.
30 Such Hadith are called single-individual narrations "Khabar al Wahid", or, in the plural, Ahad. The question of the status of such Hadith is discussed later in this volume. (Ed.)
31 Ibn Hajar, Al Isabah IV, 112; and Ibn 'Abd al Barr, Al Isti'ab (on the margins of Al Isabah) p.415.
32 Ibn Abd al Barr Jami' Bayan al 'Ilm, I, 33.
33 Al Maqrizi, Khutat, IV, 143.
34 This letter was narrated by al Imam al Bukhari in his Sahih without a formal chain of narrators (ie. Ta'liqan; as a Mu'allaq Hadith). It was also included by al Imam Malik in his Muwatta; See al Zarqani's commentary, I, 10.
35
Al Musnad: A Hadith with an unbroken chain of narrators, all the way back to
the Prophet .
36
Al Mursal: A Hadith whose chain of narrators is broken at the end,
ie. one ascribed by a Tabi'i as having come directly from the Prophet
. Essentially, as the Tabi'i could not possibly have heard the
Hadith from the Prophet , the Hadith he related in this manner
must have been told to him either by another Tabi'i, or by one of the
Sahabah. But, as the Tabi'i scholar had no doubts concerning the
trustworthiness of the one from whom he had heard the Hadith, he felt
it unnecessary to name him. For the later generations of Fiqh and
Hadith scholars, however, the question of whether the Mursal Hadith
could be accepted became a serious issue. The reason for their concern
was that the chain of such a Hadith is, after all, a broken one; and
there is no certainty that, if the Tabi'i narrator had related the
Hadith from another of his generation, that the other Tabi'i was a
reliable narrator. For the Fiqh and Hadith scholars of the early
generations, however, this was not a great problem, as they were
familiar with the Tabi'i narrators and the Shuyukh
from whom they had heard and related Hadith. Thus, beth Imams Abu
Hanifah and Malik accept the Mursal Hadith; while the two later Imams,
al Shafi'i and Ahmad, reject the Mursal. (Ed.)
37 Summarized with liberty from Dahlawi, op. cit., I, 205-308.
38 What the author is saying here is that these were methodological tools unknown to the Sahabah, yet widely applied and employed by these two Imams. (Ed.)
39 As each sect strove to outdo the other, and gain converts from mainstream Islam, they took to distorting the meanings of the Prophet's words as recorded in the Hadith, and to manufacturing, and then ascribing to the Prophet, words and meanings designed to suit their own purposes. (Ed.)
40 Ibn 'Abd al Barr, Al Intiqa' p.23.
41 A Hadith with a break at any place in the chain of its narrators is called Munqati'. As it may not, therefore, he established with certainty that the Hadith was passed on from an earlier generation, and thus not from the Prophet, upon whom be peace, such a Hadith was rejected by all the later Fuqaha' (Ed.)
42 An explanation of what a Mursal Hadith is, and of the controversy surrounding it, was given in chapter 3. See the footnote on page 25.
43 Ibn Abd al Barr, op. cit., p.24.
44 It should be mentioned here that Muhammad ibn Hasan had also studied under al Imam Malik, and that his version of Malik's Muwatta is considered by many to be the most authentic. Al Imam Muhammad's Kitab al Radd 'Ala Ahl al Madinah is an eloquent expression of the difference in the methodological approaches taken by the two schools of legal thought, Maliki and Hanafi, in particular, and by the Ahl al Ra'i and the Ahl al Hadith, in general. (Ed.)