The difference of opinion among hadith scholars regarding the ruling on a single hadith, whether it is authentic or weak, and a mention of an example that occurred to Shaykh Al-Albani himself.
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The Shaykh : Sometimes the route is the same; sometimes the route is the same, so this one authenticates it and that one weakens it. This happens, and indeed, it happens with the same person. I am not taking you far away; I give you an example of myself so that you do not say that the Shaykh does not make mistakes. The Shaykh must make mistakes, but his mistake is better than the mistake of others because he researches and works hard, and so on. So it is inevitable that he makes a mistake. But if he... researches, his mistakes will be many. And this is an example from just now, excuse me, yesterday or the day before yesterday. A man from our brothers, the students of knowledge, from Aleppo came to me and drew my attention to one hadith. I say this so that you correct what you have. One hadith exists in my book *Sahih al-Jami'* and *Da'if al-Jami'*. The first thing that came to my mind was that this type has many examples in the two books, but upon research and verification, it appears that this one who is drawing our attention is the one who made the mistake. The reason is that the hadith is in one book with one wording and in the other with another wording, and in one of them there is what is not in the other. Therefore, one was placed in the authentic and the other was placed in the weak. This is part of the precision of knowledge. But when he showed me the text, it was not of this type at all. The text This is the text of the hadith or its meaning. We cited it in the authentic and we cited it in the weak. I told him, leave the matter to me so that I study this topic calmly and with deliberation. In one of the books, I attributed the hadith to *Silsilat al-Ahadith al-Sahihah*. This is a mistake from the husband, meaning, because the mistake is based on a mistake. I cited one of the hadiths in the authentic and the other in the weak. When I went back, I found the chain of narration to be one. Do not be surprised if hadith scholars differ in this... I myself am contradictory. I found the chain to be one, but I quickly realized the mistake. The mistake is in two men. This is one of the reasons for the difference of opinion among hadith scholars. There are two men whose name and their father's name are the same. The name of each of them resembles the other in terms of his father: Abdullah ibn Waqid, Abdullah ibn Waqid. They are two: one is from Harran and the other is from Herat. The famous one in the books of hadith and the chains of hadith is the one from Harran, and his kunya is Abu Waqid. I will not hide from you, so that you understand me well, from my negligence: Abdullah ibn Waqid comes in the hadith with his kunya, and he is Abu what?
The questioner : Waqid.
The Shaykh : Abu Waqid. And he is given the kunya Abu Rajaa, not Abu Waqid. Excuse me, he comes with the kunya Abu Rajaa. So Abdullah ibn Waqid, Abu Rajaa, is trustworthy, whereas Abdullah ibn Waqid, Abu Waqid, is weak. I was negligent in seeing the kunya Abu Rajaa. I read Abdullah ibn Waqid... Abdullah ibn Waqid is weak, without elaboration and without going back to what? To the sources. So we weakened the hadith. In the authentic one, I realized that Abdullah ibn Waqid is Abu Rajaa and he is trustworthy, so we classified it as authentic. When the other one came and showed me, meaning the reason for this mistake: this is one person who makes such a mistake, so it is even more likely that one person makes the mistake I made and the other makes the correct ruling I made, and so on. So the reason, we can also summarize it, is that this one looks at a route of a hadith that the other did not look at, so he authenticates it, and that one looked at a hadith whose chain is weak and weakens it. But if they met and understood each other, they would agree on the authenticity of the hadith.
There are many reasons. Suppose the chain is one, one authenticates it and one weakens it, and the narrator is one, not like our man Abu Waqid. The reason would be that the biographer of one of the two men came across a certification of this one, and that one came across a weakening, but the weakening is stronger than the certification, or it could be the opposite. The important thing is that if this question has a benefit to be expected from it, it is to alert the attendees to two things. First, that disagreement is a natural matter among humans, and therefore we never hold it against the Imams of jurisprudence, just as we do not hold it against the Imams of hadith in what they differed in, because this is a natural matter, and the reasons are natural, cosmic, and the Sunnah of Allah in His creation. But we take that as a means to draw people's attention to the fact that they must learn and must strive as the previous Imams strove, whether they were among the scholars of jurisprudence or among the scholars of hadith. And when the jurists increase in the Ummah and the hadith scholars increase among them, the disagreements decrease, whether they are jurisprudential disagreements or hadith disagreements. But when there is only one person in jurisprudence in some field in some lands, he is exposed to error, and there is no one to reveal his error to him. Therefore, I am very happy when I feel now that there are among our brothers in this town and in others who present my error to me, because I have started to feel that we have begun to reap the fruits of spreading the Sunnah among people, and the science of hadith and the terminology of hadith. Whereas previously, and this is without doubt, like any beginner in any science, I made many mistakes, and there was no one to alert me. Why? Because I lived in this science alone. So we ask Allah, Mighty and Majestic, to awaken the Muslim Ummah to understand their religion by relying on the Book and the Sunnah, and to inspire groups of them to perform the duty of this correct understanding and the study of the science of the Sunnah with a correct scientific study. And this is enough, and praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds.
O my brothers, work with such things.
أي إخواني بمثل هذا فاعملواThe questioner : Waqid.
The Shaykh : Abu Waqid. And he is given the kunya Abu Rajaa, not Abu Waqid. Excuse me, he comes with the kunya Abu Rajaa. So Abdullah ibn Waqid, Abu Rajaa, is trustworthy, whereas Abdullah ibn Waqid, Abu Waqid, is weak. I was negligent in seeing the kunya Abu Rajaa. I read Abdullah ibn Waqid... Abdullah ibn Waqid is weak, without elaboration and without going back to what? To the sources. So we weakened the hadith. In the authentic one, I realized that Abdullah ibn Waqid is Abu Rajaa and he is trustworthy, so we classified it as authentic. When the other one came and showed me, meaning the reason for this mistake: this is one person who makes such a mistake, so it is even more likely that one person makes the mistake I made and the other makes the correct ruling I made, and so on. So the reason, we can also summarize it, is that this one looks at a route of a hadith that the other did not look at, so he authenticates it, and that one looked at a hadith whose chain is weak and weakens it. But if they met and understood each other, they would agree on the authenticity of the hadith.
There are many reasons. Suppose the chain is one, one authenticates it and one weakens it, and the narrator is one, not like our man Abu Waqid. The reason would be that the biographer of one of the two men came across a certification of this one, and that one came across a weakening, but the weakening is stronger than the certification, or it could be the opposite. The important thing is that if this question has a benefit to be expected from it, it is to alert the attendees to two things. First, that disagreement is a natural matter among humans, and therefore we never hold it against the Imams of jurisprudence, just as we do not hold it against the Imams of hadith in what they differed in, because this is a natural matter, and the reasons are natural, cosmic, and the Sunnah of Allah in His creation. But we take that as a means to draw people's attention to the fact that they must learn and must strive as the previous Imams strove, whether they were among the scholars of jurisprudence or among the scholars of hadith. And when the jurists increase in the Ummah and the hadith scholars increase among them, the disagreements decrease, whether they are jurisprudential disagreements or hadith disagreements. But when there is only one person in jurisprudence in some field in some lands, he is exposed to error, and there is no one to reveal his error to him. Therefore, I am very happy when I feel now that there are among our brothers in this town and in others who present my error to me, because I have started to feel that we have begun to reap the fruits of spreading the Sunnah among people, and the science of hadith and the terminology of hadith. Whereas previously, and this is without doubt, like any beginner in any science, I made many mistakes, and there was no one to alert me. Why? Because I lived in this science alone. So we ask Allah, Mighty and Majestic, to awaken the Muslim Ummah to understand their religion by relying on the Book and the Sunnah, and to inspire groups of them to perform the duty of this correct understanding and the study of the science of the Sunnah with a correct scientific study. And this is enough, and praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds.