Discussion of the book al-Hidayah in the tracing of the hadiths of al-Bidayah by al-Ghamari.
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The questioner : Regarding this, O Shaykh, you mentioned in one of the cassettes, in your translation, may Allah reward you, with Shaykh Abu Ishaq, may Allah reward him, that you mentioned Shaykh Ahmad al-Ghamari, the author of the book that became famous after the days of al-Hidayah in the tracing of the hadiths of al-Bidayah. You mentioned that you said, "I have not seen from him..." in knowledge, he would defend it, so I ask: if his book al-Hidayah in the tracing of the hadiths of al-Bidayah is compared with your books or the books of the predecessors who care for scrutiny, we find only one book that relied on filtering the hadiths to a great extent from... and did not care for authentication and weakening in the required manner, nor for exhausting the routes, and he imitated al-Hakim in places. So I do not know, I mean, where did you get this from?
The Shaykh : Do you want me to say that there is no one more knowledgeable than me, my brother!
The questioner : No, excuse me, it is the custom of hadith critics that they do not say a word in praise unless it is something unusual coming from a Shaykh like you. Now you understand my intent, O Shaykh.
The Shaykh : Now I will answer you regarding the second part of the speech. I said that not because I had looked into the man's books, but because I met him when he came to us as a visitor in Damascus and came to the Zahiriyyah Library, and a discussion took place between me and him regarding that Shaykh named Abdullah al-Habashi, who had started responding to me and I was responding to him. I was amazed by the responses that indicated he had no knowledge of hadith. So I discussed with Shaykh Ahmad al-Ghamari some of what Abdullah al-Habashi claimed. What became clear to me regarding Abdullah al-Habashi is that he is knowledgeable, and no time has passed but I also testify that he is knowledgeable. As for the issue of tracing and delving into authentication and patience with it, that is another matter; we cannot testify to it for any scholar we sit with, understanding that he knows the terminology completely and knows the science of critique and vindication, but theoretically. To judge him because he applies his knowledge practically, this undoubtedly requires looking into some of his works. This is something I had not come across at that time. But this session I heard about with him in the Zahiriyyah Library revealed to me that he is knowledgeable about the terminology and the rules of the hadith scholars. However, later, when I began to look into some of his works, it became clear to me that he is not one whose tracing and transmission of hadiths can be trusted. I do not know if you have come across a small booklet he named al-Mughayyir, al-Mughayyir on al-Jami' al-Saghir. In it, he followed the path of the people of opinion in criticizing some hadiths and judging them as denounced or fabricated without referring to the scientific tracing of these hadiths. I testify with myself that many times I stand before a hadith with a weak chain and it seems to me that I should judge it as a denounced hadith, but I am not satisfied with this. So I trace whether there might be other routes for this hadith or words close to its wording. In the end, I restrain my self from rushing and raise the hadith, not only from denunciation but also from weakness, and perhaps to goodness, because I found for it routes that opened my chest to rescue it from weakness and raise it to a rank that can be cited as evidence. So this man, in his book al-Mughayyir, for example, because this book of his is much more dangerous than the tracing of the hadiths of al-Bidayah which you referred to, he took very broad steps in judging some hadiths of al-Jami' al-Saghir as fabricated. Therefore, if a student of knowledge traced some of these hadiths, he would find them in my Sahih al-Jami' and Da'if al-Jami'. The reason is that he did not apply the scientific methodology. Yes, as I told you, in what I witnessed from him in that session, he is a scholar, but he did not apply the scientific rules in his transmission of the hadiths of al-Jami' al-Saghir. While I, as I said in the introduction to Sahih al-Jami' and Da'if al-Jami', by my tracing of the chains of the hadiths, I rescued dozens, indeed hundreds, of hadiths whose chains are judged weak. But when I traced these hadiths in other sources besides the sources al-Suyuti attributed them to, I found them established relatively, meaning not authentic by the route al-Suyuti mentioned, but by the other route or other routes. So by this wide tracing, I rescued hundreds of hadiths from weakness which al-Suyuti judges weak and the commentator al-Munawi judges weak. And this is from the favor of Allah upon us and upon the people, but most people do not know.
The Shaykh : Do you want me to say that there is no one more knowledgeable than me, my brother!
The questioner : No, excuse me, it is the custom of hadith critics that they do not say a word in praise unless it is something unusual coming from a Shaykh like you. Now you understand my intent, O Shaykh.
The Shaykh : Now I will answer you regarding the second part of the speech. I said that not because I had looked into the man's books, but because I met him when he came to us as a visitor in Damascus and came to the Zahiriyyah Library, and a discussion took place between me and him regarding that Shaykh named Abdullah al-Habashi, who had started responding to me and I was responding to him. I was amazed by the responses that indicated he had no knowledge of hadith. So I discussed with Shaykh Ahmad al-Ghamari some of what Abdullah al-Habashi claimed. What became clear to me regarding Abdullah al-Habashi is that he is knowledgeable, and no time has passed but I also testify that he is knowledgeable. As for the issue of tracing and delving into authentication and patience with it, that is another matter; we cannot testify to it for any scholar we sit with, understanding that he knows the terminology completely and knows the science of critique and vindication, but theoretically. To judge him because he applies his knowledge practically, this undoubtedly requires looking into some of his works. This is something I had not come across at that time. But this session I heard about with him in the Zahiriyyah Library revealed to me that he is knowledgeable about the terminology and the rules of the hadith scholars. However, later, when I began to look into some of his works, it became clear to me that he is not one whose tracing and transmission of hadiths can be trusted. I do not know if you have come across a small booklet he named al-Mughayyir, al-Mughayyir on al-Jami' al-Saghir. In it, he followed the path of the people of opinion in criticizing some hadiths and judging them as denounced or fabricated without referring to the scientific tracing of these hadiths. I testify with myself that many times I stand before a hadith with a weak chain and it seems to me that I should judge it as a denounced hadith, but I am not satisfied with this. So I trace whether there might be other routes for this hadith or words close to its wording. In the end, I restrain my self from rushing and raise the hadith, not only from denunciation but also from weakness, and perhaps to goodness, because I found for it routes that opened my chest to rescue it from weakness and raise it to a rank that can be cited as evidence. So this man, in his book al-Mughayyir, for example, because this book of his is much more dangerous than the tracing of the hadiths of al-Bidayah which you referred to, he took very broad steps in judging some hadiths of al-Jami' al-Saghir as fabricated. Therefore, if a student of knowledge traced some of these hadiths, he would find them in my Sahih al-Jami' and Da'if al-Jami'. The reason is that he did not apply the scientific methodology. Yes, as I told you, in what I witnessed from him in that session, he is a scholar, but he did not apply the scientific rules in his transmission of the hadiths of al-Jami' al-Saghir. While I, as I said in the introduction to Sahih al-Jami' and Da'if al-Jami', by my tracing of the chains of the hadiths, I rescued dozens, indeed hundreds, of hadiths whose chains are judged weak. But when I traced these hadiths in other sources besides the sources al-Suyuti attributed them to, I found them established relatively, meaning not authentic by the route al-Suyuti mentioned, but by the other route or other routes. So by this wide tracing, I rescued hundreds of hadiths from weakness which al-Suyuti judges weak and the commentator al-Munawi judges weak. And this is from the favor of Allah upon us and upon the people, but most people do not know.