Page:Maulana Muhammad Ali Quran.djvu/84

lxxxiv reliability is sufficient to condemn them. Thus there remain the three reports contained in the Ṣaḥiḥ Muslim. In accordance with the first principle laid down above, let us now resort to the Bukháree and see if it supports any of these three narratives of the Muslim, for it must be borne in mind that the Bukháree is our best and highest authority on reports, and so the Muslim world has regarded the work ever since it became public. The Ṣaḥiḥ Bukháree, according to the unanimous verdict of all learned Muslims, not only surpassed in authority and reliability all the collections which were made before it, but even the later collections do not approach its trustworthiness. If, then, any report in the Muslim or any other collection contradicts the Bukháree, we should without any hesitation reject such a report. In the present case, however, it is not the testimony of the Bukháree alone which contradicts the three reports quoted above, but there is ample testimony in the Muslim itself and other collections which is against those reports.

Let us take these three reports separately and see how far they can be relied upon. The first mentions an address of Abu Musa Ash'ari to certain reciters of Basrah to the effect that he and the other companions of the Holy Prophet used to recite two súras, but that with the exception of one passage of each of these súras he had forgotten the whole. Both external and internal evidence supplied by the Muslim itself condemns the trustworthiness of this report. For external evidence we will consider first the chain of narrators on whose authority Muslim believed the report to be authentic. On referring to the chain of narrators we find Suwaid bin Sa'id to be the immediate informer of Muslim, and much depends on the circumstance as to how far he can be relied upon. The Mizán-ul-I'tidál by Zahabi is the best and the most reliable work which criticizes the narrators. Referring to this work, we find a long article on Suwaid bin Sa'id, in which a few of the collectors of reports express a good opinion about him, but the majority discredit him. It is, however, agreed upon by all that he attained to a very old age and became blind during his latter days, and in this condition he reported and taught reports which were not really his. Bukharee rejected his evidence as absolutely untrustworthy, and so did most of the other collectors. From an anecdote related of him in the same work it also appears that he had a tendency towards Shi'ism, for we are told that when a person came to him with a book on the excellences of the companions, he placed 'Ali first and then Abu Bakr. Some have gone so far as to condemn him as a liar, but there is no doubt that with the exception of some two or three collectors, Muslim being one of them, all the others agree that reports narrated by him could not be accepted. Abu Daood judges him to be “worth nothing,” while Ibn-i-Habban tells us that he was accused of being zindeeq, or one who concealed unbelief and made an outward show of belief. Muslim's most important and immediate informer, therefore, possessing so unenviable a record for unreliability bordering on mendacity, it is hardly necessary to consider the question of the reliability of the other narrators of this report.

There is another kind of external evidence supplied by Muslim which also contradicts the testimony of the report under discussion. Immediately preceding this report there are recorded in the Muslim four other reports to the same effect, with this difference, that they describe the words here attributed to Abu Musa Ash'ari by the said Suwaid as being remnants of a forgotten chapter of the Qur-án, not as portions of the Holy Qur-án, but as words uttered by the Holy Prophet. According to the first of these, three men, Yahya bin Yahya, Sa'id bin Mansur, and Qutaiba bin Sa'id, informed