Question:
Assalaamu Alaikum
Shaykh Gibril,
I pray you are in the best of health and Iman. I have a brief question which I hope you can help me with.
Reading Muhammad Zubayr Siddiqui’s ‘Hadith Literature,’ he mentions that Hasan al-Basri was amongst those who forged hadith. Foot-noting al-Dhahabi’s Mizan al-I’itidal, he ascribes over a thousand forgeries to al-Basri. Considering the great standing al-Basri has in our heritage, is this accusation accurate, or is it that al-Basri was excused because of his rank and intention?
Answer:
`Alaykum as-Salam,
That was a blunder which slipped into Siddiqi’s first edition (1961) but was removed from the 1993 revised edition of that work. There is no such statement in Mizan al-I`tidal or anywhere else.
Hajj Gibril Haddad
