The Shaykh's commentary on the maxim: "The man of a place is best informed about his place."

The questioner : Also, the maxim that the people of a place are better informed about the narrators. That is, they said that when the people of a place criticize a narrator and others authenticate him, we follow the opinion of the people of the place who were...?

The Shaykh : This is not a criterion.

The questioner : It is not a criterion.

The Shaykh : No, it is not the proof in knowledge. This will become clear to you when you know the principle upon which the people of hadith rely when they authenticate or weaken a narrator. For example, today we have no means of authenticating or of critique and weakening, in most cases, except to take that from those before us. And not from those before us who preceded us by a century or two, but from those who were contemporaries of those men or who narrated from those men. This is the method we benefit from, and those before us benefited from it from those before them. That is, the transmission of authentication or criticism from one to another, just as hadith is narrated, authentication and criticism are also narrated. However, it is observed that many of the imams of critique and vindication authenticate and criticize those who were not their contemporaries. For example, we find some of the Tabi'un (the generation after the Companions) being authenticated or weakened by someone who is several levels below them in rank. How were they able to do that? The answer is the first method: if one finds among the Tabi'un someone who authenticated or criticized one of the Tabi'un. But in most cases, such authentication does not exist except very rarely. So how were they able to authenticate and criticize those who were not their contemporaries? The answer, and this is the point of interest, is that they would track the narrator's hadiths and then compare them with the known authentic hadiths among them. And peace be upon you. If they found that the hadiths were mostly upright, they knew that this narrator was upright in his narration. We often find in the expressions of some of the imams of critique and vindication, especially Ibn Hbban al-Busti, that he frequently uses this specific phrase: "So-and-so is upright in his narration." This is an allusion to the tracking I mentioned earlier. They might also say, for example, that he is trustworthy, or that he is truthful, according to the different levels of authentication. If they did not find in the hadiths of that narrator who was not their contemporary any contradiction with the hadiths of the trustworthy ones, they would place, as it is said today, a question mark next to him. This is what they sometimes express by saying, "There is something with him." And peace be upon you and Allah's mercy. This "something" is an allusion to the fact that there is a contradiction in his narration with the hadiths of the trustworthy ones. This contradiction indicates that this narrator is weak in his memory. If they found this contradiction to be frequent in his hadiths, they would classify him among those who are said to have poor memory, or they might state that he is weak. And peace be upon you and Allah's mercy.