Statements attributed to the Prophet ﷺ were verified and investigated as early as the time of the ṣaḥāba.1
Verification of the Sunnah began in the era of the senior ṣaḥāba. Al-Ḥākim,2 in Maʿrifat ʿUlūm al-Ḥadīth (p. 52), said: "Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿAlī, Zayd ibn Thābit and others, they critiqued and accredited narrators, and investigated the soundness and defectiveness of narrations." End of quotation.
In the beginning this was very little, but then it increased gradually. There are two reasons for this:
First: the strong memory of the mutaqaddimūn, the soundness of their hearts, and the prevalence of truthfulness among them compared with those who came after. Al-Dhahabī3 in his treatise Dhikr Man Yuʿtamadu Qawluhu fī al-Jarḥ wa al-Taʿdīl said: "Most of those who are followed are ṣaḥāba, who are upright."
Most of those followed who are not ṣaḥāba are likewise upright; in fact, most are trustworthy (thiqa) and truthful, retaining what they narrate, and they are the kibār al-tābiʿūn.4 Among them one finds, here and there, an individual about whom there is some criticism. Then, at the beginning of the second century, a group of weak narrators appeared among the awsāṭ al-tābiʿūn5 and the ṣighār,6 on account of the weakness of their memory and the spread of innovation among them. Then, towards the end of the tābiʿūn era, around 150 AH, some scholars began to record the conditions of narrators in respect of strength and weakness.
The second reason: their chains of transmission were shorter than those who came after them. Al-ʿIrāqī said: "There is no doubt that a great body of the ḥuffāẓ of the mutaqaddimūn had as their teachers tābiʿūn or atbāʿ al-tābiʿūn,7 and as the teachers of their teachers ṣaḥāba or tābiʿūn. So matters in that era were simpler."
Note that in the first century there was not the same concern for memorising, writing down, and compiling ḥadīth as in the generations that followed. That era was the era of the spread of Islam: the early Muslims went out across the world calling people to Islam and inviting them to it, and they were occupied with jihād in the path of Allāh. During their travels and at home, in their mosques and houses, they would learn the Qurʾān and the Sunnah, discuss the lawful and the unlawful, and hear the aḥādīth and the āthār, then act upon them and call others to them. This was their constant practice, and by the blessing of their perseverance in it they became the best of people at retaining knowledge. They were aided in this by the shortness of their isnāds, as already mentioned, by hearts that were pure, retentive, and strong, and by motives and intentions that were sound because of the completeness of their faith. So they did not need to write down and compile ḥadīth as later generations were obliged to do.
The codification of ḥadīth then began at the command of ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz at the start of the second century. The second century was thus the era of the codification of ḥadīth, and verification (taḥqīq) of ḥadīth increased within it, as already noted in al-Dhahabī's words. Verification of ḥadīth reached its peak in the third century, which became the era of taḥqīq al-ḥadīth. Most of the verifiers in this discipline lived in that era, among them:
Al-Dhahabī, in his treatise Dhikr Man Yuʿtamadu Qawluhu fī al-Jarḥ wa al-Taʿdīl, mentions seven hundred and fifteen persons from the beginning down to his own time (the eighth century), of whom about three hundred lived most of their lives in the third century.
Within the same work, at the end of the fifth ṭabaqa (the generation of al-Bukhārī and Muslim), he says: "And there is a great multitude whose names do not come to my mind. It would happen, in the course of journeying for the sake of knowledge, that two hundred or three hundred of them would gather in a single town; the least learned among them would be like the most retentive of our own age." End of quotation.
Verification of ḥadīth continued into the fourth century, which produced Ibn Ḥibbān, al-Dāraquṭnī, Ibn Manda, al-Ḥākim, Abū Nuʿaym, and others, and into the fifth century, which produced Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, al-Khaṭīb, al-Bayhaqī, Ibn al-Qaṭṭān, Ibn Ḥazm, and others.
Even so, this was very little compared to what had come before. The focus of the muta'akhkhirūn's verification became the verification carried out by the mutaqaddimūn, that is, those of the third century and before. For this reason they needed to know the statements and technical terms of those earlier scholars, and so works on the technical terminology of the people of ḥadīth began to be composed in the fourth century.
For more information, see the Muqaddima to the Ṣaḥīḥ of Imām Muslim. [tr.] ↩
Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Naysābūrī (321–405 AH), author of al-Mustadrak ʿalā al-Ṣaḥīḥayn and Maʿrifat ʿUlūm al-Ḥadīth. [tr.] ↩
Shams al-Dīn Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Dhahabī (673–748 AH), author of the celebrated Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalāʾ and Mīzān al-Iʿtidāl fī Naqd al-Rijāl. [tr.] ↩
Senior tābiʿūn: those who met the Companions while in a state of faith. [tr.] ↩
Tābiʿūn of the middle generation. [tr.] ↩
Junior tābiʿūn. [tr.] ↩
Literally, the followers of the followers: those who met the tābiʿūn while in a state of faith. [tr.] ↩
ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī (161–234 AH) was one of the teachers of Imām al-Bukhārī. Shaykh ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Abū Ghudda writes in his Lamaḥāt min Tārīkh al-Sunnah wa-ʿUlūm al-Ḥadīth (p. 201) that ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī was the first to compose an independent work on ʿulūm al-ḥadīth. [tr.] ↩
A survey of the foundational treatises on ḥadīth terminology, from al-Rāmahurmuzī through Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ to Ibn Ḥajar's Nukhbat al-Fikr and Ibn al-Ḥanbalī's Qafw al-Athar.
The Ḥanafīs classify narrators into four (or, on some accounts, five) groups, including the al-mastūr and majhūl categories with their five-case treatment.
The threefold division of ḥadīth study: ʿilm riwāyat al-ḥadīth, ʿilm dirāyat al-ḥadīth, and ʿilm uṣūl al-ḥadīth (muṣṭalaḥ al-ḥadīth), as set out in the opening of al-Mulakhkhaṣ.
The science of jarḥ and taʿdīl, the two grounds of evaluation, when criticism overrides praise, and who needs tazkiya.
