Al-Shāfiʿī accepted the mursal under three conditions: that the mursil (the transmitter performing irsāl) be among the kibār al-tābiʿūn; that he perform irsāl only from a thiqa; and that the report have one of four corroborating supports.1 Some of the Shāfiʿīs2 counted his not performing irsāl except from a thiqa among the corroborating supports, leaving for them only two conditions.3
Namely, that the report come through another route, whether (1) musnad, (2) mursal, (3) corroborated by the statement of a Companion, or (4) acted upon by the majority of scholars in their fatwā. ↩
Such as al-Zarkashī and Ibn Ḥajar. ↩
See: al-Risāla, pp. 63–64; Sharḥ ʿIlal al-Tirmidhī by Ibn Rajab, p. 183; al-Tabṣira wa-l-Tadhkira, 1/149–150; Sharḥ al-Taqrīb by al-Sakhāwī, p. 106; Nukat al-Zarkashī, pp. 149 and 151; al-Nukat al-Wafiyya, 1/383. ↩
Al-mursal is an omission from the end of the isnād, after the tābiʿī; one of the four kinds of rejected report rooted in a break in the chain.
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.
Among the muḥaddithūn, al-majhūl is a narrator whose condition is not known and who is not known for his pursuit of knowledge; he splits into majhūl al-ḥāl (al-mastūr) and majhūl al-ʿayn.
Al-shādhdh is that which a single narrator has transmitted alone, raising doubt in the mind of the critic; this is also the definition of al-munkar. Statements of the early imāms show the two are one.
