What is the basis for your authentication of some of the hidden narrators in your books?
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
The questioner : A scholar said that in some of your books, you held that if a narrator is unknown, but a group of trustworthy narrators narrated from him, and he did not transmit anything that is rejected...
The Shaykh : This is a summary of what was mentioned earlier.
The questioner : What do you mean?
The Shaykh : "Al-Sabr" means tracing the narrators who narrated from this hidden narrator, especially if Ibn Hibban or al-'Ajli or others of the lenient scholars authenticated him. When a person traces these narrators who narrated from him and they are trustworthy, and they did not mention any rejected narration from him, then the soul is reassured that this person is truthful. The two Imams mentioned earlier, al-Dhahabi and al-'Asqalani, proceeded on this basis; they authenticated, or at least judged, many narrators whom no one had ever authenticated before, ruling that one of them is truthful. This was only due to their comprehensive study of the trustworthy narrators who narrated from these hidden narrators.
The Shaykh : This is a summary of what was mentioned earlier.
The questioner : What do you mean?
The Shaykh : "Al-Sabr" means tracing the narrators who narrated from this hidden narrator, especially if Ibn Hibban or al-'Ajli or others of the lenient scholars authenticated him. When a person traces these narrators who narrated from him and they are trustworthy, and they did not mention any rejected narration from him, then the soul is reassured that this person is truthful. The two Imams mentioned earlier, al-Dhahabi and al-'Asqalani, proceeded on this basis; they authenticated, or at least judged, many narrators whom no one had ever authenticated before, ruling that one of them is truthful. This was only due to their comprehensive study of the trustworthy narrators who narrated from these hidden narrators.