As for al-munqaṭiʿ: according to Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, it is anything not connected, and so it encompasses the three categories above (al-muʿallaq, al-mursal and al-muʿḍal), indeed, it is more general than them. According to al-Ḥākim, it is a ḥadīth whose chain has had one or more narrators left unnamed or omitted before reaching the tābiʿī; in his usage it is distinct from the mursal.1
This is the technical convention of the muta'akhkhirūn among the muḥaddithūn, from the era of al-Ḥākim onwards. For the mutaqaddimūn among the muḥaddithūn, and for the fuqahāʾ and uṣūliyyūn: the mursal (from irsāl, literally something set free) and the munqaṭiʿ (literally, disconnected) are one and the same.2
See: Maʿrifat ʿUlūm al-Ḥadīth, pp. 25, 26, 28, 36; Khams Rasāʾil, p. 79; al-Tabṣira, 1/158–160; Sharḥ Nukhbat al-Fikr, pp. 48–52; Tadrīb al-Rāwī, 1/208. Shaykh ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq al-Dihlawī, in the introduction to his commentary on the Mishkāt (p. 4), restricted al-muʿḍal and al-munqaṭiʿ by requiring that the omission be from within the chain; I have not found a precedent for him in this restriction. And Allāh knows best. ↩
Maʿrifat ʿUlūm al-Ḥadīth, p. 27; Muqaddimat Ikmāl al-Muʿlim, p. 314; al-Taqyīd wa-l-Īḍāḥ, p. 72; Qafw al-Athar fī Ṣafw ʿUlūm al-Athar, p. 70. ↩
If the narrator is not named (a shaykh, a man, some of them, a thiqa), this is al-mubham; the unnamed narrator may be identified through another route, and the Mubhamāt literature is devoted to this.
Among the muḥaddithūn, al-majhūl is a narrator whose condition is not known and who is not known for his pursuit of knowledge; he splits into majhūl al-ḥāl (al-mastūr) and majhūl al-ʿayn.
The Ḥanafīs treat al-mashhūr as a third tier alongside al-mutawātir and khabar al-wāḥid, defined by what was āḥād in the first generation but tawātur thereafter.
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).
