Al-shādhdh is that which a single narrator has transmitted alone, and which raises doubt in the mind of the critic. This is also the definition of al-munkar.
The grounds of this doubt are four: (1) the weakness of the sole transmitter; (2) his contradiction of one more trustworthy than himself; (3) the matn being of a kind that would normally have circulated widely (yet the report has not); (4) the teacher narrated from is one of the imāms whose ḥadīth is collected, while the sole transmitter from him is not among that teacher's well-known close students.1
On this basis, what al-Shāfiʿī said, that al-shādhdh is what a thiqa narrates in contradiction to the narration of the people, not what one narrates that no other does, and what al-Khalīlī said, that "the position adopted by the ḥuffāẓ of ḥadīth is that al-shādhdh is that which has but a single isnād, in which a thiqa or someone else stands alone", all of this comes back to what has just been laid out.2
According to the Ḥanafīs, al-shādhdh is that which contradicts the Book, the established Sunnah, the consensus of the umma, or a report on a matter of widespread practical concern. This is more general than the Shāfiʿī definition.3
Al-shādhdh and al-munkar are one and the same, as Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ stated in his Muqaddima.4 Ṣāliḥ Jazara said: "The shādhdh ḥadīth is the munkar ḥadīth that is not known." Shuʿba said: "The shādhdh ḥadīth comes to you only from the shādhdh man."5 Statements such as these from the early imāms show that the two are one, with no distinction between them.6
We shall give for each of these grounds two or more examples, which will make clear that there is no real distinction between al-shādhdh and al-munkar, and that each is applied to the narrations of both the trustworthy and the weak. ↩
Muqaddimat al-Kāmil, 1/207; Maʿrifat ʿUlūm al-Ḥadīth, pp. 119–122; al-Irshād of al-Khalīlī, 1/176; al-Nukat al-Wafiyya, 1/455–456; Fatḥ al-Mughīth, 2/10; Sharḥ al-Taqrīb by al-Sakhāwī, p. 138; Tadrīb al-Rāwī, 1/233. ↩
See: al-Dirāsāt, pp. 34–36; al-Muḥarrar, 1/273. ↩
Muqaddimat Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, p. 64. And as has become plain from the foregoing examples. ↩
al-Kifāya, in the chapter on ceasing to take as proof one whose narration is dominated by anomalies and manākir, p. 187. ↩
What Ibn Ḥajar held, namely, that al-shādhdh is what the accepted narrator transmits in opposition to one more worthy than himself, and al-munkar is what the weak narrator transmits in opposition to the accepted, I have found no precedent for. It may be so in most cases; yet making it a universal rule is problematic. And Allāh knows best. ↩
The science of jarḥ and taʿdīl, the two grounds of evaluation, when criticism overrides praise, and who needs tazkiya.
When the addition of a thiqa narrator is accepted: positions of al-Tirmidhī, Ibn Ḥibbān, Muslim, al-Ḥākim and the Ḥanafīs, with the majlis distinction.
The Ḥanafīs classify narrators into four (or, on some accounts, five) groups, including the al-mastūr and majhūl categories with their five-case treatment.
Al-mursal in its broad sense was not rejected by anyone until Imām al-Shāfiʿī; the Ḥanafīs differ over the mursal of the first three generations.
