# Who vouched for Farabri? Baji, Sam'ani and whether transmission implies reliability

- URL: https://muftiabulayth.org/r/x6sffyrljey/s/13/
- Date: 2018-08-30 · Kind: lesson · Transcript tier: machine · Recording: BukhariGate Part 1: Sahih Bukhari is NOT so Sahih -Mufti Abu Layth (1:16:51–1:26:03)
- Status: general teaching
- Watch from the start of the segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6SfFYRljeY&t=4611s
- Recording page: https://muftiabulayth.org/r/x6sffyrljey/

**Topics:** Sahih al-Bukhari (BukhariGate); Narrator criticism

**Summary (not a quotation; machine-made, unchecked):** Nobody who knew Farabri declared him reliable, and the attributions to al-Baji and al-Sam'ani cannot be found in their works. That scholars transmitted from him proves nothing, since transmission is not endorsement.

**Checked position (checked by two independent reviews, not by the channel):** Mufti Abu Layth says no contemporary who knew Farabri ever declared him reliable, that the later attributions to al-Baji and al-Sam'ani are unsupported in their own works, and that a scholar transmitting from someone does not make that person reliable.

**Evidence, his words at 1:17:48:** “nobody who actually knows him ever vouched for him as reliable” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6SfFYRljeY&t=4668s)

## Longer summary

Mufti Abu Layth asks who ever declared Farabri reliable. He says Ibn Rushayd [?] attributes it to Abu al-Walid al-Baji, an early Maliki master of Muslim Spain, but that no contemporary, neither al-Dhahabi nor Ibn Hajar, ever quotes Baji saying so and it is not in Baji's own book on Bukhari; and to Abu Bakr al-Sam'ani of the fifth century, who lived over a century after Farabri and could not have known his memory or precision. He adds that in one manuscript of Ibn Rushayd's book the sentence about Sam'ani is missing, and that the entry on Farabri in al-Ansab by Sam'ani's son Abu Sa'd, number 3006, does not call him reliable while other entries do. He notes that Shia critics have raised the same point and that he was accused of being influenced by them for saying it. Against the argument that Farabri must be reliable because al-Hafiz Ibn al-Sakan and others transmitted from him, he reads al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, page eighty-four, that a scholar transmitting from someone does not declare them reliable, giving the example that Imam Malik transmitted from Abd al-Karim ibn Abi al-Mukhariq [?], an unreliable narrator; he says Ibn al-Salah in his Muqaddima and Ibn Hajar write the same.

## Sources and names cited

- Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Farabri
- Ibn Rushayd [?]
- Abu al-Walid al-Baji
- Abu Bakr al-Sam'ani
- Abu Sa'd al-Sam'ani
- al-Ansab
- Ibn al-Sakan
- al-Khatib al-Baghdadi
- Imam Malik
- Abd al-Karim ibn Abi al-Mukhariq [?]
- Ibn al-Salah
- Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani
- A scholar transmitting from a narrator does not declare him reliable

## Transcript (machine tier, 1:16:51–1:26:03)

[1:16:39] hadith that they've disagreed with the hadith if you find a book that is certain like it's written by the handwriting of an imam a thicker a reliable person or it's an manuscript can you use it look at this this is page 49 [Music] with their consensus

[1:17:08] he says that you cannot teach from that because you don't know if it's the words of the prophet so now some of these people are saying this is really much ado about nothing is it because the question is why did nobody declare imam we're calling him imam but muhammad yusuf al-farabri why did nobody declare him to be reliable this is the question because he lives in a time where many people he is rubbing shoulders with some of these great scholars he's obviously met bukhari he's in the time of

[1:17:48] he's in the time of people like imam tarmidhi abu dawood he's in the time of nasa he's in the time of ibn bihar jose maybe he's in the time of all of these great and some of them are junior to him or like some of them may be senior nobody who actually knows him ever vouched for him as reliable how like what on earth is going on because and then they say well okay now you see people claim that um

[1:18:26] you see this was the same what um this was the same uh scholar ibn rushad who's from al-andalus the seven eight hundreds he tries to in his book that i was reading from a father on page 15 he did he writes all those people who said uh fabri was reliable the problem is look he states first of all the abu validal claims he was reliable abu uli dal baji is an early great master don maliki from muslim spain he claims that he said

[1:19:06] the problem is nobody has ever come nobody ever quotes that nobody even the herbie even ibn hajjar who quotes never quotes that that he was reliable they never quote that from bhaji they never quote his name so where has bhaji said this it's not in any of his books that we know where has he said this now he claims and he's obviously hundreds like 300 years after bhaji but he claims that bhaji said it but none of the other scholars who are contemporary to him ever quote bhaji as saying this so this is highly suspect because bhaji

[1:19:45] has a book on sahil bukhari but it's not in there so where is he saying this then check this out he quotes al-baqara samani a scholar from the four hundreds again from the fifth century who states about foreign he was a reliable first of all bakara samani never met he is much after much after fabri over we're talking over 100 years over towards 150 years he's living anyway he's living much after him at least a century after him he's never known him he's never known perhaps anybody who's

[1:20:22] actually directly known for abri one question is how does he declare him to be a third when he's never actually because to say somebody's reliable you're speaking about their memory their precision their kind of general good behavior and you've never like me declaring somebody from the 19th century to be reliable i've never known the person but the plot thickens people the plot thickens that is that check this out look in the manuscripts what does it say oh but in this book of ibn russia in manuscript b this sentence of samani is missing

[1:21:01] it's not even there that he says that samani declared him to be reliable you see that this is interesting and i'll tell you why this gets even more interesting because uh samani he has a son by the name of abu sabha now when i was transmitted referring to this previously i thought because people once again tertiary sources keep mixing them up some people say it was the sun some people say it's the father the father is abu bakker that we're talking about so i thought to be on the safe side we'll go with the sun because he has a book on people

[1:21:38] but as it appears you see in his book this is from his book alan he does declare other people to be there so there's a page where he begins by declaring somebody as you can see they aren't reliable in hadith but then it comes to ferrabri 3006 for abri he talks about him he says everything he does not declare him in any way to be reliable he doesn't even use he doesn't say he's thicker and he doesn't even say that my father declared him to be thicker but then when he goes on to speak about another fabri somebody else this is not muhammad in

[1:22:16] the useful he's a foreign by the way but about nowhere to be seen so we the question is when they say he is reliable who has vouched for him the earliest that they're going with are people that first of all never ever met him came over a hundred years after him and then secondly it's very suspect that they even said this because it's not in their books they his book is either not in print

[1:22:55] people who had seen it said they never saw it in there so it's it's highly suspect and this by the way is one of the attacks that even the shia have brought up against frabri in saying that why are sunnis trying to use al-baqar samani when we've checked their sources doesn't seem to be saying this now because i highlighted this in one of my polls somebody started saying oh he's getting influenced by the shia

[1:23:24] see this is the the stupid kind of responses that i have to face so this is the issue with fabri the other thing is that people are saying well okay fine but because uh people transmitted from him that should make it okay that should make it fine because he had at least one scholar of hadith called al-hafiz ibn sakhin who transmits from him therefore it should be at least fine because even though he didn't say that he's reliable see even ibn ii

[1:24:04] hadith from egypt he takes bukhari from frabari but he doesn't he doesn't even declare him to be reliable but they're trying to say this should make it reliable so people this is he has a section in his book as you can see page 84 where he says if a scholar transmits from somebody that does not mean they are declaring them

[1:24:36] reliable and he says he says people say oh if yeah but if he's taking from him if he thought he was doubtful he would never take from him he says that you know it could be for other reasons maybe he just doesn't know

[1:25:14] many people transmit imam malik transmitted from somebody abdul kareem uh ibn maharik he transmits from him he was a unreliable transmitter it doesn't mean just because he transmitted from him that person becomes reliable that way every person who abu dhawu transmitted from a tarmithi transmitted from ibrahim transmitted from nasa's transmitted from uh ibn abi hadim transmitted from er sorry about every person ibn hussaimah transmitted from ibrahim trump every person they transmitted from would automatically become thicker that's nonsense and this is the same thing that even uh ibn salah writes in his mukha

[1:25:53] as well he writes the same thing the same thing ibn hajj writes in his commentary on but i quoted al-khatib because he's the earliest out of them therefore perhaps in some ways more authoritative but they all write the same thing that so this one not nice you know because i saw some people trying to say well because people transmit from him therefore automatically that's reliable [Music] this one not nice my friend this one this one dubious you know this one dubious circumstances so the second point right

## Cite

Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment X6SfFYRljeY/s/13. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/x6sffyrljey/s/13/

Not a fatwa: these answers were given to specific people at specific times. Ask a qualified scholar about your own situation.