Definition of Ḥadīth

Footnotes

1. Muftī Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Mālik al-Kumillāʾī separates five usages of the word ḥadīth: its sense in the ʿurf of the sharīʿah; everything connected with the Prophet ﷺ, including his involuntary states and what preceded the prophetic mission (p. 54); what is ascribed to the Ṣaḥābah and the Tābiʿūn (p. 58); whatever is ascribed to any of them by bare attribution, without regard to establishment or soundness (p. 61); and the chains themselves, one ḥadīth with many isnāds counting as many (p. 63). What turns on the choice is the threefold division. To define ḥadīth as the Prophet's sayings, acts and states and then at once divide it into ṣaḥīḥ, ḥasan and ḍaʿīf is inconsistent, he argues, since that definition points to thubūt, and what is established from him is of one kind only; the definition that carries the division is rather "what is ascribed to the Prophet" «ما أضيف إلى النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم», the report being ṣaḥīḥ or ḥasan where the ascription holds and ḍaʿīf where it is weak (pp. 62 to 63). The wording given here he takes to define ḥadīth among the muḥaddithūn, not sunna (p. 55). Al-Wajīz fī shayʾ min muṣṭalaḥ al-ḥadīth al-sharīf, pp. 46 to 65. [tr.] ↩

2. Whether word, action, tacit approval, ethical attribute or physical attribute, including motions and stillness, in waking and in sleep, and whether before the prophetic mission (baʿtha) or after it. Nawādir al-Ḥadīth, 1/63 to 65. ↩

3. As for tacit approval (taqrīr), it falls under the first category, since it is in effect a statement; or under the second category, since the abstention from speaking is itself an act. So it is stated in Taqrīr al-Mishkāt by Shaykh Muḥammad Salmān al-Sahāranpūrī, p. 3, citing al-Awjaz. The reason for the difference between the two technical definitions is that the aim of the fuqahāʾ is to derive rulings, so they do not investigate non-volitional states or what occurred prior to prophethood; the muḥaddithūn, by contrast, investigate everything attributed to him ﷺ. So it is stated in Nawādir al-Ḥadīth, 1/63 to 68; al-Durr al-Manḍūd, 1/8; and al-ʿUrf al-Fāʾiḥ, pp. 34 to 35. Know further that the āthār of the ṣaḥābah and the tābiʿūn fall within the definition of ḥadīth in the view of al-Ṭībī, al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī and Shaykh ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq al-Dihlawī, since the application of the word ḥadīth to them is established in the words of many of the muḥaddithūn, and they are mentioned in the books of ḥadīth. Ibn Taymiyyah, al-Kirmānī, Ibn Ḥajar, al-ʿAynī, al-Sakhāwī and others incline to their not falling within it, and for that reason they did not include them in the definition; in their view the application of the word ḥadīth to them is figurative, in view of the lexical meaning, and their mention in these scholars' books is incidental, since they serve as corroborations, witnesses and clarifications of the marfūʿ. So it is stated in Nawādir al-Ḥadīth, 1/71 to 75. ↩