I heard a university doctor say: Shaykh Al-Albani cited a hadith in *Al-Silsilah* and stated that it has no chain of narration, and I found a chain for it in

The student : When you cited a hadith in *Al-Silsilah*, I did not cite its chain of narration with it because it has no chain, or I do not know how?

The Shaykh : I do not think so.
The student : I mean, it has no chain of narration.

The Shaykh: Yes.
The student : Okay, I found a chain for this hadith.

The Shaykh : I found a chain.
The student : Yes, we study the subject of research and tracing hadiths (*takhrij*) at the university. When the doctor presented the hadith to us, he said Shaykh Nasser did not find a chain for this hadith, and we found a chain for it.

The Shaykh : May Allah reward him with good, and he...
The student : He says the hadith's chain is found with Abu 'Adi in *Al-Kamil* under the biography of...

The Shaykh : Ibn 'Adi.
The student : Ibn 'Adi, under the biography of Ibn 'Adi's father.

The Shaykh: All right.
The student : He said: "Abdurrahman ibn Abi... al-'Asqalani narrated to us, my father narrated to us, Noah ibn al-Haytham narrated to us, and then Wahb ibn Wahb narrated from Thawr ibn Yazid from Khalid ibn Ma'dan from Mu'adh ibn Jabal from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). He said this is the hadith's chain, and...The Shaykh : ...he did not find a chain for it. So I said, meaning, if I were to review it with the Shaykh, I would see.

The Shaykh : Okay, this doctor is telling you this.
The student: Yes.

The Shaykh : Tell the doctor: Is the chain of narration a means or an end? Or learn specifically, because you have declared war on the doctors. Ask him: Is the chain a means or an end? If he is a true doctor, he will say yes, it is a means, not an end.
The student: Yes.

The Shaykh : Okay, what is the goal of the chain of narration? It is to know the validity of the narrated text (*matn*), or conversely, its weakness. So he says: He made a correction (*istidrak*) to Al-Albani regarding the chain of a hadith that he cited in *Al-Da'if* and did not mention a chain for. We say, may Allah reward him with good, but did he reach the goal?
The student : He reached it. He says the hadith...

The Shaykh : The goal is the text (*matn*)...
The student : No, the goal is merely that he researched the men to ultimately reach the weakness of the hadith. No, I mean, this is his statement: The principle is that we do not judge the hadith immediately, but rather we look at its men.

The Shaykh : First, when I wrote this statement in *Al-Silsilah*, the book *Al-Kamil* by Ibn 'Adi was not among the published works. Therefore, this is a fact that many overlook and some ignore for a purpose of their own, or Allah knows what is in their hearts. The important thing is that this correction is purely formal. The intended meaning is that we corrected Shaykh Al-Albani. The correct correction is that Al-Albani weakened a hadith, but Doctor So-and-So found a valid chain for it; that is a great gain. As for a hadith that Al-Albani weakened and for which a chain was found that does not remove it from the category of weakness, what is the benefit of this other than to say: We are here.