Between Jurists and Hadith Scholars.

The Shaykh : Many sciences are such that one cannot do without the other. It is not hidden from any Muslim that knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence alone is insufficient, for jurisprudence is built upon "Allah said" and "The Messenger of Allah said." The saying of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) is that which explains and interprets the Qur'an, as our Lord (Mighty and Majestic) said in the Noble Qur'an: . What was revealed to them is the Qur'an, and the explanation of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) is the Sunnah. However, things that are not part of the Sunnah have entered into it. Therefore, it became the duty of many strong scholars in the science of hadith to collect the authentic narrations in a book, so that this would assist the jurists in deriving legal rulings from authentic hadiths. But, unfortunately, the jurists followed their own path, and the hadith scholars followed their own path, and few attempted to combine the two paths. Thus, among this few were some famous scholars in every school of jurisprudence. In the Hanafi school, for example, a scholar specialized in the science of hadith, Imam al-Zayla'i, came to a famous book in Hanbali jurisprudence, the book titled "Al-Hidayah." He wrote a book in four volumes titled "Nasb al-Ra'yah li-Ahadith al-Hidayah," in which he traced the hadiths of that book, one by one. Through this, the jurist became able to know the hadiths upon which legal rulings were built. However, these hadiths are not authentic; consequently, the rulings built upon those hadiths are not valid. As it was said long ago: "Can the shadow be straight when the stick is crooked?" A famous example of this is found in the Hanafi books, where they arranged some legal rulings based on hadiths that are not authentic, as Imam al-Zayla'i himself stated, let alone others, in the aforementioned book, "Nasb al-Ra'yah li-Ahadith al-Hidayah."