A ḥadīth in which a narrator has been replaced with another, whether one narrator,1 or several, or even the entire chain,2 is the maqlūb (literally, that which has been inverted) ḥadīth.
It has also been said: it is that in which the name of the narrator has been inverted, by giving his own name to his father and his father's name to him.3
Qalb may also occur in the matn.4
For example, a ḥadīth well known from Sālim is presented as if from Nāfiʿ in order to make it gharīb and thus desirable. ↩
An example: what the people of Baghdād did to Imām al-Bukhārī when they tested him. ↩
As, for example, Murra ibn Kaʿb and Kaʿb ibn Murra. This is the view of al-Ḥāfiẓ; the former definition is the view of Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ and those who followed him. ↩
An example: the ḥadīth of Abū Hurayra, may Allāh be pleased with him, in Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ on the seven whom Allāh will shade in the shade of His Throne. In it appears: "…and a man who gives charity in concealment, such that his right hand does not know what his left has given." This is something that one of the narrators has inverted; the correct wording is: "…such that his left hand does not know what his right has given," as in the two Ṣaḥīḥs. See: Muqaddimat Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, pp. 81–82; Nukat Ibn Ḥajar, pp. 371–375; Sharḥ al-Nukhba, pp. 63–64; Tadrīb al-Rāwī, 1/291. ↩
Al-muttaṣil (also called al-mawṣūl) is that whose chain of transmission is unbroken: every narrator has heard the report from the one above him, all the way back to its source.
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-mawḍūʿ is that which has been concocted and fabricated. It is known by four indications, and may not be narrated to one who knows its condition without disclosure.
A muʿallal ḥadīth contains a hidden defect (ʿilla) damaging to its soundness, detected by warning signs in sanad and matn that arise to one familiar with the art.
