The meeting of Shaykh Al-Albani with Shaykh 'Abd al-Rahim Sadiq during his journey for 'Umrah in the last days of Rajab

The Shaykh : ... , , , As for what follows:
Indeed, the best of speech is the speech of Allah, and the best of guidance is the guidance of Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him and his family), and the worst of matters are their innovations, and every innovation is a religious innovation, and every religious innovation is misguidance, and every misguidance is in the Fire. And after that:
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Traveling brings many benefits to the traveler, among which is that it may be written for the traveler to meet a group or some of the scholars of knowledge. And Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He) has written for me to perform 'Umrah in the last days of the past month of Rajab, and to meet with some of the scholars in the Noble Makkah who have a strong insight into participating in the knowledge of the Sunnah and hadith. There is no doubt that meeting with such people brings many benefits to a student of knowledge like me. Among these benefits is being alerted by such people who are engaged in the knowledge of hadith and Sunnah to some of the things in which one may have erred or made a mistake. Indeed, I benefited from this journey with benefits that I saw it was my duty to alert you to, because it relates to pointing out an error of mine that occurred in the hadith numbered three hundred and eight in "Al-Silsilah al-Ahadith al-Sahihah." Therefore, I hope that everyone who has this book, "Al-Silsilah al-Ahadith al-Sahihah," will take note of this alert regarding the hadith numbered three hundred and eight. The text of this hadith is the well-known: . The first thing I mentioned in tracing this hadith was my following statement: "It was narrated by 'Abd ibn Humayd in al-Mukhtabar from al-Musnad," and I mentioned the page, which is the tenth after the hundred, and the second side, and I said: "So 'Abd ibn Humayd said: Ibn Abi Shaybah narrated to us, Waki' narrated to us, from Hammam, from Qatadah, from Abu 'Isa al-Aswari, from Abu Sa'id: "Love the poor people; for I heard the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) say in his supplication, and he mentioned it."
I said: "And this is a hasan chain in my opinion, all of its narrators are trustworthy men of the two Shaykhs," and so on. So that noble man, whose name is "Abd al-Rahim Sadiq," alerted me. And we must give credit to its rightful owner, we must attribute it to its rightful owner. And from this man's virtue is that Allah (Mighty and Majestic) has bestowed upon him much wealth, which he spent traveling in many Islamic countries and others to obtain manuscripts in the knowledge of hadith and Sunnah and photographing them. Therefore, he has been able to obtain many precious books that we have not yet come across. I am not now in the position of explaining these benefits that we gained from looking at the index of this noble man, in which he collected the names of those books photographed in his possession. But I am in the position of mentioning this error that he alerted me to. He said—and he was truthful in what he said—that when I attributed this hadith to 'Abd ibn Humayd in his "Musnad," your eye moved from the text of this chain to this text. This chain is the chain of 'Abd ibn Humayd that I recited for you, its text is not the hadith: . And this hadith: its chain is not this chain, and they are one after the other. So when I transferred this text, instead of my eye falling on the second chain which is in this text, my eye moved to a chain before it for the text of another hadith. And this other hadith is: , and it is also from the hadith of Abu Sa'id al-Khudri.
And this "Musnad of 'Abd ibn Humayd" or "al-Mukhtabar" from it, its style in mentioning hadiths is on the method of the Musnads; because its origin is a Musnad. And the Musnads present hadiths from one Companion in a continuous sequence without regard to chapters or any system. Rather, so-and-so narrated to me from so-and-so from Abu Sa'id al-Khudri, he said: The Messenger of Allah said such and such. A second chain with a second hadith, and a third, and so on. So the error that he alerted me to is this: this text does not have this chain; rather, it has another chain. And naturally, I said to him: It is necessary to research and verify for the sake of scientific verification; because he showed me a copy he had obtained, written in a very beautiful handwriting, and its handwriting resembles the handwriting of the known Mushafs today. I said: I cannot now agree to the correctness of this correction or to its error until we return to the old copies that we have, fearing that this copy might be an error. And indeed, the first thing I did when I returned to the library was to review two copies I have of "Musnad 'Abd ibn Humayd" or "Mukhtabar from Musnad 'Abd ibn Humayd." So my error and the correctness of that noble man became clear to me. Therefore, I saw it as good to hasten in presenting this note, fearing that we may not be able to reprint the book soon. And until it is reprinted, and it may not be reprinted, Allah knows best about that. So I see that you should preserve this from me first, and that the present should convey it to the absent to clear the conscience.
Up to here ends my alert regarding my error in transferring this chain for this hadith.

The questioner : ... .

The Shaykh : Listen, my brother, listen to half the speech with the answer. I did not say: "Up to here ends the explanation of my error" except because the speech has a continuation. So here a question naturally arises; after we have known that this chain which I graded as hasan is not for this text, what is the state of the chain of this hadith which should have been here and did not occur for a wisdom that Allah wills? And the most prominent of these wisdoms is that you know that the Shaykh makes mistakes, if you believed that the Shaykh and the Shaykhs like me, of course, are not better than me and I am not better than them. This is from the wisdom that you know that infallibility belongs to Allah (Mighty and Majestic) alone. You know, but you verify that.
So what is the value of this chain which should have been placed here instead of this one?
The answer is: This chain is weak, while this one is hasan. And based on my previous misconception that this hasan chain is the chain of this hadith, I summarized the speech regarding the remaining hadiths or chains for this hadith in my statement here: "And the hadith has another route from Abu Sa'id, and corroborations from Anas ibn Malik, 'Ubadah ibn al-Samit, and Ibn 'Abbas, which I have all traced in "Irwaa' al-Ghalil" number such and such. And I preferred to present this route here because it is rare despite the soundness of its chain," and so on. So this soundness has gone, it has crashed. The true chain for this text is weak.
So what is the ruling of this hadith?
The answer will be in the next session; because now the reality, after we have lost this chain upon verification, requires reconsidering the individual elements of those routes and the mentioned corroborations. Their chains or individual elements may be weak with a slight weakness that is compensated by the totality of their routes, or the matter may be otherwise. Because we always and forever, following the scholars of hadith, alert that the hadith which is strengthened by the multiplicity of routes requires that these routes not be severely weak. I did not address this aspect in this tracing; that is: to explain that these routes are severely weak or moderately weak. But now, after the revelation of this error, it is necessary to study the individual elements of these routes. Either their weakness is slight and is compensated by their totality, or it is the opposite. If it is the former, the hadith remains to be relied upon, but not in the rank of authenticity; because the basis for authenticating it was based on this chain, and this—as we said—has gone and crashed. But it will be in the rank of hasan li-ghayrihi. And these routes may not reach the level of strengthening the hadith to this rank. So the answer from this perspective; that is: in brief, does this hadith remain in the share of the book "Al-Silsilah al-Ahadith al-Sahihah" after explaining this error, or is it transferred from here to the other book? I hope that the answer to this will be in the next meeting—if Allah wills.
This is what I wanted to alert you to in the short, tight time.
What is left?

Another questioner : A quarter of an hour.

The Shaykh : A quarter of an hour.