Al-A'mash: How do we receive his tadlis and his 'an'anah?

The questioner : Al-A'mash: How do we receive his tadlis and his 'an'anah?

The Shaykh : If nothing appears in the hadiths he narrated that would make us hesitate to accept them, the principle regarding his 'an'anah is that we let it pass and do not stop to examine it; because this is the norm in his hadiths in "al-Sahihayn" and in the other books of the sound narrations. They do not concern themselves with the tadlis we read in his biography except very rarely, when they are lacking in evidence that compels them to reveal it; because they found something strange in the text, so they search and find no support for them except the 'an'anah. Here they say: perhaps the point here is that he sometimes practiced tadlis. And on this basis, we have proceeded in following our predecessors. I did not pay much attention to some of their classifications of him, placing him in... either by explicit narration or by a corroborating narration that strengthens the hadith he narrated with 'an'anah.

The questioner : Is this, O Shaykh, by virtue of Al-A'mash's explicit statement that he does not use 'an'anah or practice tadlis except regarding fiqh?

The Shaykh : No, it is not from that angle. Rather, this is, as I told you, only following the imams.

The questioner : But do you not know why the imams did this? I mean, is there an explicit statement from one of them, or what?

The Shaykh : They say, for example, in "al-Sahihayn" that the hadith must have been established with them in some of the chains where there is explicit narration. In reality, I believe this is a kind of defense ofThe Shaykh : them, for example. Otherwise, often even the most memorizing of the memorizers, Al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, is unable to produce a corroborating narration with explicit narration from Al-A'mash for some of the hadiths in "al-Sahihayn." And therefore, my heart was reassured by what I mentioned to you earlier.