Is the Prophetic hadith transmitted to us by its wording or by its meaning, and is the noble Prophetic hadith relied upon in establishing the rules of the language?

The questioner : We ask you to clarify for us whether the Prophetic hadith is transmitted to us by its wording or by its meaning, and whether the noble Prophetic hadith is relied upon in establishing the rules of the language.

The Shaykh : This question was posed to me by one of those who attends for one of these certificates, and a long discussion took place on this matter. The summary is: the original rule for Prophetic hadiths is that they are narrated by their words and meanings, naturally. I say this is the original rule because we know with certainty that some hadiths are narrated by their meaning, especially when the hadith is long and it is not easy for the listener to grasp it in its entirety, with all its words, on the first, second, or third hearing. However, when we study the history of the hadith narrators, we find that they were influenced by what they heard of the hadiths of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), which urged them to convey what they had heard. This means conveying the exact wording they heard from the Messenger (peace be upon him), such as the hadith: and the hadith: and the hadith: . These hadiths all confirm for us that these narrators took as a principle that the hadith should be narrated as they heard it. But we do not deny or conceal the fact that there are hadiths that were definitely narrated by their meaning. However, this does not invalidate the previously mentioned original rule. Everyone who wants to say—and this has unfortunately happened—that the hadith cannot be used as evidence to establish a specific Arabic word, such as a rare word in the hadith, or a phrase that is not established by a sound hadith of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), has spoken as some linguists have. But they forgot a bitter truth: first, they forgot this original rule, which does not imply that all the hadiths of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) were narrated by meaning rather than wording; rather, it implies the exact opposite: they narrated the hadiths as they heard them, which is the original rule, though some hadiths were narrated by meaning, and this is evident from comparing the hadiths with one another. Then they forgot another truth: if they criticize this original rule and claim that it is not permissible to establish language or any part of language by a sound hadith, their language collapses from its very foundation. For by what do they establish language? By poems they narrate from the poets of the pre-Islamic age of ignorance. Where is the chain of narration from them for these poems? They have no proof other than hearsay and "it is said." If they establish the Arabic language with such narrations that have no backbone and no bridle, is it not more fitting and more appropriate for them to establish the Arabic language with hadiths narrated by hadith scholars with chains of narration for which no one in the entire world has concerned themselves with knowing the biographies of their narrators, the levels of their memorization, and the continuity of some of them with others, except the hadith scholars? The linguists themselves have nothing of this except what they may have quoted from the hadith scholars. Therefore, you will find—and this is due to the impact of the wide-ranging hadith scholarly movement on others—that some literary scholars, for example al-Asbahani in his book *al-Aghani*, narrate stories, which may contain some indecency, by saying: "So-and-so told me, he said: So-and-so told me", imitating the imams of hadith. As for the linguists, they do not have such a field. Therefore, the claim that the sound hadith, naturally, is not used as evidence in language means that there is no language, because the path by which they establish language is the path of broken narrations, whereas the hadiths are connected narrations. Then I said, among other things, why do those linguists not use the hadith as evidence? He said: because many of the hadith narrators are non-Arabs. This is true, but we say that these non-Arabs became more Arab than the Arabs themselves. And we see today that the Arabs read verses of the Qur'an to them, and they barely understand the words. Why are these people still considered Arabs when the Qur'an is Arabic? Because their foreignness entered them and distanced them from what? True Arabness, so they no longer understand its language. The exact opposite was the case in the early periods, in the first eras, when Islam was spreading, and with it spread not only its faith and religion, but also its language wherever it settled. Then these non-Arab Muslims embraced the religion by learning the Arabic language, because the Qur'an is not understood except in this language, and the hadith of the Messenger is not understood except in this language. Therefore, we say: these narrators, even though many of them were not Arabs but non-Arabs, they Arabized and became Arabs in their language.
From this, this fact becomes clear to you: remember that many of the great scholars were non-Arabs, and some of them were imams of the language itself. For example, who is the oldest of the jurists in age? Abu Hanifa al-Nu'man ibn Thabit, a non-Arab, not an Arab. Yet most of the Muslims today follow his school of jurisprudence. Can it be said that because he was of non-Arab origin, he did not understand the Arabic language? The answer is: No.
Take, for example, Sibawayhi, the imam of the grammarians; he was also a non-Arab, as his name indicates. Take, for example, the Imam al-Zamakhshari, the author of the tafsir and the author of *al-Fayyiq fi Gharib al-Hadith*; he is an imam in the Arabic language and he is a non-Arab, and so on. Therefore, it does not harm us that there are non-Arabs among the hadith narrators, because they are better than many of the Arabs in their knowledge of the language of the Arabs, the language of the Qur'an and the Sunnah. This is what can be said in answer to this issue.