Conditions for the One Performing Jarḥ or Taʿdīl

There are four positions:

1. According to Imām Abū Ḥanīfa and Abū Yūsuf, may Allāh have mercy upon them: jarḥ and taʿdīl have the standing of khabar (a regular ḥadīth report), so no number, freedom, or maleness is required. The jarḥ and taʿdīl of a single upright narrator is accepted, whether free or slave, male or female. This is the position upon which fatwā is given in the Ḥanafī school.
2. According to Imām Muḥammad and al-Ṭaḥāwī: jarḥ and taʿdīl have the standing of testimony (shahāda), so the conditions of shahāda, namely number, freedom, and maleness, apply. The jarḥ of a single narrator is not accepted, nor that of a slave, nor that of a woman. Al-Bāqillānī also adopts this on the authority of many of the fuqahāʾ of Madīna and others.
3. According to most of the uṣūliyyūn: a precondition follows the thing it conditions. Hence number, freedom and maleness are not required for the jarḥ and taʿdīl of narrators, since they are not required in the act of transmitting a report itself. As for testimony: number and freedom are required because they belong to the testimony itself; maleness is required only outside those cases where the testimony of a single woman suffices.¹
4. Al-Samʿānī ascribes to most of the fuqahāʾ and muḥaddithūn the view that taʿdīl of narrators has the standing of khabar, so none of those conditions apply to it; while jarḥ has the standing of testimony, and so the conditions of testimony do apply.

So there are four positions: three are well-known, while the fourth is uncommon.²

The one who performs jarḥ or taʿdīl must also be upright (ʿadl), thorough in verification, and free of partisan bias.³