Your Excellency mentioned in some of your works that the later scholars excused the *'an'anah* of al-A'mash unless something appeared to them that prevented its acceptance. What is it that appears to prevent its acceptance?

The questioner : Our Shaykh, you said in some of your works that the later scholars excused the *'an'anah* of al-A'mash unless something appeared to them that prevented that. So, what is it that may appear such that the *'an'anah* of al-A'mash is considered a defect?

The Shaykh : This varies depending on the hadith in which that *'an'anah* occurred. It may be that the text contains something that causes the researcher to hesitate in accepting that text for one reason or many. For example, the text may appear to him to be correct or incorrect; that is another matter. It may appear to him that it contradicts the established legal principles, so he finds no way to reconcile that text with those principles which he is familiar with and upon which his jurisprudence is settled. He finds no way to reconcile that text with those principles. Here, he is compelled to look for a hidden defect in the chain of that text, but he finds nothing there except the *'an'anah*. This is what allows the text to be attributed to the *'an'anah* as a defect. As for hadiths that are on the straight path and came from a person like Sulayman ibn Mihran al-A'mash, who is a mountain in knowledge and memorization—even though he was accused of *'an'anah*—I do not say that only the later scholars followed this path. We find in the two Sahihs, and in other than the two Sahihs, among those who committed themselves to authenticity in what they narrated in their books of hadith, that they do not pay attention to the *'an'anah* of al-A'mash. I know that al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani and others like him among researchers and scholars of hadith respond to the *'an'anah* of al-A'mash in the two Sahihs with answers based on the principle of good opinion toward al-Bukhari and Muslim. Perhaps they found a narration in it that explicitly stated the transmission, perhaps, perhaps. And this is the principle in excusing the authentication of the mujtahid imams, whether they are jurists or hadith scholars, unless something becomes clear that leaves the researcher no choice but to say, "So-and-so made a mistake." But the principle is to excuse the narration of so-and-so and the statement of so-and-so. So, when we find scholars of hadith excusing the *'an'anah* of al-A'mash, for example, and others, we say that this is their practice when they do not find in the text something that compels them to look for a hidden defect. In this regard, we followed them in this path. I weaken a hadith containing the *'an'anah* of al-A'mash unless it becomes clear to me that there is something strange in the text, and I have no way to attribute a defect to that text except through the *'an'anah*. At that time, I hold onto it.