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= therein, then he said: This hadith contains some disorder (idṭirāb). I asked ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān — meaning al-Dārimī — about it, and he did not rule on it definitively. I asked Muḥammad — meaning al-Bukhārī — about it, and he did not rule on it definitively, though it seemed that he considered the hadith of Zuhayr more likely correct, and he placed it in al-Jāmiʿ. al-Tirmidhī said: The most sound in my view is the hadith of Isrāʾīl, and Qays ibn al-Rabīʿ followed him in it. al-Tirmidhī said: Zuhayr only heard from Abū Isḥāq late in his life. End quote.

Ibn Abī Ḥātim reported from his father and from Abū Zurʿah that they both deemed the narration of Isrāʾīl more preponderant, and it seems al-Tirmidhī followed them in that.

What appears evident is that what al-Bukhārī deemed preponderant is the more preponderant. The explanation of that is that the collective statements of the imams indicate that the preponderant among all the narrations is either the path of Isrāʾīl — which is: from Abū ʿUbaydah, from his father — and Abū ʿUbaydah did not hear from his father, so the chain would be interrupted; or the narration of Zuhayr — which is: from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Aswad, from his father, from Ibn Masʿūd — and this is continuous, and it is a sound handling, because the chains therein to Zuhayr and to Isrāʾīl are more firmly established than the rest of the chains.

Once this is established, the claim of disorder in this hadith is refuted, because disagreement among reliable memorizers (ḥuffāẓ) regarding a hadith does not necessitate that it be considered disordered except under two conditions:

First: that the aspects of disagreement be of equal weight. Whenever one of the statements is deemed preponderant, it is given precedence, and the sound is not rendered defective by the outweighed.

Second: that, along with equal weight, a reconciliation be impossible according to the rules of the hadith scholars, and it becomes the dominant presumption that that particular memorizer did not precisely retain that specific hadith. Only then is that single narration judged to be disordered, and one withholds judgment on the soundness of that hadith on that account. Here, it becomes clear that the aspects of disagreement regarding Abū Isḥāq in this matter are not of equal weight, because among the differing narrations from him, there is no chain free of criticism except the two paths previously mentioned: that of Zuhayr and that of Isrāʾīl — especially since most of the paths can be reduced to the narration of Zuhayr. What appears evident after that is giving precedence to the narration of Zuhayr, because Yūsuf ibn Isḥāq ibn Abī Isḥāq followed Zuhayr in it, and he narrated it =