Al-Majhūl

Footnotes

1. That is, his condition may be unknown either with respect to his ʿadāla or his ḍabṭ: we may know, for example, that he prays, but be uncertain about his memory and precision in transmission. [tr.] ↩

2. ʿAllāmah Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ holds that majhūl al-ḥāl and mastūr are distinct: mastūr in his usage is one whose inward state (his characteristics, bāṭin) is unknown, but whose outward state (his ẓāhir, such as appearance and conduct) is not. [tr.] ↩

3. Under the heading jahālat al-rāwī, Shaykh Muḥammad Abū Shuhba divides the unknown narrator into three: jahālat al-ʿayn, where only one narrator transmits from him, which is lifted when two upright narrators do so; jahālat al-ḥāl outwardly and inwardly, where two recognised authorities of jarḥ and taʿdīl have not attested his uprightness; and jahālat al-ḥāl inwardly but not outwardly, which is al-mastūr (al-Wasīṭ fī ʿUlūm wa-Muṣṭalaḥ al-Ḥadīth, ʿĀlam al-Maʿrifa edition, p. 404). On the rulings he follows Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ and al-Nawawī (p. 405). The narration of one whose ʿadāla is unknown outwardly and inwardly is not accepted by the great majority of the muḥaddithūn, fuqahāʾ and uṣūliyyūn; some of those who reject it accept the mastūr, among them Sulaym al-Rāzī, on the ground that reporting rests on a good opinion of the narrator and that inward uprightness is often beyond the reach of those receiving reports, unlike testimony before judges. ʿAllāmah Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ held that much of the practice in the well-known ḥadīth collections rests on this. The narration of the majhūl al-ʿayn is rejected even by some who accept the mastūr, and rejection is the correct position, held by most scholars. [tr.] ↩

4. A narrator may be shown not to be majhūl in several ways: by an explicit statement to that effect; by being included in a register of thiqah narrators; by being narrated from in either of the two Ṣaḥīḥs, or by those who stipulate ṣaḥīḥ-grade asānīd in their works, which all hold sufficient; by a scholar's having acted upon his ḥadīth and given fatwā by it on his account, which some hold sufficient; by being narrated from by thiqah narrators, which some hold sufficient; by two thiqah narrators transmitting from him, as with al-Dāraquṭnī and al-Bazzār; or by a single thiqah transmitting from him, as with Ibn Khuzayma and others. See: al-Kifāya, p. 121; Qawāṭiʿ al-Adilla, 1/349; Tadrīb al-Rāwī, 1/315 and 2/371; Nukat al-Zarkashī, p. 266; Fatḥ al-Mughīth, 2/206 to 213; Sunan al-Dāraquṭnī, 3/122. ↩

5. Drawn from al-Kifāya, pp. 116 to 118; Sharḥ al-Nukhba, pp. 70 to 71; al-Rafʿ waʾl-Takmīl, pp. 249 to 251; Sharḥ al-Taqrīb by al-Sakhāwī, p. 193. ↩

6. See: Maʿrifat ʿUlūm al-Ḥadīth, pp. 27 to 28; al-Burhān, 1/222; Muqaddimat Ikmāl al-Muʿlim, p. 314; Sharḥ al-Mishkāt by al-Ṭībī, 6/231; Tadrīb al-Rāwī, 1/197; al-Tārīkh al-Kabīr by al-Bukhārī, 1/409 (no. 1306); Marāsīl Abī Dāwūd, p. 16. ↩