this very condition when he attempted to reinforce Qatadah’s mursal with the report of Ibn Jurayj—although the latter is actually muʿdal. The matter may be clarified from two angles: 1. The required condition is absent here. Both of the two transmitters whose mursal reports are being compared—Qatadah and Ibn Jurayj—share the same teacher, ʿAtaʾ ibn Abi Rabah, as is stated in their biographies. Consequently the two isnads may collapse into a single mursal route, and in that case one chain cannot lawfully be used to support the other for the reason already mentioned. 2. The report of Ibn Jurayj is muʿdal, not merely mursal; therefore it is wholly unfit to serve as corroboration for the first mursal. Ibn Jurayj narrates only from successors (tabiʿun). It is possible that the shaykh from whom he took this muʿdal report was a trustworthy tabiʿi who had received it from the very same authorities cited in the first mursal; thus the stipulated condition has not been met. It is equally possible that his shaykh was unreliable, in which case the report cannot be cited at all because of its weakness and its being mursal. Of these two possibilities, the latter seems more likely to me, for—despite his lofty standing—Ibn Jurayj practised tadlis, as Mawlana Mawdudi himself acknowledged in his rejoinder, though he hurried past the point and neither paused over it nor explained the type of tadlis involved. Instead, he devoted himself to quoting the hadith critics’ statements attesting to Ibn Jurayj’s general reliability—something of little relevance here and liable to mislead the uninformed into thinking that his mursal reports are probative. Among the sources he cited for those testimonials is Mizanu l-iʿtidal, which contains the following: ‘ʿAbd Allah b. Ahmad b. Hanbal said: My father remarked, “Some of the traditions that Ibn Jurayj relates in mursal form are fabricated; Ibn Jurayj did not care from whom he took them,”—that is, when he would say, “I was informed,” or “It was narrated to me from so-and-so.”’ And in Tahdhib al-tahdhib it says: ‘Al-Athram reports from Ahmad: When Ibn Jurayj says, “So-and-so said,” or “It was said,” or “I was informed,” he brings strange narrations; but when he says, “He informed me,” or “I heard,” then you may rely on it.’ Jaʿfar b. ʿAbd al-Wahid relates from Yahya b. Saʿid: ‘Ibn Jurayj was truthful; when he says, “He narrated to me,” it is firsthand hearing, but when he says, “I was informed…” =