“ʿAN FULĀN”
“From so-and-so.”
The wording ʿan does not expressly declare hearing in the way “samiʿtu” does. Scholarly approaches vary in assessing continuity for a non-mudallis transmitter using contemporaneity, possibility of meeting and evidence of actual meeting. A mudallis narrator’s ʿanʿanah requires special caution.
Example: Narrator A and teacher B lived during the same decade. Their overlapping lives alone do not conclusively prove a meeting. Evidence that they attended the same session or directly heard one another changes the assessment.
The investigator combines transmission wording with historical possibility and proof. It is a mistake either to treat every ʿan as direct explicit hearing or to declare every ʿanʿanah unconnected without distinction.