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.
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 non-upright transmitters."3
He was a person of known uprightness, of whom it is known that he narrates only from upright transmitters." End of quotation.4
Although some have spoken on the matter. ↩
Risāla of Imām Abū Dāwūd, may Allāh have mercy on him, to the people of Makka describing his Sunan, printed with the Indian edition of Sunan Abī Dāwūd, p. 6; Thalāth Rasāʾil, p. 32; Tadrīb al-Rāwī, 1/90–91; al-Iqtirāḥ, p. 186. ↩
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, 2/30–31. ↩
Al-shādhdh is that which a single narrator has transmitted alone, raising doubt in the mind of the critic; this is also the definition of al-munkar. Statements of the early imāms show the two are one.
Positions on what to do when the teacher (aṣl) denies a narration that the student (farʿ) attributes to him.
Al-Shāfiʿī accepts the mursal under three conditions; some Shāfiʿīs treat the third as one of the four corroborating supports, leaving two conditions.
The Ḥanafīs classify narrators into four (or, on some accounts, five) groups, including the al-mastūr and majhūl categories with their five-case treatment.
