What is the criterion for removing the obscurity of a narrator? Or what is the minimum number by which the obscurity of a narrator is removed? With an explanation of the criterion for a mass-transmitted report.

The questioner : Regarding this multitude that removes obscurity, what is its minimum? What is the criterion for this minimum multitude?

The Shaykh : Do you mean the narrators who are authenticated by Ibn Hbban?

The questioner : Those who narrate from a narrator such that his obscurity is removed.

The Shaykh : How?
Al-Halabi : How many narrators are there who, when they narrate from an unknown person, remove his obscurity?

The Shaykh : This is what I am saying to him; I am telling him that what I understood is that the narrators who narrate from the one whom Ibn Hbban authenticated—this is his question, is it not?

The questioner : Yes, exactly.

The Shaykh : Well, it appears to me that this issue does not have a specific threshold or fixed number, because it accepts increase and decrease. This issue is like other issues; for example, the topic in which the scholars of terminology differed greatly, and very greatly, when they investigated the mass-transmitted report and tried to set a limited number for it. When does it become mass-transmitted? Some said that the number of reports coming from more than a hundred paths is required. Then the number was lowered by some to ten narrators. Then they continued to differ because it is not possible to set a limited limit for the issue. The correct view in the issue of mass transmission, in my opinion, is exactly like this issue you are asking about. If we imagine a report narrated by the four Caliphs, and from each of them a trustworthy person from the generation after the Companions, such as Sa'id ibn al-Musayyib or similar, the soul is reassured of the certainty that this report is authentic with certainty, so it is mass-transmitted. The number of Companions who narrated this report is, for example, three or four. Because the comprehensive and exclusive definition set by the scholars of hadith is that it is narrated by a group from a group whose collusion in lying is impossible. And it is certain and beyond doubt that if a group of trustworthy people, whose trustworthiness is certain, narrate it, the strength of this narration is undoubtedly much stronger than if a similar number narrated it, but their authentication is not like the authentication of those first ones; that is, their authentication is the stronger position but not certain. So the number of these people in providing mass transmission and certainty is not like the provision of the number of the first group, and so on. Also, if we say, for example, and among the conditions of the mass-transmitted report according to them is that it is not required to trace and know the biography of every narrator of the mass-transmitted report, such that if a group of narrators known for their weakness in memorization narrate a report, and their number is large and very large, their report also becomes mass-transmitted, even though these individual narrators are weak in themselves. Therefore, they said that it is not required in a mass-transmitted report to know the biographies of these narrators, because mass transmission is what places certainty in the researcher's soul that their collusion in lying is impossible. If we know this difference in trustworthiness, precision, and fairness in the number of mass transmission, then it is not possible to set a limited number for it and stop there. Rather, that differs according to the trustworthiness, fairness, and precision of these narrators of the mass-transmitted report; it may be few or many. Likewise, our topic: if the narrator is, for example, from the level of Ibn Lahi'ah, from that man whom Ibn Hbban authenticated, then the soul requires an increase in the number to more than if the narrators from that man authenticated by Ibn Hbban were from the level of al-Layth ibn Sa'd. So the issue must be studied in each narrator with a specific substantive study, so that a named number is not set such that it is shared in knowing this narrator who uniquely authenticated him by Ibn Hbban. Is he from the famous category that he is in the group of the unknown? Or is he from this exception we mentioned earlier, that he is trustworthy because of the narration of a group of trustworthy people, and the matter ends there? It is not so; rather, every narrator requires a specific study of who narrated from him. If they are in the proportion of the Imam al-Layth, for example, in terms of fame for trustworthiness, precision, and knowledge, and the like, then the soul is satisfied at that time if they are three or four. But if they are like Ibn Lahi'ah, known for his poor memorization, then at that time the soul requires a number greater than that number, and so on. Yes.