It is that which has been concocted and fabricated.1
It is known to be fabricated by one of four indications: (1) the confession of its fabricator; (2) something that takes the place of his confession;2 (3) circumstantial evidence concerning the state of the narrator;3 or (4) circumstantial evidence concerning the report itself.4
ʿAllāmah Ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd said: "The narrator's confession of fabrication is sufficient to reject the report; but it is not decisive in establishing that the report is fabricated, since he may himself be lying in that very confession."5
ʿAllāmah al-Sakhāwī said: "He means it is not, in such a case, designated mawḍūʿ."6
Al-Ḥāfiẓ said: "He means it is fabricated; but by predominant supposition, not by certainty."
It is not lawful for anyone who knows the condition of such a ḥadīth to narrate it without making clear that it is fabricated.7
One kind of fabrication is known from the state of its narrators: "Reflection for an hour is better than sixty years of worship" «تفكُّرُ ساعةٍ خيرٌ من عبادة ستين سنة», a saying in wide circulation and at times ascribed to al-Bukhārī. Ibn al-Jawzī enters it in al-Mawḍūʿāt (3/144) and names two liars in its chain, Isḥāq ibn Najīḥ al-Malaṭī, whom Imām Aḥmad called the most lying of men, and ʿUthmān ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Qurashī, who in ʿAllāmah Ibn Ḥibbān's words fabricated ḥadīth upon trustworthy narrators (p. 43). Another is known from the report itself: "Keep to lentils, for they are blessed; they soften the heart and bring on the tears, and they were sanctified upon the tongues of seventy prophets" «عليكم بالعَدَس، فإنه مبارك يُرقِّقُ القلب، ويُكثِرُ الدمعة، قُدِّس على لسان سبعين نبياً», which Shaykh ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Abū Ghuddah lists among the fabrications made on the merits of foods, quoting al-Fīrūzābādī that nothing in that chapter is sound (pp. 50 to 51). Both examples are his, in Lamaḥāt min Tārīkh al-Sunnah wa-ʿUlūm al-Ḥadīth; the pages are those of the first edition (1404/1984), which the later printings do not follow. [tr.] ↩
Al-Ḥāfiẓ said: the more apt example here is that which al-Bayhaqī narrated in al-Madkhal with a sound chain: that they had disagreed, in the presence of Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Juwaybārī, on whether al-Ḥasan had heard from Abū Hurayra; whereupon he narrated a ḥadīth to them, with his isnād to the Prophet ﷺ: "al-Ḥasan heard from Abū Hurayra." al-Nukat, p. 359. ↩
Al-Ḥāfiẓ said: the more apt example here is when a muḥaddith narrates from a teacher, and then mentions that his own birth-date falls after the date of that teacher's death. al-Nukat, p. 359. ↩
This is the most common case: that the matn is feeble in meaning, or contradicts the explicit text of the Book, the mutawātir Sunnah, the certain consensus, plain reason, sense or witnessed observation, and so on. See: al-Iqtirāḥ, p. 228; Nukat Ibn Ḥajar, p. 361. ↩
These are ʿAllāmah Ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd's own words, lightly shortened, from al-Iqtirāḥ fī Bayān al-Iṣṭilāḥ (ed. Qaḥṭān ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Dūrī, pp. 315 to 316); ʿAllāmah al-Sakhāwī quotes the passage in full in Fatḥ al-Mughīth (ed. ʿAlī Ḥusayn ʿAlī, 1/333). [tr.] ↩
ʿAllāmah al-Sakhāwī writes of ʿAllāmah Ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd's words: "he intended only to prevent its being called mawḍūʿ" «وإنما أراد مجرد المنع من تسميته موضوعًا» (Fatḥ al-Mughīth, ed. ʿAlī Ḥusayn ʿAlī, 1/333 to 334). Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar's reply, which the author quotes next, is reported by al-Sakhāwī on the same two pages. [tr.] ↩
Muqaddimat Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, pp. 77 to 78; al-Iqtirāḥ, p. 229; Sharḥ al-Nukhba, pp. 56 to 57; Fatḥ al-Mughīth, 2/130. ↩
Ṣaḥīḥ and ḥasan are accepted in every case; ḍaʿīf is not, except in faḍāʾil and al-targhīb wa-l-tarhīb, with Ibn Ḥajar's three conditions for acting on it.
A ḥadīth in which a narrator has been replaced with another, whether one narrator, several, or even the entire chain, is al-maqlūb (literally, that which has been inverted).
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.
The threefold division of ḥadīth study: ʿilm riwāyat al-ḥadīth, ʿilm dirāyat al-ḥadīth and ʿilm uṣūl al-ḥadīth (muṣṭalaḥ al-ḥadīth), as set out in the opening of al-Mulakhkhaṣ.
