It is not permissible to summarise a ḥadīth or to narrate it by meaning, except for someone learned in what the words denote and in what would distort the sense; this is the sound view in both questions.1 According to the Ḥanafīs: if the ḥadīth is mushtarak, mushkil, mujmal, mutashābih or among the jawāmiʿ al-kalim,2 it is not permissible to narrate it by meaning.
If, however, the ḥadīth is muḥkam (clear and not subject to abrogation), someone learned in Arabic may narrate it by meaning. As for the ẓāhir (apparent in meaning) which can bear another sense, such as the general (ʿāmm) bearing the particular (khāṣṣ), or the literal (ḥaqīqa) bearing the figurative (majāz): this may be narrated by meaning only by a mujtahid.34
Shaykh Muḥammad ʿAwwāma gives an instance of the error that can follow when a narrator who is not a faqīh transmits by meaning, in his Athar al-Ḥadīth al-Sharīf fī Ikhtilāf al-Aʾimma al-Fuqahāʾ (pp. 43 to 45). Quoting ʿAllāmah al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, he reports that Ibn ʿUlayya narrated from ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Ṣuhayb, from Anas, that the Messenger of Allāh ﷺ "forbade that a man dye himself with saffron" «نهى رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم أن يَتَزَعْفَرَ الرجل», while Shuʿbah narrated the same ḥadīth from Ibn ʿUlayya in the general wording, "the Prophet ﷺ forbade dyeing with saffron" «أن النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم نهى عن التزعفُر». Ibn ʿUlayya said: "Shuʿbah narrated a single ḥadīth from me and gave a mistaken impression in it." Al-Khaṭīb comments that Shuʿbah aimed at the sense and did not notice what Ibn ʿUlayya noticed, the prohibition being addressed to men in particular, "and for this reason we said that narrating a ḥadīth in its wording is safer than narrating it by meaning" «فلهذا قلنا: إن رواية الحديث على اللفظ أسلم من روايته بالمعنى». [tr.] ↩
Jawāmiʿ al-kalim: brief yet meaningful speech, a special quality of the Prophet ﷺ. [tr.] ↩
Mujtahid: a Muslim jurist of the highest rank, qualified to derive rulings from the primary sources. [tr.] ↩
Sharḥ al-Nukhba, p. 66; Qafw al-Athar, pp. 82 to 83; al-Muḥarrar, 1/267 to 268. ↩
When the addition of a thiqah narrator is accepted: positions of al-Tirmidhī, Ibn Ḥibbān, Muslim, al-Ḥākim and the Ḥanafīs, with the majlis distinction.
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 science of jarḥ and taʿdīl: its two grounds, ʿadāla and ḍabṭ, when jarḥ must be explained, when it overrides taʿdīl and who needs tazkiya.
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.
