The Ḥanafīs classify narrators into several categories:
First: one known for ʿadāla, ḍabṭ and fiqh; his ḥadīth is accepted unconditionally.
Second: one known for ʿadāla and ḍabṭ but not for fiqh; his ḥadīth too is accepted unconditionally, except in cases of necessity and where there is no room for independent reasoning.1 This is the position of ʿĪsā ibn Abān, followed by many of the later scholars.
Our preferred view is that the report of every narrator who is ʿadl and ḍābiṭ is accepted, whether he is a faqīh or not, so long as it does not contradict the Book, the well-known Sunnah or ijmāʿ; and it is given precedence over qiyās.2 This is the view of al-Karkhī and those who followed him.3
There is a third category mentioned by some Ḥanafīs but not others: al-mastūr, which some describe as ʿadl al-ẓāhir, khafī al-bāṭin (outwardly upright, inwardly unknown). Perhaps the mastūr is one known by several narrations, and so becomes, on that account, ʿadl al-ẓāhir.4 His uprightness, however, has not been ascertained by looking into the inward side of his dealings.
As for the ruling on him: some Ḥanafīs hold that he is accepted in the first three generations but not thereafter; others hold that his ḥadīth is not a ḥujja in itself, and that the matter is settled by ijtihād (here, independent juristic reasoning) in accepting or rejecting it.5
Fourth: a narrator not known for ʿadāla or ḍabṭ, nor known for carrying knowledge, in that he has narrated, for example, only one or two ḥadīths. This is al-majhūl. His narration falls into one of five cases:
These, then, are five cases for majhūl al-ʿayn and majhūl al-ḥāl, arranged from highest to lowest: the first is the strongest and the last the weakest, with intermediate gradations between them.6
Al-Bazdawī said: this is because, once the door of raʾy is closed, the ḥadīth becomes an abrogator of the Book and of the mashhūr ḥadīth, and a contradiction of ijmāʿ. Such is the ḥadīth of Abū Hurayra (raḍ. ʿanhu), on al-muṣarrāt: the door of raʾy was closed in it, so that it became an abrogator of the Book and of the well-known Sunnah, and a contradiction of the consensus that compensation for a wrongful taking is by the like or by the value, and not by dates. Kashf al-Asrār, 2/555 to 556. ↩
In their view, then, the ḥadīth of al-muṣarrāt was left unacted upon because it contradicts ijmāʿ and the general import of the Book and of the well-known Sunnah, not because its narrator was not a faqīh while it also contradicted qiyās. Reflect on this. Some have taken it to apply to diyāna (what is between a man and his Lord) and not to qaḍāʾ (judicial ruling). See: al-Durr al-Manḍūd, 5/385 to 386; al-Taqrīr al-Rafīʿ and its ḥāshiya, 3/246 to 249. ↩
See: Kashf al-Asrār, 2/558 to 559; Ẓafar al-Amānī, p. 70; Dirāsāt fī Uṣūl al-Ḥadīth ʿalā Manhaj al-Ḥanafiyya, pp. 258 to 272; Uṣūl al-Jaṣṣāṣ, 2/24 to 25. ↩
These are narrators described as ʿadl al-ẓāhir, khafī al-bāṭin: outwardly upright but inwardly unknown. Visible markers of uprightness, such as keeping a beard or praying in the mosque, may be enough to consider someone ʿadl outwardly. [tr.] ↩
See: Uṣūl al-Jaṣṣāṣ, 2/25; al-Dirāsāt, pp. 200 to 201 and 218 to 231; al-Taqrīr wa-l-Taḥbīr, 2/318 to 324; Qafw al-Athar, p. 86. ↩
See: Uṣūl al-Sarakhsī, 1/255 to 258; Kashf al-Asrār, 2/553 to 554 and 565 to 566; Qafw al-Athar, p. 86; Qawāʿid fī ʿUlūm al-Ḥadīth, pp. 206 to 209. ↩
Four positions on whether jarḥ and taʿdīl follow the rules of khabar or of testimony, with the additional requirement that the evaluator be ʿadl and unbiased.
The science of jarḥ and taʿdīl: its two grounds, ʿadāla and ḍabṭ, when jarḥ must be explained, when it overrides taʿdīl and who needs tazkiya.
Al-shādhdh is what a single narrator transmits alone, raising doubt in the mind of the critic; this is also al-munkar, and the muḥaddithūn treat the two as one.
Al-mursal in its broad sense was not rejected by anyone until Imām al-Shāfiʿī; the Ḥanafīs differ over the mursal of the first three generations.
