The Ranks of Hadith Science: Self-Evident and Innate Divisions

The Shaykh : These ranks... meaning self-evident, innate, and natural. The scholars of hadith noticed this when they divided hadith into what we called mutawatir, mashhur, mustafid, and ahad, or sahih and hasan. Now, when these people come along and make us doubt one of their technical terms, it is because they have not informed us of what is in their hearts or how they deal with the general public in receiving their reports. For they are all individuals and ahad, but they are not equal in terms of truthfulness first, and in terms of understanding, intelligence, and attentiveness second; they differ in every way. Nevertheless, they trust a man simply because they do not know of any lying on his part, so they accept his report. However, in reality, they do not treat the report of Zayd as the report of 'Umar and 'Amr, and so on. But all of them fall within the rank of acceptance. The scholars of hadith, due to their precision in their science and terminology, established these ranks and this scale. Why? Because it enters into the subject of fiqh, upon which the understanding of the Qur'an and the Sunnah is built based on the terminology of hadith. Therefore, when I mentioned, Shaykh Ahmad, a group of these students of knowledge who devoted themselves to tracking the differences in the scholars' opinions on fiqh issues and preferring the stronger position over the weaker, they do not have expertise in hadith science; rather, they rely on the early scholars of hadith or some of the later ones if they have confidence in them. But this does not make their ijtihad free from error. However, they are undoubtedly better than the taqlid followers who surrendered their minds to a specific madhhab. This is because there is much disagreement... regarding hasan and sahih hadith and those above them. Here, the science of terminology intervenes. Al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar, truly an imam as was said earlier, so pay attention, Imam Ibn Hajar truly says in his commentary on al-Nukhba, in the section on acceptable hadith: "When two contradictory hadiths come to us, it is obligatory to reconcile them by one of the means of reconciliation." He phrases it this way, even though it is concise... by one of the means of reconciliation. Al-Hafiz al-'Iraqi mentioned these means in his commentary on the introduction to the Sciences of Hadith by Ibn al-Salah, listing more than a hundred means. So al-Hafiz is referring to these means. He said: "It is obligatory to reconcile the two contradictory hadiths by one of the means of reconciliation. If reconciliation is not possible, one proceeds to considering the abrogating and the abrogated." He said: "If that is not possible," and here is the point: "one proceeds to tarjih (preference)." One proceeds to tarjih, meaning a hasan hadith that opposes a sahih one. If reconciliation is not possible and considering the abrogating and the abrogated is not possible, the sahih is preferred over the hasan. Or if both are sahih, but one has a corroborating narration (shahid) and the other does not, the one with the shahid is taken. Why? Because the one with the shahid strengthens one's confidence in its authenticity more than the other. These proportions are natural, innate proportions that Allah (Mighty and Majestic) has established in the hearts of people... there is no difference between the Muslim and the disbeliever. But the scholars of the Muslims have the merit that they established these precise scales, and some disbelievers have explicitly acknowledged that this scale is something unique to the scholars of the Muslims, and merit is what is witnessed to by the enemies.