A statement by the Shaykh al-Islam regarding mursal reports.

The questioner : The Shaykh al-Islam says in the introduction to his tafsir: "If mursal reports have multiple chains and are free from collusion, whether intentional or coincidental, they are certainly valid." Is this statement correct?

The Shaykh : I believe that if we look at the wording of his statement with precision and careful attention, it is correct. So, let me review it so that I can stand firm on that specific wording.

The questioner : Perhaps you are referring to collusion.

The Shaykh : Yes, exactly. And in order to avoid collusion, some scholars of hadith mentioned that if we look at two mursal reports of a mursal hadith and find that each of the mursal narrators initially lived in a country different from the other's, and it is more likely than not—and the preponderance of probability is sufficient in such matters—that one of them did not meet the other, or at least did not travel to the country where the other mursal narrator was, then by such tracing, and by what Imam al-Shafi'i also said, which seems to refer to what I mentioned, namely that if the teachers of each of the mursal narrators differ from the teachers of the other, it reassures us that there is no collusion and no meeting in the narration from a specific person, so that the narration of the two shaykhs returns to the narration of a single shaykh.