Is it permissible to narrate a hadith by meaning?

The questioner : Shaykh, may Allah bless you, many hadiths come to us, and we find that their wordings differ, and some of them differ in meaning as well. Is this due to the multiplicity of narrations, or is it due to the permissibility of narrating by meaning?

The Shaykh : This is the second one. All the hadiths, I mean, most of them are narrated by meaning. They are narrated by meaning. Some of the hadith scholars, some of the narrators, say that if it were not permissible for us to narrate by meaning, we would not have narrated a single hadith. This is clear in the contexts of the hadiths. Yes, yes.

The questioner : Regarding narrating by meaning, is this a general rule, or is there a specific type of hadith?

The Shaykh : No, no, there are conditions. The conditions of our master Makkah—wait, the scholars mentioned conditions in the terminology: that it not be from the things by which one worships, such as the wordings of dhikr (remembrance of Allah), for example; that the narrator has knowledge of the difference in wordings; and that he does not place one sentence before another if the context of the hadith requires order, and so on. The conditions must be met.