Is Ibn Hbban's authentication to be relied upon?
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The Shaykh : And I have proceeded on this basis for years, and I have amended the rule that Allah the Exalted enabled me to publish in the present age among the students of knowledge, which is that Ibn Hbban's authentication is not to be relied upon, because he authenticates those who are unknown to others, and in most cases the stronger opinion is with them and not with him. After patience and perseverance in seeking knowledge, and following the statements of the scholars in the critique and vindication of narrators, and the narration of the narrators from those whom Ibn Hbban authenticated, I introduced an amendment that I saw it obligatory for me to publish among the students, even if after ... because it is from the knowledge that has reached us recently, namely that if Ibn Hbban (may Allah have mercy on him) authenticates a man, and he is the only one to authenticate him, unlike the other masters of the critique and vindication of narrators, we say, as we said previously, that he is not authenticated by his authentication, except here is the exception: except if this narrator whom Ibn Hbban alone authenticated has a large number of trustworthy, well-known narrators who narrated from him, such that the researcher's heart is convinced that this large number of narrators, when they narrated this from this narrator whom Ibn Hbban (may Allah have mercy on him) alone authenticated, that Ibn Hbban was correct in the authentication due to the multitude of narrators from him. But if he alone authenticated a narrator who has only one narrator from him, then at that time we apply the general rule that we include him in the group of the unknown whom Ibn Hbban authenticated. I have seen practically from al-Dhahabi and Ibn Hajar al-'Asqalani, after I reached this exception, that I found them authenticating some narrators, even if they did not find a text specifying the authentication, even if it was like Ibn Hbban in leniency. They explicitly authenticated some narrators, even if Ibn Hbban or one like him in leniency, such as al-'Ajli or al-Hakim, did not authenticate him. There is no one in the biographies of these whom he authenticated. Nevertheless, note the rule that you quoted just now from al-Dhahabi. When they found a multitude of the just narrating from that narrator, whose original status is that he is said to be unknown, and no one authenticated him, nevertheless, they found them saying—I mean al-Dhahabi and al-'Asqalani—sometimes they say of such a narrator that he is trustworthy, and when they soften the statement about him, they say he is truthful, even though no one before them from the masters of the critique and vindication of narrators said this or that statement of theirs. So when they examined the method of the earlier masters, how they judged the trustworthiness or lack of trustworthiness of a narrator, and they did not live in his time and did not mix with him, from their study of the hadiths of this narrator and the narrators from him, if the justice can be reached by knowing the justice of the narrators from that narrator, whose original status is that he is unknown to us, then if the just narrators are numerous in narrating from one for whom we do not know an authentication or a criticism, we consider the narration of these trustworthy people from him as a vindication for them. On this basis, we saw what al-Dhahabi said as correct, because he followed the path of the masters of the critique and vindication of narrators in that. Do you have something here? Please.
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