Muslim al-Nishaburi (d. 261 AH), author of al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaḥīḥ, unlike al-Bukhari (d. 256 AH)—the other prominent Sunni compiler of a Ṣaḥīḥ—included an account of the Ghadir event and sermon in his collection. However, despite being placed under the “Chapter on the Virtues of ʿAlī,” his report makes no explicit reference to Imam ʿAlī. This absence has often been used as an argument against the authenticity of the sermon’s central statement, “Whoever I am his master, ʿAlī is his master,” and other well-known passages. Given the mutawātir nature of this phrase and the abundance of reports on the Ghadir sermon in sources both preceding and following Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, scholars have long questioned why the key sections are missing and at what stage the truncation occurred. The findings of this study indicate that the omission was not made by Muslim himself or by intermediaries in the chain of transmission. Rather, Zayd ibn Arqam—the principal narrator of the Ghadir sermon—appears to have transmitted multiple versions of the event at different times and under varying circumstances, which led to the concealment of its more sensitive and central portions. Motivated by theological caution and concern over possible accusations of fabrication, textual alteration, or incompleteness, Muslim diverged from his usual method of presenting multiple related reports within a single chapter and instead selected only Zayd’s abridged version, omitting other extant narrations of the Ghadir sermon.