اختصار علوم الحديث 3

بِسْم الله الرحمن الرحيم

اختصار علوم الحديث

What does معلق mean?

ما حذف من أول إسناده راوي أو أكثر 

The author of a particular book will not mention the teacher he heard from. The first person from the angle of the author  is missing from the chain. 

The word معلق in the Arabic language is anything dangling. That is why Allah ordered the man if he has more than one wife:

فَلَا تَمِيلُوا كُلَّ الْمَيْلِ فَتَذَرُوهَا كَالْمُعَلَّقَةِ ۚ 

“So do not incline completely [toward one] and leave another hanging.”

The man is neither married to her nor divorcing her. It is like something dangling from the roof but not touching the ground. 

There are two views regarding the معلقات present in Bukhari:

1) There are 1,340 Hadiths 

2) There are 1,341 Hadiths 

As for Muslim, there are 14 Hadith. In other places of his Sahih he brought it موصول (connected); mentioning who he heard it from. 

The Hadiths Bukhari which he then brings again as connected Hadiths are all except for 160 or 159. This 159 or 160 is not a lot in comparison to the 2000+ Hadiths in his Sahih. And they are further categorized into two:

1) ما صدر بصيغة الجزم

Some of which Imam Bukhari narrated in an affirmative decisive manner.

E.g. In the form of: قال، ذكر، روى

قال مالك عن نافع عم ابن عمر

He hasn’t met Imam Malik, so his teacher and/or his teachers teacher is missing from the chain. It is معلق without a doubt but he said “قال” so it is decisive.

These Hadiths are Sahih.

2) ما صدر بصيغة التمريض

Some of which he narrated in ambiguity, which is the opposite of the first type.

E.g. قيل (In the passive tense), ذُكِرَ،. رُوِيَ

The Scholars said you can’t say these are authentic nor can you say they are weak because of being this because Scholars came across Hadiths of this type that were authentic and some of them that were weak. Some of them were found in Sahih Muslim.

Note: In the world we are living in today, Bukhari is under attack. The matter alone about Bukhari, his conditions, his methodology, took Ibn Hajar 16 years to author on. He wrote a two volume book called Hadyu Saari and put it as an introduction to his book Fat’h Al-Baari. He followed up and studied Sahih Bukhari for 16 years. 

Ibn Khaldun said, “Sahih Bukhari is a debt on this nation.” Meaning when Bukhari wrote Sahih Bukhari he served this nation greatly he has a debt on us. 

As-Sakhawwi came many years after ibn Khaldun and said, “If he was to see what Ibn Hajar did, he would have realized the debt has been paid on our behalf.”

They said to Imam Ash-Shawkani to explain Sahih Bukhari. He said, “لا هجرة بعد فتح” 

We have to try to understand this book which we consider to be the most authentic book after the Qur’an. 

What if Bukhari says “قال” and mentions his teachers name? The terms he should have used are clear words indicating that he heard it directly from his teacher, such as “حدثني، اخبرني، أنبأني.”

They are not considered from the معلقات. The Hadith of music in Sahih Bukhari is related to this point:

Bukhari said قال هشام ابن عمار and did not say حدثني. Ibn Hazm therefore said this Hadith is weak because he did not say he heard it from his teacher. The Scholars repsonded with two points:

1) The Hadith is found connected in Sunan Abi Dawud 

2) Bukhari is a man known to not be a مدلس (drop people out of the chain) and he narrated it in a صيغة الجزم. 

Iraqi said:

أما الذي عزا لشيخه بقال فكذي

عنعنة كخبر المعازف *** لا تصغ لإبن حزم المخالف 

The عنعنة (I.e. قال) in the Hadith of معازف, don’t give any attention to Ibn Hazm. It has no basis. Ibn Hazm is not an Imam in Hadith, he used to come with strange things in Hadith. If he authenticates a Hadith do not just take his authentication, but if other Scholars authenticated it with him then there is no harm mentioning his name alongside. And Iraqi is refuting him, who is a Scholar in Hadith, and Ibn Hajar’s teacher.

There are two books which are the best refutation of Ibn Hazm’s inconsistency on this issue:

a) Ighaathatul Lahfan by Ibn Al-Qayyim

b) Tahreem Alaat At-Tarb by Sheikh Nasir

Bukhari and Muslim are the most authentic books after the Qur’an and the Ummah unanimously agree upon the Hadiths that are in them. Some of the Scholars said: If a man made an oath of divorce that all the Hadiths in Bukhari and Muslim are authentic (or he would divorce his wife), this would invalidate his marriage. 

The only differences are a little wordings here and there in Bukhari and Muslim where تجاذب happened. Three prominent Scholars took the front line in weakening those wordings:

1) Imam Ad-Daruqutni

2) Abu Mas’ud Ad-Dimishq

3) Abu Ali Al-Jayyani

Those three Scholars exerted great effort to find inauthentic Hadiths in Sahih Bukhari and Muslim and they could only come with wordings in the Hadeeths. After these three Imams came, no one was able to add anything they brought to the table. They got subtracted by Ibn Hajar, but the Hadiths they weakened are what the Ummah unanimously agreed upon.

Ibn Hajar and Ibn Nawawi responded to them.

The Ahadeeths which are Saheeh, do they benefit certainty?

There are two ways Hadeeths reached us:

1) Mutawaatir - Mass transmission

These benefit certainty. 

2) Aahaad - Singular / Few

These do not benefit certainty, but that does not negate implementation. 

E.g. If 1 reliable man tells you something, and then 100 reliable men tell you the same thing, it is not the same when you hear it for the first time than when you hear it from the 100. You take it from the first person because there is no reason to not take it from them but it does not benefit you in certainty because there is a chance he got it wrong even if he is precise and has good memory. 

This is the discussion which Ibn Kathir mentioned here: Three views came regarding this:

1) Whether it is Aahad or Mutawaatir it benefits certainty 

This is the view of Dawud Ath-Thahiree and it is a far-fetched view.

2) The Aahad benefit certainty.

This is the view of Ibn Salah. This view is different from the previous view. 

3) The Aahad do not benefit certainty 

This is the view of An-Nawawi.

An-Nawawi and Ibn Salah’s view do not diametrically oppose one another. How? When Ibn Salah said it benefits certainty, he was referring to the Aahad which are محتف بالقرائن (have external support) or مسلسل بالأئمة (are narrated by a chain of Imams) whilst Nawawi was referring to the Aahad which are not. 

The Ummah unanimously agreed upon what is in Bukhari and Muslim, so the Aahad mentioned in it are like Mutawaatir and they benefit us certainty.

The Aahad that come from Ahmed narrating from Shafi’i narrating from Malik narrating from Nafi’i narrating from Ibn Umar narrating from the Prophet ﷺ is like this, because it is a golden chain. If Shafi’i made a mistake, Ahmed would have seen it; it would have been detected by one of the narrators.

Al-Iraqi said:

 واقطع بصحة لما قد أسندا *** كذا له و قيل ظنا ولدي 

محققيهم قد عزاه النووي ***  و في الصحيح بعض الشيء قد روي

We still have to implement what is in the Aahad, because they still come from a reliable person. Allah said in Surah Al-Hujurat [49:6]:

يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا إِن جَاءَكُمْ فَاسِقٌ بِنَبَإٍ فَتَبَيَّنُوا 

“O you who believe! If a rebellious evil person comes to you with a news, verify it”

The مفهوم المخالفة (The contrary implied meaning) is that if a reliable person comes with information you are not obliged to verify it.

Some of the Scholars rejected the idea of Aahad and Mutawaatir and questioned why they were delving into this issue; as long as the Hadith is authentic to the Prophet ﷺ it should be accepted. The reason is because it came in the early stage of Islam. The deviated group of the Jahmiyyah and the Mu’tazilah that came after said that they don’t take the Aahad Hadiths as evidence for Aqeedah. The Scholars said that they take every Hadith that meets the conditions of authenticity and implement it, but one thing they do accept is that 100 people and 1 person is not the same in the certainty it benefits us in. 

This issue of what the Mutawaatir and Aahad benefit us in have nothing to do with Mustalah Al-Hadeeth. Mustalah Al-Hadeeth is only concerned with the authenticity of Hadeeths. The science that deals with what you implement or not implement is Usool Al-Fiqh. This is a foreign discussion in Mustalah Al-Hadeeth.