What are Da'if Sanad Ahadith, and why they are not accepted
﷽
Verily all praise is for Allah, we praise Him and seek His aid and ask for His forgiveness and we seek refuge with Allah from the evils of ourselves and our evil actions. Whomever Allah guides there is none who can misguide him, and whomever Allah misguides there is none who can guide him, and I bear witness that none has the right to be worshiped except Allah alone, having no partner, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His slave and His Messenger
(this is how Prophet SAW used to start his speech Nisai 3278)
My Lord, open up my heart [with assurance] And ease for me my task And untie the knot from my tongue That they may understand my speech. Ameen
So before jumping into it I would like to say that both the Quran and Hadith are protected by Allah they cannot be altered.
Indeed, it is We who sent down the Zikr (Quran and Hadith) and indeed, We will be its guardian.[Hijr 15:9]
What it means is that there will always be at least one Quran or Books of Hadith which will be free of alterations, because we see that Bible is no longer in its original text. We also see people like Ahmadis or Parwazis making amendments in Quran but that doesn't change the original Quran same is with the Hadith.
on authority of Abī Hurayrah, on authority of the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings of Allah upon him, he said:‘There will be in the last of my nation a people narrating to you what you nor your fathers heard, so beware of them’. [Sahih Muslim 6]
Abā Hurayrah saying, the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings of Allah upon him, said:‘There will be in the end of time liars coming to you with narrations that you nor your fathers heard, so beware of them lest they misguide you and cause you tribulations’.’ [Sahih Muslim 7]
Abd Allah [bin Mas’ūd] R.A said:‘Indeed Satan will appear in the form of a man and he will come to the people, narrating to them false Ḥadīth, and they will then depart. Then a man among them will say: ‘I heard a man whose face I recognize but I do not know his name narrating [such and such]…’ [Sahih Muslim Introduction 17]
...Ibn Abbās R.A said to Bushayr bin Ka’b:Indeed once upon a time we would listen to a man saying, ‘the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings of Allah upon him, said…’ rushing towards him with our eyes and harkening towards him with our ears; then when the people took the difficult and the docile we no longer took from people except those whom we knew’. [Sahih Muslim Introduction 21]
A companion of Prophet Ibn Abbas R.A is saying that Tabieen were liars they started spreading false narrations in the name of Prophet, not all tabieen ofcourse
Ibn Abī Mulaykah, he said:‘I wrote to Ibn Abbās asking him to write something [pertaining to knowledge] for me and he withheld from me quite a bit, and said: ‘As [if he were] a sincere child, I will write for him something especially suited to his status withholding from him what would not benefit him’. [Ibn Abī Mulaykah] said: ‘So [Ibn Abbās] called for the judgment of Alī [bin Abī Tālib which was a book with which Alī would pass verdicts in Kuffah], and he began to write from it [with respect to the request of Ibn Abī Mulaykah] and he came upon something [not appropriate to the station of Alī regarding the science of verdicts]. So [Ibn Abbās] said: ‘By Allah, Alī did not give judgment according to this unless he was astray’(meaning the verdicts where corrupted by someone as narrated in next two narrations).’ [Sahih Muslim Introduction 22]
on authority of Ibn Sīrīn that he said:‘They would not ask about the chains of narration, and when the Fitnah occurred, they said: ‘Name for us your men’. So Ahl us-Sunnah would be regarded, and their Ḥadīth were then taken, and Ahl ul-Bi’dah would be regarded, and their Ḥadīth were not taken’.[Sahih Muslim Introduction 27]
I advise you to read the Muqadma of Sahih Muslim in which he stated why is there a need to classify Hadith as Sahih and Daif. I will add a summarized version of it at the end in Urdu of 4 pages and for full version in English with detail (click here to read it)
You might have heard people quoting a Hadith of Prophet Muhammad S.A.W, and the other person respectfully saying that it is a Da'if Hadith (Weak narration) then the first person saying so what?! it is still a Hadith.... So what are Da'if Hadith?
Da'if (Weak) hadith, they are weak Ahadith attributed toward the Prophet S.A.W, to understand this, first you need to know one main thing. A Hadith consists of two parts one is chain of narration and the second part the text, the saying of Prophet S.A.W. So a Hadith is declared Da'if in two ways. (all this has been done by various Muhaditeen, the classification of Ahadith long ago and we don't need to worry about it anymore but one should know the mechanism of how it is done)
1) It deals with the text. If the text, the saying is something completely opposite to the teaching of Quran and other Ahadith. It is classified as Da'if by Muhaditeen (not by some simple molvi or not even by fiqah expert, you can understand this in such a way that Muhadith is a different field, just as an Engineer can't prescribe you a medicine, similarly if an Alim, Mufti or Faqeeh don't have a knowledge of Fiqh of Hadith he can't do it ) This type of weakness in Hadith is a very rare case and is known as Darayatan.
2) It deals with the chain of narration of the Hadith and it has a number of variants which classifies that this Hadith is da'if in narration so we cannot attribute it toward the Prophet S.A.W. Why? (will talk on this a bit later). This is called Rawayatan.
I will talk about a number of variants not all because there are many.
i) It is written, in a chain of narration that for example Yahya narrated it from Yunus and Yunus narrated it from Abu Tufail R.A. Only Abu Tufail R.A is the Sahabi in this chain of narration. By the way he was the last Sahabi to have lived on this earth he died in 111 Hijri. Normally the chain is not this short it is very long except for in case of Muwatta Malik some of it's chain are very short and they are strong chains. Some of them are called golden chains.
Anyways, so in the above example it is said that Yahya narrated it from Yunus, so a Mohadith checks it using Asma Ar Rijaal and checks this link of the chain, whether it is correct or not, by correct it means a number of things firstly, you must be thinking what is Asma Ar Rijaal?🤔It is the encyclopedia and biographies of all the Hadith narrators every single one of them. It has every teeny tiny detail about that narrator like
where was he born,
from where did he took his education,
how was his memory and at what age did his memory became bad,
how was his dealings with other people,
was he a liar,
all his life with whom did he meet and gained knowledge from and many more.
Someone might say why dig so deep into someone's life that's because he is narrating something very important and it said in Surah Al Hujrat
O you who have believed, if there comes to you a disobedient one (فَاسِقٌ) with information, investigate, lest you harm a people out of ignorance and become, over what you have done, regretful. (49:6)
The Arabic word used is Faasiq, the one who knows what the hudood of Allah are but still breaks it, this is something in the heart which no human can see, so according to this verse if someone brings any important information first investigate it. That's why Muhaditeen were so careful in classifying a Hadith.
So he checks whether Yahya and Yunus are of the same Era ✅, did Yahya in his entire life met Yunus ✅, was Yahya a truthful person ✅, was his memory good when he narrated this from Yunus or when he heard this from Yunus ✅, and many more conditions are there. If all passes then this link of chain is a good, then we go to second link.
It is said Yunus narrated it from Abu Tufail R.A. Same process is repeated for Yunus, were Yunus and Abu Tufail R.A of the same Era ❌. Wow we have a problem here, they were not of the same Era then how did Yunus narrated it from Abu Tufail R.A, this narration is classified as Da'if and if a number of conditions are not met then it is said Da'if Jiddan (Strong/very weak).
Sometimes it is said that a narrator is a Mudallis. Mudallis is the narrator who has a habit of doing Tadlees which means that he omits the narrator he heard this hadith from and says he heard it from the third person. for example the chain was A heard it from B and B from C but what he does is he being A says that I heard it from C or I heard it, then it is Tadlees. These type of narrations are not accepted until they know who the middle man is and if he is strong narrator or a daif one only then can this portion be classed as Sahih. Normally the narrator says Akhbarna or Hadasna but if he says Ann. It means he is doing Tadlees. Only that narrator who has been declared as Mudallis his narration starting with Ann is not accepted, from other narrators it is acceptable. There are a total of approximately 200 narrators who were Mudallis. Now one may ask why would a narrator do Tadlees. There may be two reasons
1) He wants minimum number of narrator between him and the Prophet.
2) The person he is narrating from, the one whose name he is hiding, he may be a daif narrator and the person thinks if I expose his name my narration won't be accepted.
Most of the Muhaditeen don't accept a Mudallis and Imam ibn Shobah says that "Tadlees is worse than Zina". Some are of the view that if the person is honest and his tadlees is found one will accept his hadith. One thing to keep in mind is for example there is a hadith in Bukhari and in it's chain there is Tadlees but the same hadith is found in other book like Hakim or Abu Dawud and there the chain is complete without Tadlees and the chain is not daif then both these Hadith will be classed as Sahih.
It was just an example this might not be a real chain. So a Muhadith don't take such Ahadith because they know that this Hadith is weak and is attributed towards the Prophet S.A.W and it contains things which he S.A.W never said, and if someone narrates it, it is as if he is lying upon Prophet S.A.W because he never said that. Now that's a big problem because
Narrated 'Ali bin Abi Talib:that the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said: "Do not lie upon me, for indeed whoever lies upon me, he will be admitted into the Fire."
So now one knows what to narrate and what not to, If he narrates something which was not narrated by Prophet S.A.W then according to Prophet S.A.W he will go to Hell. So whatever we do or share. It must be a Sahih Hadith, It is very easy for us now, the sites like Sunnah.com or the apps like Islam 360 or Hadith app it tells you the grade of the Hadith too. If you are carefree in this matter then instead of getting good deeds you may be reserving your seat in Hell.
There is one other grade of Hadith it is Maudu (which is a fabricated hadith). As the name suggests it is Fabricated so it is not to be accepted as well.
So now let's look at some real examples: (it will be better if you read these in Urdu or Arabic because English translation is just not that much clear)
1)
Nasr bin Alī al-Jahdhamī narrated to us, al-Asma’ī narrated to us, on authority of Ibn Abī-Zinād, on authority of his father, he said:‘I met one hundred [transmitters] in al-Madīnah, each of whom were reliable. Narrations were not taken from one about who it was said, ‘he is not from its people’.’[Sahih Muslim Introduction 30]
All 100 men were reliable, trustworthy and pious but they were not of the field of Ahadith and they would narrate from whoever they would listen from not knowing if it was true or not.
2) It's a long narration
Muhammad said, I heard Abā Ishāq Ibrāhīm bin Īsā at-Tālqānī say, I said to Abd Allah bin al-Mubārak: ‘Oh Abā Abd ir-Rahman! How is the Ḥadīth which goes ‘Indeed from al-Birr after al-Birr is that you pray for your parents after you pray for yourself and you fast for them both after you fast for yourself’? So [Ibn al-Mubārak] said: ‘Oh Abā Ishāq! On whose authority is this?’ I said to him: ‘This is a Ḥadīth from Shihāb bin Khirāsh’. [Ibn al-Mubārak] said: ‘[He is] trustworthy. On whose authority [did he transmit]?’ I said: ‘on authority of al-Hajjāj bin Dīnār’. [Ibn al-Mubārak] said: ‘[He is] trustworthy. On whose authority [did he transmit]?’ I said: ‘He [al-Hajjāj said] the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings of Allah upon him, said…’ [Ibn al-Mubārak] said: ‘Oh Abā Ishāq! Indeed between al-Hajjāj bin Dīnār and the Prophet, peace and blessings of Allah upon him, is a wilderness in which the necks of the mounts are severed (meaning the difference in time is so much that they could not have met each other), however, there is no difference of opinion regarding charity [offered on behalf of one’s parents]’.Muhammad said, I heard Alī bin Shaqīq saying, I heard Abd Allah bin al-Mubārak saying in front of the people: ‘Abandon the Ḥadīth of Amr bin Thābit for indeed he would curse the Salaf [i.e., the Companions, may Allah be pleased with them]’. [Sahih Muslim Introduction 32]
3)
Muhammad bin Yahyā bin Sa’īd al-Qattān, on authority of his father, he said:‘We do not see the righteous more false in anything than they are regarding Ḥadīth’.
Ibn Abī Attāb said: ‘So Muhammad bin Yahyā bin Sa’īd al-Qattān and I met and I asked him about it and he said on authority of his father: ‘You will not see the people of good (Ahl ul-Khayr) more false in anything than they are regarding Ḥadīth.’ Muslim said: ‘He was saying that falsehood flows upon their tongues although they do not intend to lie’. [Sahih Muslim Introduction 40]
4)
‘Abū Dāwud al-A’mā entered upon Qatādah and when he stood, they said:‘Indeed this one alleges he has met eighteen of the warriors of the battle of Badr’. Qatādah said: ‘This one was barely asking (beggar) before the plague; he did not attend to anything from [seeking Ḥadīth] and he did not speak [to any scholars] regarding it. By Allah, al-Hasan did not narrate to us from a witness of the battle of Badr without an intermediary; and Sa’īd bin al-Musayyib did not narrate to us from a witness of the battle of Badr without an intermediary except from Sa’d bin Mālik’. [Sahih Muslim Introduction 64]
5)
Suwayd bin Sa’īd narrated to us, Alī bin Mus’hir narrated to us, he said:‘Hamzah az-Zayyāt and I heard from Abān bin Abī Ayyāsh something like one thousand Ḥadīth’. Alī said: ‘So I met Hamzah then he informed me that he saw the Prophet, peace and blessings of Allah upon him, [in a dream], and he produced for him what he heard from Abān. However he [the Prophet] didn’t recognize any except a small amount [like] five or six [Ḥadīth]’ [Sahih Muslim Introduction 79]
This Aban bin Abi Ayyash is the same person who lied about Omar R.A that he killed Fatima S.A Naozobillah and both Asma ur rijaal of Ahle Tashee and of Ahle Sunnat classes this narrator as Kazab (liar).
6)
Abd Allah bin Abd ar-Rahman ad-Dārimī narrated to me, he said:‘I heard Abū Nu’aym and he mentioned al-Mu’allā bin Urfān, so [Abū Nu’aym] said, [al-Mu’allā] said: ‘Abū Wā’il narrated to us, he said ‘Ibn Mas’ūd attacked us on the day of Siffīn’. So Abū Nu’aym said: ‘Do you think he was raised after death? [Ibn Mas’ūd passed away in 32 or 33H, several years before the battle of Siffin]
One last thing some people say that Ahl ul Ilm says that the Daif hadith can be taken for encouragment (Fazeelat). I will quote Imam Muslim on this the compiler of Sahih Muslim
Imam Abu Hussain Muslim said:
"Indeed [the Muhaddithīn] concerned themselves with the unveiling of the defects of transmitters of Ḥadīth and narrators of reports; they delivered verdicts in that at the time they were asked when there was a great danger involved considering that the reports are regarding affairs of the Dīn; whether [the transmissions]
i) present a permission or proscription (good deed bad deed)
ii) a command or prohibition (ruling Halal or Haram)
iii) encouragement or admonition. (Fazail and Waeed)
If the transmitter for it is not a source of truthfulness or reliability, then those who know [his condition], who risk transmitting on his authority, and not declaring [his condition] to others whom are ignorant of his [state], are sinning through doing that, and deceiving the common Muslims," {Muqadma Sahih Muslim}
So the book of Hadith, the most common are Sahah Sitaa, although this name is not correct as it means 6 Sahih Book but only Bukhari and Muslim consists of only the Sahih us sanad Ahadith, the other still contains Da'if or Mawdu Ahadith but they are graded in those books.
- Sahih Bukhari
- Sahih Muslim
- Jami Tirmidhi
- Sunan Nisai
- Sunan Abi Dawud
- Sunan ibn Majah
- Sunan Imam Ahmad
- Musanaf bin abi Shaybah
- Mustadrak Al Hakim
One last thing, a Hadith may be Da'if due to it's chain in one Book of Hadith and Sahih in another book, because the text would be same but the chain would be different. So this scenario is possible
The urdu summarized version of Muqadmah of Sahih Muslim it is like 4 pages available on
The english version of Muqadmah of Sahih Muslim it is available onO Allah! Enable us to see the Truth as Truth and give us the ability to follow it. And show us the falsehood as false and give us the ability to refrain from it. Ameen
Comments
Post a Comment