Of them also is diversion from the intentions...

Of them also is diversion from the intentions, a large number of transmitters were not aware of the purpose of what they used to see and hear, reporting the hadith according to their surmise and conjecture, the fact entailing their liability to falsity. Also of the reasons is imagining the truth, which occurs mostly because of trusting the transmitters.

Besides unawareness of application of the states with the incidents, because of the obscurity and affectation overwhelming them, so they would be transmitted by the reporter in the way he saw them, that is by feigning other than their truth.

Another reason is the people’s seeking favouritism near the magnates and chiefs through flattery and adulation, with circulation of remembrance to the extent that the reports would convey that contrarily to reality, as the selfs being fond of hearing flattery, and people are anxious to gain the worldly lusts and means, like magnanimity and affluence, not interested mostly in virtues or competing to be of their owners.

The foremost of reasons leading to falsity being unawareness of nature of conditions in populousness, as for every incident — abstract or act — there should be a certain nature belonging especially to itself in essence, and to what it encounters.

If the hearer be acquainted with natures of events and conditions in the existence, and their requirements, that will verily help him rectify the khabar so as to discern truthfulness from falsity, which being the most effective way in verification from every aspect. Most often it may occur to the listeners to admit and transmit some impossible akhbar, that would be taken from them.

735 Verification of Akhbar by Recognizing Tempers of People: He (Ibn Khaldun) said also: The best and most authentic methods in verification of akhbar being only in recognizing the tempers of people, so as to discern the real from false ones. This method is prior to verification through ta’dil of the narrators, to which it should not be referred but only after realizing that the khabar being possible or impossible in itself.

If it be impossible, then it would be futile to consider the ta’dil and tajrih (for giving judgement). Men of insight regarded impossibility of indication of the word and interpreting it with what is refused by reason, to be one of points of defamation in the khabar.