The Disagreement Between Imam al-Bukhari and Other Scholars Regarding the Requirement of Meeting and the Insufficiency of Mere Contemporaneity

The Shaykh: Thus, digging up statements that we can say are anomalous compared to what the critics and preservers followed after that statement was issued is entirely similar to what is known about Imam al-Bukhari, which you mentioned earlier, namely that his school of thought holds that mere contemporaneity is not sufficient to establish continuity; rather, proof of a meeting is required in this establishment.
The student: Yes.

The Shaykh: This is what Imam al-Bukhari said, and it is well known about him. So what is the position of the preservers who came after him? Perhaps you know from the jurisprudence of those who studied the principles of hadith that the majority of hadith scholars, especially the later ones, consider al-Bukhari’s school of thought to be the weaker position. And I mean, as I say, that it is the weaker position in terms of making it an operative cause in a hadith when the conditions of authenticity are met, except for the meeting according to al-Bukhari. The hadith scholars say that this condition is not a binding requirement for others. And all scholars who have books called "Sahih" (authentic collections), such as the Sahih of Ibn Khuzaymah, Ibn Hibban, Ibn al-Jarud, and the compiler of al-Hakim, and others like them, followed this, let alone the later scholars who proceeded to authenticate and grade as good, and to grade as good, isolated hadiths in books of hadith tracing, such as al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani and Ibn al-Muqanna, and others like them. All of these scholars authenticate hadiths while being content with mere contemporaneity. Now.