According to the Ḥanafīs:4 the ziyādah of a thiqah is accepted, except when the majlis is one and the same, that is, the Companion narrating is one, and the narrators who omit the ziyādah are so numerous that it is normally inconceivable they would all be heedless of it.5
If matters do not reach that point, and the majlis is the same, the report containing the ziyādah is accepted and the deficient one is rejected.
If the majlis differs, that is, the two aḥādīth are transmitted from two different Companions, both are accepted: the muṭlaq (unrestricted) report stands in its unrestricted sense, and the muqayyad (restricted) in its restricted sense.
As for the distinction drawn by Ibn al-Sāʿātī and those who followed him between a contradictory ziyādah and a non-contradictory one, this scarcely arises in the present question, that is, in the question of a word added to a ḥadīth.6
Such factors include the number of narrators, their relative strength, the views of al-Bukhārī and Muslim, and so on. [tr.] ↩
Meaning: from one whose dominant character is fiqh (jurisprudence). ↩
Meaning: from one whose dominant character is ḥadīth. ↩
The Ḥanafīs hold two positions on this question: that of the earlier (mutaqaddimūn), such as al-Karkhī, al-Jaṣṣāṣ, al-Sarakhsī and al-Bazdawī, who hold that the ziyādah is accepted; and that of the later (mutaʾakhkhirūn), who hold that it is accepted from a thiqah, except where there is a divergence among students of a single teacher. [tr.] ↩
An example: the ḥadīth of Mālik, from Nāfiʿ, from Ibn ʿUmar, who said: "The Messenger of Allāh ﷺ made zakāt al-fiṭr of Ramaḍān obligatory upon every free man and slave, male and female, of the Muslims: a ṣāʿ of dates or a ṣāʿ of barley." Imām al-Tirmidhī said: "Mālik added the words 'of the Muslims' in this ḥadīth, whereas Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī, ʿUbayd Allāh ibn ʿUmar and several other imāms transmitted the ḥadīth from Nāfiʿ, from Ibn ʿUmar, without mentioning 'of the Muslims'." I say: more than one transmitter has in fact agreed with Imām Mālik on this, as Imām al-Nawawī and others have noted. A further example, continuing from the previous: the ḥadīth of Ibn ʿAbbās and ʿAbd Allāh ibn Thaʿlaba on ṣadaqat al-fiṭr, in which the words "of the Muslims" are not mentioned, as in Sunan Abī Dāwūd, 1/229, and Sunan al-Nasāʾī, 1/269. Al-Jaṣṣāṣ said: "These two reports (i.e., the earlier ḥadīth of Ibn ʿUmar in which 'of the Muslims' is mentioned, and theirs in which it is not) are independent of one another and both are operative; we are not at liberty to construe the unrestricted report in light of the report restricted by Islām, because the apparent state of the matter is that the Prophet ﷺ said one of them on one occasion and the other on another." al-Fuṣūl, 2/56. Translator's note: as a worked illustration, if five thiqah narrators omit the addition "of the Muslims" while seven include it, one may judge that it is implausible for five trustworthy narrators to overlook so deliberate a phrase as a matter of mere oversight, and conclude that it is a genuine ziyādah. ↩
See, for the whole discussion of ziyādat al-thiqah: ʿIlal al-Tirmidhī, 2/238; Thiqāt Ibn Ḥibbān, at the beginning of the fourth century, and Ṣaḥīḥ Ibn Ḥibbān, 1/159; Nukat al-Zarkashī, pp. 209 to 212; Nukat Ibn Ḥajar, p. 282; al-Fuṣūl, 2/55 to 56. Dirāsāt fī Uṣūl al-Ḥadīth ʿalā Manhaj al-Ḥanafiyya, pp. 426 to 432. ↩
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.
Positions on what to do when the teacher (aṣl) denies a narration that the student (farʿ) attributes to him.
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.
Four positions on whether jarḥ and taʿdīl follow the rules of khabar or of testimony, with the additional requirement that the evaluator be ʿadl and unbiased.
