Why does the Tabi'i send the mursal hadith without mentioning the name of the Companion or the one who narrated to him, and how does he attribute the hadith to the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, when he does not know its authenticity? Are all of Ibn Lahi'ah's hadiths weak? Is it not possible that he narrated something authentic? And why is what the weak narrator narrated not considered abrogated, or that he alone narrated it without others?

The reasons for irsal (disconnection in the chain of narration) have been mentioned by Hadith scholars, among them: the mursil (the one who sends the narration) forgetting who narrated the hadith to him, or mentioning it for the purpose of discussion or fatwa, in which case only the text is deemed sufficient. As for what is attributed to irsal, indeed, one who only sends narrations from a trustworthy source may have heard it from a group of trustworthy individuals, or he may have forgotten who narrated it to him but remembered the text, or he did not intend to transmit it as a formal narration but rather in the context of discussion or giving a fatwa.

As for Abdullah ibn Lahi'ah, many scholars praised him, and his hadith was not weakened due to a defect in his integrity, but rather due to his poor memory after his books were burned. The hadith he narrated before the burning are sound, and the narrations of the Abadilah (Abdullah ibn al-Mubarak, Abdullah ibn Wahb, and Abdullah ibn Yazid al-Muqri') from him are sound because they narrated from him before his books were burned.

Hadith scholars established specific and precise criteria for narrators of Hadith, and based on these, they classified their narrations into sahih (sound), hasan (good), da'if (weak), and mawdu' (fabricated). A ruling on the weakness of a hadith may be due to its text or its chain of narration, owing to the poor memory of its narrator, or his irsal, or tadlis (concealment of a defect in the chain), or his jahalah (unknown identity). As for abrogation (naskh), it has no relation to weakness; they are distinct concepts.