in deduction, is what will appear later in the book (p. 161; here pp. 884–885) concerning my understanding of Ibn Masʿud’s statement in the tashahhud: “When he (meaning the Prophet ﷺ) passed away, we would say: al-salam ʿala al-nabiy (peace be upon the Prophet),” which I held to be by prophetic instruction. Al-Ghumari blackened five pages (pp. 13–18) attempting—so he claims, by many arguments—to prove that this was merely the ijtihad of Ibn Masʿud and those who agreed with him. Because this introduction cannot accommodate a point-by-point refutation, I shall give a brief reply that will, by Allah’s leave, uproot all of his objections and scatter them like dust, while at the same time offering—God willing—guidance to anyone eager to follow the truth and prefer it to inherited custom or majority opinion. I say: It is perfectly clear that no one inferior to the Companions in knowledge, piety, fear of Allah, and faith in the verse revealed about His Prophet ﷺ, “Nor does he speak from desire; it is only revelation revealed” (53:3–4), would ever dream of taking one of the Prophet’s teachings—such as his instruction to say “al-salam ʿalayka ayyuha al-nabiy (peace be upon you, O Prophet!)”—and altering it to “al-salam ʿala al-nabiy (peace be upon the Prophet).” Nor would anyone tamper with his ﷺ guidance for greeting the inhabitants of the graves—“al-salam ʿalaykum ahl al-diyar (peace be upon you, dwellers of these abodes…)”—and turn it into “al-salam ʿala ahl al-qubur (peace be upon the occupants of the graves…).” How, then, could such a change possibly be attributed to the very Companions, and especially to Abd Allah ibn Masʿud, who was famous among them for his uncompromising war on all innovations? His condemnation of those who gathered in the mosque in circles, each with a man in the middle telling them, “Say subhan Allah so-many times, say Allahu akbar…” is too well known to need rehearsal here. =