ʿAbd al-Razzāq ibn Hammām al-Ṣanʿānī, compiler of al-Muṣannaf, is discussed by critics in connection with later-life confusion. The date of a pupil’s hearing and the quality of the surviving written material therefore become important.
The example shows why not every pupil of the same teacher must receive the same chronological assessment. Earlier, securely preserved hearing can be differentiated from later, questionable transmission.
The correct lesson is not that every report in the scholar’s collection becomes untrustworthy. It is that different periods of the narrator’s life and different pupils’ auditions must be distinguished with evidence.