the rightly guided, which he narrated with his isnād from al-ʿIrbāḍ ibn Sāriyah. I have responded to him in another place, so refer to "al-Ṣaḥīḥah," second edition, correction number (13). Then, what is between the brackets is for al-Tirmidhī, and he does not have section (3), which is found in Ibn Mājah and Aḥmad, but Ibn Mājah does not have section (7). Thus, the total sections in "al-Sunan" are seven, and in "al-Musnad" eight, yet the wording of the ḥadīth with them is: ".. six characteristics"! So, what is counted with them is more than the number, according to the details mentioned earlier. This is one of the rare instances of inconsistency in the text—as far as I know—despite the authenticity of the isnād. The positions of the scholars who extracted this ḥadīth differed regarding this wording. Some mentioned it as it was reported: "six," like al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Mundhirī in "al-Targhīb" (2/194), attributing it to "al-Sunan," and al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Kathīr in "al-Tafsīr" (4/174), attributing it to the three, and they both agreed with al-Tirmidhī on its authenticity. I followed their method in "Aḥkām al-Janāʾiz" (p. h 3-36). Al-Suyūṭī differed in "al-Jāmiʿ al-Kabīr" and in "al-Ziyādah ʿalá al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaghīr"—and al-Nabhānī followed him in "al-Fatḥ al-Kabīr"—so they replaced the word "six" with "seven" to match the counted number! However, the disagreement remained between them regarding Aḥmad's narration; for what is counted with him is "eight," as in the context of the narration of al-Bayhaqī and Ibn ʿAsākir, without the word for the number, thus avoiding the mentioned inconsistency. I do not know if this was their own doing, or the doing of one of their isnād narrators. And Allāh knows best. There was also inconsistency in the isnād of the ḥadīth with Aḥmad; for after he narrated it from his teachers Isḥāq ibn ʿĪsá and al-Ḥakam ibn Nāfiʿ from Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAyāsh with the aforementioned isnād;