Al-mursal in this broad sense, which encompasses all the sub-categories of al-munqaṭiʿ, was not rejected by anyone1 until Imām al-Shāfiʿī, as Imām Abū Dāwūd and Imām Ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī have stated.2 According to the majority of the fuqahāʾ, an unbroken isnād is not a condition of authenticity.3
Some of the Ḥanafīs distinguished between the mursal of the first three generations and that of others; others did not draw this distinction. Al-Sarakhsī said: "The soundest of the views on this matter is what Abū Bakr al-Rāzī said: that the mursal of one who is of the first three generations is a proof, so long as he is not known to narrate unrestrictedly from one who is not upright and reliable.4
"The mursal of one who came after them is not a proof, except in the case of one well known for narrating only from a transmitter who is upright and reliable. For the Prophet ﷺ testified to the truthfulness and excellence of the first three generations, so that their uprightness stands established by that testimony for as long as nothing to the contrary comes to light; and he testified against those who came after them with lying, in his words, 'then lying will spread'. So the uprightness of one who lived in an age whose people were testified against with lying is established only through the narration of one who was a person of known uprightness, of whom it is known that he narrates only from upright transmitters." End of quotation.5
Although some have spoken on the matter. ↩
Risāla of Imām Abū Dāwūd, may Allāh have mercy on him, to the people of Makkah describing his Sunan, printed with the Indian edition of Sunan Abī Dāwūd, p. 6; Thalāth Rasāʾil, p. 32; Tadrīb al-Rāwī, 1/90 to 91; al-Iqtirāḥ, p. 186. ↩
Al-mursal, in Shaykh Muḥammad Abū Shuhba's account of the majority position, is what a tābiʿī, senior or junior, attributes to the Prophet ﷺ without naming his own informant (p. 280). They hold it weak because the state of the omitted man is unknown: the tābiʿī may have taken it from another tābiʿī, reliable or not, and the possibility repeats, in practice through six or seven links; once the informant may be weak, the report falls short of what may be argued from. Quoting ʿAllāmah Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, Abū Shuhba cites Imām Muslim's preface: "The mursal, in the foundation of our position and in the position of the people of knowledge of reports, is not a proof" «المرسل في أصل قولنا، وقول أهل العلم بالأخبار ليس بحجة» (p. 282). Against this he sets Ibn Jarīr's report that the tābiʿūn agreed on accepting it, and the acceptance of Mālik and Abū Ḥanīfah, the Ḥanafīs restricting it to the mursil of the first three generations. Imām al-Shāfiʿī's conditions in al-Risālah are that the mursil be a senior tābiʿī and that the report be corroborated, in which case it is a proof but does not rise to the rank of the connected (pp. 283 to 284). Al-Wasīṭ fī ʿUlūm wa-Muṣṭalaḥ al-Ḥadīth (ʿĀlam al-Maʿrifa edition), pp. 280 to 285. [tr.] ↩
This, in my view, is when his narrations from non-upright transmitters are frequent. And Allāh knows best. ↩
Uṣūl al-Sarakhsī, 1/272; Uṣūl al-Jaṣṣāṣ, 2/30 to 31. ↩
Al-shādhdh is what a single narrator transmits alone, raising doubt in the mind of the critic; this is also al-munkar, and the muḥaddithūn treat the two as one.
The Ḥanafīs classify narrators by ʿadāla, ḍabṭ and fiqh, with the mastūr as a disputed third category and the majhūl, whose narration falls into five cases
Positions on what to do when the teacher (aṣl) denies a narration that the student (farʿ) attributes to him.
Eight methods of receiving ḥadīth: samāʿ, qirāʾah, ijāzah, munāwalah, mukātabah, wijāda, waṣiyya and iʿlām, with their respective rulings.
