Category: Sciences

FEW MUSLIMS TODAY memorize a ḥadîth in quantity and fewer still according to their categories in the various ṣahîh collections. But there are those among that ever-rare breed of scholars, the mu ḥaddithîn, that still do. Accessing Ahadith There can be no…

WE PREVIOUSLY HAVE looked at related ḥadîth reports that appear to contradict each other due to one conveying a general ruling and the other specifying when rulings do or do not apply (see Taʿâruḍ, Reconciling Contradictory Ḥadîths). We now turn to the…

THE WORD ‘TAʿARUḌ’ in the Arabic language is derived from the trilateral root ʿayn • râ • ḍâd—or from ʿaraḍa—which means ‘parallel.’ The technical term ‘taʿâruḍ’ in ḥadîth studies also means ‘parallel,’ for just as two parallel lines never meet, similarly two…

IN THE PREVIOUS installment on Mus ṭala ḥ Al-Ḥadîth (Al-Ḥadîth Al-Mudallas) we discussed the hidden break in the chain of narrations of a ḥadîth that scholars have termed ‘mudallas,’ meaning a hidden discontinuity in the chain of a ḥadîth report’s narrators. This…

ONE OF THE possible defects in a narration is a break, or missing link, in the chain of narration. In Mus ṭala ḥ Al-Ḥadîth (Al-Ḥadîth Al-Muʿanʿan), we discuss which Arabic conjunctions convey an actual meeting between one narrator and the next. Having…

Definition THE WEAK ḤADÎTH is the report attributed to the Prophet ﷺ that lacks one or more of the conditions of an acceptable isnâd, or chain of narrators. There are different levels of weakness of isnâd. Some are weak, others very weak,…

THE ḤASAN ḤADÎTH is an authentic ḥadîth, or report from the Prophet ﷺ, that is slightly weaker than a ṣaḥîḥ ḥadîth. As to its practical use, however, the scholars agree that the ḥasan ḥadîth is of a “compulsory” nature—meaning that the instructions,…