The reality of al-mudraj: the mixing of what belongs to one speaker with what belongs to another, without any indication of where one ends and the other begins.1
Al-mudraj is of two categories: the first, mudraj al-matn (insertion within the matn); the second, mudraj al-sanad (insertion within the chain).
Mudraj al-matn may occur at the beginning of the matn, in its middle or at its end,2 the last being the most common.3
Mudraj al-isnād takes a number of different forms.
Idrāj is detected by a more detailed narration that distinguishes the inserted portion from the rest of the ḥadīth, by an explicit statement from the narrator himself or by an explicit statement from one of the well-informed imāms.4
ʿAllāmah al-Sakhāwī said this in Sharḥ al-Taqrīb, p. 160. ↩
ʿAllāmah Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ does not set out this threefold division. He defines idrāj in the matn as a narrator's own words placed "after what he narrates of the ḥadīth", and of his four worked examples the one that in fact falls inside a matn, the insertion of "do not vie with one another" into the ḥadīth of Anas, he does not label as such (Muqaddimat Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ed. Nūr al-Dīn ʿItr, Dār al-Fikr, 1406/1986, pp. 95 to 98; ed. Fahl and Humaym, pp. 194 to 200). His editors Fahl and Humaym remark at p. 195 that the restriction is "contrary to the fact", since "idrāj has occurred at the beginnings of some aḥādīth and in their middles". The division with an example of each is Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar's, in al-Nukat ʿalā Kitāb Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ (ed. Rabīʿ al-Madkhalī, al-Jāmiʿa al-Islāmiyya, Madīnah, 1404/1984), 2/812. At the beginning, which he calls exceedingly rare, Abū Hurayra's "Perform the wuḍūʾ fully" standing before the Prophet's words "woe to the heels from the Fire" (2/824). In the middle, which is little, al-Zuhrī's explanation of yataḥannath, "and that is devotion", inside ʿĀʾishah's ḥadīth of the beginning of revelation (2/825). At the end, which is the commonest, "the owned slave has two rewards", joined to which is "by Him in whose hand my soul is, were it not for jihād in the path of God, the ḥajj and dutifulness to my mother, I would have loved to die a slave", words that are Abū Hurayra's, since the Prophet had no mother to be dutiful to (2/812 to 813). Shaykh Muḥammad Abū Shuhba sets out the same division with the same examples in al-Wasīṭ fī ʿUlūm wa-Muṣṭalaḥ al-Ḥadīth (ʿĀlam al-Maʿrifa edition), pp. 312 to 313. [tr.] ↩
An example: what al-Bukhārī narrated (1/25, no. 136) from Abū Hurayra, who said: "I heard the Messenger of Allāh ﷺ say: 'On the Day of Resurrection my community will be summoned, with shining faces and limbs from the marks of wuḍūʾ; so let whoever among you can lengthen the radiance of his face do so.'" The statement "So let whoever among you..." is mudraj from the words of Abū Hurayra himself, as al-Ḥāfiẓ and others have pointed out. And Allāh knows best. ↩
Sharḥ Nukhbat al-Fikr, pp. 61 to 63; and others. ↩
Al-mutawātir is a ḥadīth narrated, on the basis of sensation rather than pure reason, by a number whose collusion upon falsehood is rendered impossible by ordinary custom.
When a narrator's solitary transmission is suspected, others' parallel narrations are mutābaʿa or shāhid; the pursuit of these is al-iʿtibār.
Al-gharīb falls into two categories: al-fard al-muṭlaq (absolute solitary) and al-fard al-nisbī (relative solitary).
A ḥadīth narrated through different but closely comparable routes that cannot be reconciled is al-muḍṭarib; iḍṭirāb renders it weak, as it implies an absence of ḍabṭ.
