Al-mudabbaj (literally, embellished or paired): when each of two peers narrates from the other, this is al-mudabbaj.1 Al-ʿIrāqī, following al-Dāraquṭnī, did not require the two narrators to be peers (qarīnān) for a ḥadīth to count as mudabbaj.2
Thus the narration of ʿAbd al-Razzāq from Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī and Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn, who were his students, together with their narration from him in the reverse direction, is reckoned mudabbaj (on the looser definition). For Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ and others, however, it is only riwāyat al-akābir ʿan al-aṣāghir and is not mudabbaj. See: Maʿrifat ʿUlūm al-Ḥadīth, pp. 215–220; al-Taqyīd wa-l-Īḍāḥ, pp. 262–264. ↩
Examples of this were given above in the discussion of al-mudabbaj. ↩
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).
If two men are of the same age and have met the same teachers, they are qarīnān (peers); the narration of one of two peers from the other is riwāyat al-aqrān.
An omission of two or more consecutive narrators at any point in the chain — this is al-muʿḍal.
When a body of narrators take a ḥadīth from a prominent imām, it is called mashhūr (literally, well-known, publicised).
