Clarification of some issues in the terminology of hadith and its development between the early scholars and the later eras in which the terminology, such as the hasan hadith, became established.

The Shaykh : It is not hidden from you, if Allah wills, all of you, that the rank of the sahih hadith is higher than the rank of the hasan hadith, and this is higher than the rank of the da'if hadith. However, the terminology regarding the hadith that is used as evidence is that some of it is sahih and some of it is hasan. This was not a common usage in the initial emergence of the science of hadith. The early scholars of hadith divided hadith into two categories: sahih and da'if. But the nature of every science is that it begins without being fully refined, and as time passes, it becomes more refined and precise. Therefore, the scholars of hadith, in their terminology, divided the hadith used as evidence into two categories: sahih and hasan. But this hasan hadith was not in circulation among the scholars of hadith in the past. The first person known for using it was the Imam Muhammad ibn Isma'il al-Bukhari, and the first person to spread and popularize it was his student, the Imam al-Tirmidhi. If this is the case, then this benefits us in not being too harsh on some of those who say that the hadith of Ibn Ishaq is a sahih hadith, because the sahih includes the hasan as well, according to the terminology of the early hadith scholars.
And when we know this detail, we then know precisely that the hadith of Ibn Ishaq is in the middle between the sahih hadith and the da'if hadith. It is hasan, and the rank or status of the hasan hadith among the hadith scholars is that it is used as evidence just as the sahih hadith is used as evidence, exactly.