Mashhūr

Footnotes

1. Muftī Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Mālik al-Kumillāʾī examines this passage of Ibn Manda's in his al-Wajīz fī shayʾ min muṣṭalaḥ al-ḥadīth al-sharīf (pp. 164 to 175), citing it from Ibn Ṭāhir al-Maqdisī's Shurūṭ al-Aʾimmah al-Sittah (p. 100). The imāms of ḥadīth, he finds, used ʿazīz for rarity, not for Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar's later count of two narrators in some generation and never fewer in any (pp. 164, 167). Ibn Manda's three terms are relative (nisbī): gharāba, ʿizza and shuhrah reckoned from a prominent imām's ḥadīth rather than from the whole isnād, so the description need not hold in every route (pp. 165 to 166). So with the closing clause here: a report is mashhūr from such an imām when a body narrates it from him, even where he alone transmits it (p. 169). Ibn Ḥajar's restriction of mashhūr to more than two in every generation he finds in no earlier writer on muṣṭalaḥ, and sets against it Imām Abū Dāwūd, who called most of his Sunan mashāhīr, and the ʿilal and rijāl books, whose "mashhūr from the ḥadīth of so-and-so" implies no such count (pp. 169 to 171). A fourth sense, currency on people's tongues, settles nothing about soundness: ʿAllāmah al-Sakhāwī's al-Maqāṣid al-Ḥasana and al-ʿAjlūnī's Kashf al-Khafāʾ collect such reports of every grade, from mutawātir down to what has no basis at all (pp. 171 to 175). [tr.] ↩

2. Muqaddimat Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, p. 163. Example of gharīb: a ḥadīth narrated by Sufyān ibn ʿUyayna, from Misʿar ibn Kidām, from Saʿīd ibn Abī Burda, from his father, who said: "Ibn ʿUmar said to me: 'Did you know that my father met your father?'" the ḥadīth. ʿAllāmah al-Dāraquṭnī said: gharīb in respect of Misʿar's narration from Saʿīd; Sufyān ibn ʿUyayna alone narrated it from him. Example of ʿazīz and 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.'" Sulaymān al-Taymī's son Muʿtamar ibn Sulaymān and ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Mubārak narrated it from him; and several narrated it from Anas. Abū Nuʿaym therefore said: it is mashhūr from Anas, transmitted from him by several; while the ḥadīth of Sulaymān is ʿazīz. Aṭrāf al-Gharāʾib wa-l-Afrād, no. 152; Ḥilyat al-Awliyāʾ, 8/172 to 173; Musnad Abī Yaʿlā, no. 4069; Shuʿab al-Īmān, no. 4965. This is the well-known position among the muḥaddithūn. After Ibn Manda it was transmitted and adopted by Muḥammad ibn Ṭāhir al-Maqdisī, Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, al-Nawawī, Ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd, Ibn Sayyid al-Nās, Ibn Kathīr, al-ʿIrāqī and others; and Imām al-Ḥaramayn, al-Rāzī, al-Ghazālī, al-Āmidī, Ibn al-Ḥājib, Ibn al-Sāʿātī and others said likewise, that the least number for mashhūr is four. Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar assigned three and above to mashhūr, and two to ʿazīz, and I have seen no predecessor for him in this save what al-Subkī said in Jamʿ al-Jawāmiʿ: "Among it is al-mustafīḍ, which is that which has spread from an origin; it is sometimes called mashhūr, and its least number is two, though it is said: three." End of quotation. And Allāh knows best. See: Muqaddimat Aṭrāf al-Gharāʾib wa-l-Afrād, 1/52 to 53; Shurūṭ al-Aʾimmah al-Sittah, p. 21; Irshād Ṭullāb al-Ḥaqāʾiq, 2/545; al-Iqtirāḥ, pp. 271 to 272; al-Tabṣira wa-l-Tadhkira, 2/267; al-Nafḥ al-Shadhī, 1/34; Ẓafar al-Amānī, pp. 301 to 302; al-Bāʿith al-Ḥathīth, p. 162; al-Iḥkām by al-Āmidī, 1/267; Muntahā al-Sūl, p. 79; Sharḥ Mukhtaṣar Ibn al-Ḥājib, 1/655; Nihāyat al-Wuṣūl, p. 160; Imʿān al-Naẓar, pp. 25 to 26; Ḥāshiyat al-Bannānī ʿalā Jamʿ al-Jawāmiʿ by al-Subkī, 2/129. ↩