And they are not to blame in this respect...

And they are not to blame in this respect, as endeavouring to realize the hidden realities and whereabouts of men is verily an infeasible or rather impossible task. In this regard al-Wazir al-Yamani, in al-Rawd al-basim, says: Many of the chiefs of jarh and ta’dil are reluctant regarding the (reliability of) narrator, deeming him reliable once and unreliable another.

As bringing his fancy within the pale of multiplicity can't be weighed by a standard criterion but it is subject to conjecture and can be recognized through investigation and strival (ijtihad), so such wahm (fancy) was viewed in the same way the fuqaha’ were viewing the conjectural events. Hence Ibn Mu'in 533 holds two views regarding the narrator: tawthiq (deeming reliable) and tad'if (deeming weak), and alike things.

Further, it is impossible to evade wahm (misconception), and ismah (infallibility) can never be an attribute of reliable people, or rather it (Messenger's ismah) can never prevent against suspicion but only in tabligh (i.e. tabligh of revelation). As the Messenger of Allah doubted that he performed some obligatory prayers completely, when Dhu al-Yadayn questioned him: Have you shortened the prayers or forgotten this?

534 For all this, we find all books of hadith containing the sahih and non-sahih and even the fabricated and falsified ones, with none of the books being devoid of this even those of al-Bukhari and Muslim which were called al-Sahihayn, and were a target of violent attacks of critics.

Since the case was such with these books, which were devoid of mutawatir authentic traditions but full of conjectural ahad traditions, the Ummah ulama’ of fiqh, usul and kalam have not acted according to them nor been committed to whatever cited in them. So also the case with the grammarians who never quoted hadith to prove rules of language and grammar (nahw), after being sure of their being not sahih or mutawatir as were uttered by the Prophet, but were narrated on the basis of meaning.

The argument they adopted for this was the hadith: "I married her to you with what you have", 535 which was cited in eight forms though being composed of two words only! Those were the views we intended to survey before quoting the utterances of the ulama’ who prompted us to make such a meditative halt before them.

Ibn al-Salah says: When they say: 'This hadith is sahih they mean by this that its sanad goes back to all the aforementioned kinds, and it is no provision for it to be decisive in itself.