The Ruling on Ṣaḥīḥ, Ḥasan and Ḍaʿīf

Footnotes

1. Acceptance, however, does not always require acting on the ḥadīth, because of the possibility of conflict or abrogation. The matter at issue may also be one that would normally have circulated widely, while the ḥadīth in question is not in fact widely circulated, and there may be no support for it from the practice of the salaf. An example: what al-Bukhārī (1/116) and Muslim (1/217) narrated from Ibn ʿAbbās: "We used to know the conclusion of the prayer of the Messenger of Allāh ﷺ by the takbīr." Imām al-Nawawī said: Ibn Baṭṭāl and others have transmitted that the adherents of the followed madhāhib and others are agreed that it is not recommended to raise the voice in remembrance (dhikr) and takbīr. I (the author) say: the reason is plain, the matter is one that would normally have circulated widely, while the ḥadīth in question has not, and there is no support for it from the practice of the salaf. And Allāh knows best. Other matters too may prevent action upon a ḥadīth. And Allāh knows best. ↩

2. Imām al-Nawawī's words, quoted in the author's note on this passage, are from his commentary on that ḥadīth of Ibn ʿAbbās in al-Minhāj Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj (Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, second printing, 1392), 5/84, in the chapter on dhikr after the prayer: "Ibn Baṭṭāl and others transmitted that the adherents of the followed madhāhib and others are agreed that raising the voice in dhikr and takbīr is not recommended." Al-Nawawī adds there that Imām al-Shāfiʿī understood the ḥadīth to mean that the Prophet ﷺ raised his voice for a short while so that the people might learn the form of the dhikr, not that they did so always. [tr.] ↩

3. The statement of Imām Aḥmad usually cited here, that a weak ḥadīth is dearer to him than qiyās, has been understood in more than one way. Shaykh ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Abū Ghuddah, in his notes to al-Laknawī's al-Rafʿ waʾl-Takmīl fī al-Jarḥ wa al-Taʿdīl (pp. 75 to 76), quotes Shaykh Ibn Taymiyyah in Minhāj al-Sunnah al-Nabawiyya (2/191): "Our saying that the weak ḥadīth is better than opinion, what is meant by it is not the abandoned weak ḥadīth, but rather the ḥasan." «قولنا إن الحديث الضعيف خير من الرأي، ليس المراد به الضعيفَ المتروك، لكن المراد به الحسَنُ». The reasoning is that before Imām al-Tirmidhī a ḥadīth was either ṣaḥīḥ or ḍaʿīf, the ḍaʿīf being of two kinds, abandoned and not abandoned. Shaykh Abū Ghuddah adds that his colleague Shaykh Muḥammad ʿAwwāma wrote a study on this claim, and printed it in his own notes on al-Tahānawī's Qawāʿid fī ʿUlūm al-Ḥadīth (Dār al-Qalam, 1392/1972, pp. 100 to 108). ʿAwwāma answers that ḥasan was already a term of art before al-Tirmidhī, in ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī, al-Bukhārī and Aḥmad himself, so that the premise fails, and that Aḥmad's words are to be taken at face value, of "the weak of middling weakness and what stands above it, which is nearer to the ḥasan" «الضعيف المتوسط وما فوقه مما هو إلى الحسن أقرب» (p. 108). Al-Sharīf Ḥātim al-ʿAwnī holds Ibn Taymiyyah's reading. In his Sharḥ al-Mūqiẓa (Dār Ibn al-Jawzī, 1427/2006, p. 35) he takes Aḥmad to mean "the ḥadīth that is in the last ranks of acceptance, which is the ḥasan in our terminology", and in al-Usus al-ʿAqliyya li-Manhaj Naqd al-Muḥaddithīn (Dār al-Miʿrāj, Damascus, 1445/2023, p. 108, note 1) he calls the contrary construal "an error into which a number of contemporary scholars and researchers have fallen" «خطأٌ وقع فيه عدد من العلماء والباحثين المعاصرين», since a report probably at variance with the fact cannot at the same time be probably established. He names no one, but the position he rejects is the one ʿAwwāma set out and Shaykh Abū Ghuddah published. [tr.] ↩

4. Such as Imām Aḥmad, Imām Abū Dāwūd and others. ↩

5. Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar set out the three conditions in his own hand for ʿAllāmah al-Sakhāwī, who gives them in al-Jawāhir wa al-Durar (ed. Ibrāhīm Bājis, p. 954): that the weakness not be severe «أن يكون الضعف غير شديد», which excludes a report in which a liar, one accused of lying or one of gross error stands alone; that the ḥadīth fall under a general established principle «أن يكون مندرجًا تحت أصلٍ عامٍّ», which excludes what is invented and has no basis at all; and that its being established not be believed when acting upon it «أن لا يعتقد عند العمل به ثبوته», lest something be ascribed to the Prophet ﷺ that he did not say. The last two Ibn Ḥajar takes from Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām and Ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd, and on the first he reports al-ʿAlāʾī's claim of agreement. Al-Sakhāwī gives the same three, compressed into a single sentence, in Fatḥ al-Mughīth (ed. ʿAlī Ḥusayn ʿAlī, 1/351). [tr.] ↩