When a body of narrators take a ḥadīth from al-Zuhrī, Qatāda, and their like among the imāms whose ḥadīth is collected, it is called mashhūr (literally, well-known, publicised).1
Muqaddimat Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, p. 163. Example of mashhūr: the ḥadīth of Sulaymān al-Taymī from Anas ibn Mālik, that the Prophet ﷺ said: "On the night I was taken on the night journey I saw men whose tongues were being cut with shears of fire. I asked, 'Who are these, O Jibrīl?' He said: 'These are preachers of your community who command the people to what they themselves do not do.'" Several narrated it from Anas. Abū Nuʿaym therefore said: it is mashhūr from Anas, transmitted from him by several. ↩
When two or three transmitters share a ḥadīth from a prominent imām, it is called ʿazīz (literally, rare; or strong, intense).
When a single narrator takes a ḥadīth in solitary fashion from a prominent imām, it is called gharīb (literally, strange, or one who is alone).
If the narrators of a ḥadīth agree in their wording of transmission, in any verbal feature, in an action, or in some shared quality, this is al-musalsal (literally, a chained or serial ḥadīth).
When each of two peers narrates from the other, this is al-mudabbaj (literally, embellished or paired); al-ʿIrāqī, following al-Dāraquṭnī, did not require the two narrators to be peers.
