Connectedness of the isnad and proven hearing

اتصال الإسناد وثبوت اللقي

The condition held by a majority traditionist school for accepting a chain as connected: that each narrator's hearing of, or meeting with, his own informant be proven — not mere contemporaneity and 'an'ana; Ibn Rajab sets out this principle plainly in his takhrij of 'fear God wherever you are': the view of al-Bukhari, his teacher Ali ibn al-Madini, Abu Zur'a, Abu Hatim and others that a hadith connects only with proven meeting, Ahmad's wording indicating the same and al-Shafi'i stating it in the Risala — all contrary to Muslim's position; the application is Maymun ibn Abi Shabib, the chain's reporter from Abu Dharr and Mu'adh: al-Fallas found no 'I heard' in any of his Companion reports, Abu Hatim declared his routes from Abu Dharr and A'isha unconnected, Abu Dawud held he reached neither A'isha nor Ali — still less Mu'adh — and al-Bukhari narrates nothing from him in his Sahih nor Muslim except in his introduction; hence al-Hakim's grading of the hadith as sound on the two Shaykhs' condition is, for Ibn Rajab, mistaken on both counts, and al-Daraqutni preferred its mursal route.