Muslim

So all of these followers whose narrations we have established, from the Companions whom we have named, it has not been preserved from them that they heard (directly) from them, as far as we know, in any specific narration, nor that they met them in the very same report itself. Yet these are chains of transmission, according to those knowledgeable in reports and narrations, from the soundest of chains. We do not know that they have ever been criticized for anything in them, nor have they sought in them evidence of some hearing of one from another, since it is possible for each of them to have heard from his companion, and it is not objectionable, as they all lived in the same era in which they coincided. And this statement, which was introduced by the one whose view we have related, in weakening the hadith due to the reason he described, is too insignificant to be considered or its mention to be raised, since it is an innovated statement, and a baseless speech that none of the scholars of the past ever said, and those who came after them reject it. So we have no need to refute it with more than what we have explained, since the value of the statement and its proponent is as we have described. And Allah is the One sought for help in repelling what opposes the way of the scholars, and upon Him is reliance.