Continuation of the discussion on the ruling regarding the addition of “(by day)” in the hadith “(Night and day prayer, two by two)” and an explanation of when the addition of a trustworthy narrator is accepted.

So there you are, you have researched what concerns the supporting narrators, and as far as I know, there are two. As for me, I do not recall them right now; are there two? Are there one? Are there more? But in general, he has supporting narrators. So why are you going around in circles regarding the corroborating narrators? This is a very important matter, because I may have conceded to you in this debate that the addition of “(by day)” in this hadith is anomalous, but I... Ibn Umar’s [report] is anomalous, but attributing this hadith to the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) is not anomalous. So what is the value of that anomaly in that case? Is this clear?
Abu Ishaq: Yes.

The Shaykh: And I think this statement, without blame, is from the category of: .. This is not found in the depths of the books; have you ever in your life heard of relative anomaly?
Abu Ishaq: No, I have not heard of it.

The Shaykh: You have not heard of it, and he laughs.The Shaykh : And he says this is taken from the study, naturally. So now, leave the matter of Ibn Umar and the narrations of the trustworthy narrators whose memory is like mountains—as you correctly said—they narrated Ibn Umar’s hadith . And indeed, Ibn Umar’s hadith is this, its text is: Other narrators came and narrated from the Messenger, may Allah’s prayer and peace be upon him, through a route other than Ibn Umar’s . What do you say about this hadith, is it authentic or not authentic?
Abu Ishaq: If the corroborating narrations are authentic, I mean?

The Shaykh: I am not saying that, of course. I am not saying now that it is authentic or not authentic. I am using the precise scientific expression: Other narrators came and narrated from the Messenger, peace be upon him, through a route other than Ibn Umar’s that he said such and such. So this hadith would be authentic, very good. So what is the effect of that difference in Ibn Umar’s hadith, where the addition of “(by day)” is specific to his hadith, is it preserved or is it anomalous? It does not affect the authenticity of the hadith. But whoever says this is authentic from Ibn Umar from the Messenger of Allah, that discussion is examined, and then what concerns us? If someone attributes a hadith to Ibn Umar that Ibn Umar did not narrate, but the Messenger reported it and other Companions received it from him, of course the narrators attributed it to Ibn Umar, and Ibn Umar did not have the report. What concerns us is the authenticity of the attribution of the hadith to the Messenger, may Allah’s peace be upon him, but it does not concern us at all that the hadith is authentic through the route of Ibn Umar or Abu Umar, it does not concern us at all. If the matter has some precision, it does not mean it is explicitly stated in the terminology, but rather in their tracing of the hadiths. So if we say this hadith or this addition is anomalous, that means it is not permissible for us to say the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: . It is not permissible for us to say this except after looking at the other corroborating narrations. The other corroborating narrations, now I am descending from the previous call, so I will give only one example. I say, suppose with us that there is a hadith with that anomalous wording from Ibn Umar, narrated with a good chain from Abu Hurayrah or from another of the Companions, that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: . Would you not argue with this hadith?
Abu Ishaq: It is argued with.

The Shaykh: Praise be to Allah. So it remains for us to study the corroborating narrations. These corroborating narrations either give us the authenticity of the hadith in itself, or its authenticity due to another, or its goodness in itself, or its goodness due to another, and this is the lowest rank. So if it is good due to another, the discussion of Ibn Umar’s hadith, whether this addition is anomalous in it or not, is a formal discussion with no fruit. Perhaps I have clarified what is in your mind.
Abu Ishaq: But if a corroborating narration is not authentic, then ruling that this addition is anomalous is more appropriate.

The Shaykh: No, this requires re-examining the supporting narrators of al-Barqi. I think that is Ali ibn Abdullah, yes. Anyway, it remains to look at the individuals of the supporting narrators of this Ali ibn Abdullah. If they are trustworthy and numerous, it is not necessary here now for the number to be equal, meaning the number to be equal. You mentioned earlier a large number, may Allah will it, how many is it?
Abu Ishaq: Seventeen narrators.

The Shaykh: Seventeen narrators, it is not necessary that it be so. Because the agreement of three or four on an addition, and they are supposed to be trustworthy, is not accepted by the mind, and it is not believed in this case. And I am exaggerating now in the description so that the meaning I want to explain becomes clear. There are seventeen trustworthy narrators who narrated the hadith on the established path . I do not think you will not agree with me that, as far as I know, no scholar of hadith conditions the authenticity of this addition that there be seventeen trustworthy narrators who added this addition. So if one is missing, what do they say about its authenticity in your opinion?
Abu Ishaq: They say.

The Shaykh: And so you descend to whatever number you wish.
He laughs.The Shaykh

The Shaykh: Until you reach the number that the soul is reassured by, the group is in the process of eating, or?
Abu Layla: Not yet, my teacher.

The Shaykh: They are hungry, but it became nine o’clock...
Abu Layla: Abu Yasar... was with Nizam, and Nizam asked me if he would come out.The Shaykh : So I told him I do not think he would come out.The Shaykh : After two hours.
The student brothers laugh.
Al-Halabi: He cut off your path.

The Shaykh: But the one who works in it.The Shaykh : The so-called Abu al-Yasar is... work, meaning if the first cause went into a continuous cause, and that is work.
Al-Halabi : Yes, that is correct.

The Shaykh: So he informed them of that, yes, we are meeting with.The Shaykh : Five minutes ago, so praise be to Allah, it became authentic for him what did not become authentic for others—he laughs.The Shaykh : —
And this, if Allah wills, is a proof of the goodness of his intention and his inner state. Please.
Abu Ishaq: We were talking about the addition of the trustworthy narrator and the difference between it...

The Shaykh: Yes, the truth is there is precision in it, and secondly, it is a matter of disagreement between scholars of hadith and scholars of the principles of jurisprudence. Scholars of the principles of jurisprudence adopt in their principles, and not in their branching and application, the absolute acceptance of the addition of the trustworthy narrator, whether he is equal to those who added to him or is below them in trustworthiness and number. So the addition of the trustworthy narrator in the science of principles is accepted with this absoluteness. It is not so with scholars of hadith, for scholars of hadith only accept the addition of the trustworthy narrator if he did not contradict someone more memorizing than him, or if the contradictors of him, or those who contradict him, are more in number than him. In this case, they reject this addition, and it is what they call the term anomaly or the anomalous hadith. And as they mention regarding Imam al-Shafi'i that he said: “The anomalous hadith is not that a trustworthy narrator narrates what others did not narrate, but rather the anomalous hadith is that a trustworthy narrator is contradicted by one more trustworthy than him.” And perhaps he said or more in number than him. And what he said, scholars of hadith say this. And therefore the results differ greatly between these and those. Those, when they see the addition of the trustworthy narrator, say the addition of the trustworthy narrator is accepted, even if the contradictors, as our teacher said earlier, are like mountains in memory, the addition of the trustworthy narrator is accepted. While scholars of hadith say no, the addition is only accepted with the previous condition that he added to his equal. As for adding to one more memorizing than him, or to those more in number than him, this addition becomes anomalous. And I remember they mentioned in the terminology an example that was said to be anomalous, and it is the hadith of Abdullah ibn Umar ibn al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with them both), he said: . This addition of in the hadith does not exist in all routes of the hadith, and the one who is known and famous for mentioning this addition in the hadith is Imam Malik. So they mentioned that some of them criticized it with anomaly and with the claim that Imam Malik was unique in it, and scholars of hadith almost followed this, if not that some of them found supporting narrators for it, and with these supporting narrations, this addition was saved from being ruled as anomalous. This is an example mentioned in the terminology, and especially in the Abridgment of the Sciences of Hadith by Ahmad Shakir (may Allah have mercy on him), which has the long handle. And a person finds in the course of his reading of the books of the imams of hadith many, many examples of this addition, which is of the type of anomalous hadith. And I mention an example that I have not seen from anyone before, except that Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah weakened the hadith without explaining the reason, and it is his saying, may Allah’s prayer and peace be upon him, regarding those who enter Paradise without reckoning or punishment, their faces are like the moon on the night of the full moon. Who are they? In the hadith agreed upon by.The Shaykh : The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: . Al-Bukhari and Muslim narrated this in their two Sahihs; but in a narration by Muslim himself, it is stated: . So I conducted a research and verification, gathering all the chains of this hadith, which is from the narration of Ibn Abbas, along with the corroborating narrations outside the two Sahihs, which include, as I recall, the hadith of Ibn Masud in the Musnad of Imam Ahmad and the Mustadrak of al-Hakim. I found that all the chains of the first hadith, the hadith of Ibn Abbas, and the other hadiths, including the hadith of Ibn Masud, do not mention the addition of , but rather they are content with the statement: . After this study—and this was about twenty-five years ago—I was certain that the addition of is anomalous (shadh). Consequently, an anomalous hadith is a type of weak hadith. Then the years passed, and a collection of fatwas by Ibn Taymiyyah was printed, and in some of his answers, he mentioned this hadith and said it is weak, without specifying the reason. I had already identified the reason in that research, which is its anomaly (shudhudh), meaning that a trustworthy narrator contradicted other trustworthy narrators, and furthermore, it contradicted the narrations of other Companions. The one who contradicted was an imam among the imams of the Muslims and a shaykh among the shaykhsThe Shaykh : of the scholars, namely Sa'id ibn Mansur, the author of the Sunan. Since that day, I have had a concern regarding the memorization of Sa'id ibn Mansur. Then the days passed, and it became clear to me that he had other matters of this kind as well. The last of these is this hadith that made people stand and sit: . I gathered several chains for this hadith from a group of trustworthy narrators, all of whom narrated it from Sufyan ibn Uyaynah with his correct chain from Hudhayfah, traced to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), except for Sa'id ibn Mansur, who ruined the matter for us by saying, "In our land, in the Levant." Because he narrated the hadith with the wording that caused people to doubt the authentic hadith, where he said: , and mentioned them, then said: . This addition of has no basis in any of the narrations of the trustworthy narrators; all of them narrated it up to . Given the distance of students from studying the science of hadith, first theoretically, and then practically, they clung to this addition mentioned by al-Shawkani, quoting from Sa'id ibn Mansur, and did not elaborate on it with words that clarify the value of this addition from the hadith perspective first, and then its status from the jurisprudential perspective second. So a question arose that in a narration mentioned by al-Shawkani, he said "in a congregational mosque"; this caught the questioner's attentionThe questioner : that if the hadith were in the wording of , if the narration were like this, some people might cling to it to permit i'tikaf (spiritual retreat) in a congregational mosque other than these three mosques. But two things stand in the way of such an argument. The first thing is that Sa'id's narration is in the wording "or he said," and this is not a choice from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), but rather a doubt from the narrator. And who is the narrator? Sa'id ibn Mansur, our companion, because all the narrators narrated it from Sufyan ibn Uyaynah, and he says, "Sufyan ibn Uyaynah narrated to me," then mentioned this addition. So where does this addition come from? From his own source.
Al-Halabi: Like the first one.

The Shaykh: Exactly like the first one. This is the first thing that prevents using it as evidence, and the summary of that is that this is an anomalous addition with no value. Second, if this addition were in the wording "yes, of course, or he said" only, or "a congregational mosque," it would also be anomalous for the same reason, because he did not say it with certainty, and for another reason we take from the text of the hadith, where he said: . So this became thirty and three hundred mosques, and whatever number Allah wills. This contradicts the beginning of the hadith where he said: . So this addition is an error, whether it is as it actually is, "or he said in a congregational mosque," or as some students imagined, that he said "or in a congregational mosque." The point of all this is to present some examples to clarify that it is absolutely not correct to take the rule "the addition of a trustworthy narrator is accepted" in an absolute sense. Rather, it must be restricted to the case where the trustworthy narrator has not contradicted someone more trustworthy than him. This is what I have.
Al-Halabi: My teacher, sometimes, meaning from the articles of the early scholars and their knowledge of defects ('ilal), when a marfu' (traced to the Prophet) and a mawquf (stopping at a Companion) are combined, they prefer the mawquf over the marfu'.

The Shaykh : Why?
Al-Halabi: It is probably, of course, an anomaly (shudhudh).

The Shaykh: No, this defect is an anomaly (shudhudh). It is this: "Peace be upon you."
Al-Halabi: What is in the minds of many students is that the marfu' is an addition.

The Shaykh: No, this is not absolute at all. Yes, and this is the important point in the matter. Yes.
Abu Ishaq: Our Shaykh, in hadith number fifty-one of the Da'if (weak) hadiths, among the defects you mentioned, you said: "And Muhammad ibn Sirin did not hear from Imran ibn Husayn, contrary to Ahmad." In Sahih Muslim, there is a hadith: . Muhammad ibn Sirin explicitly stated that he heard from Imran; and in al-Jarh wa al-Ta'dil by Ibn Abi Hatim...

The Shaykh: I will pause for a moment because a tooth and a lesson do not go together.
He laughs.The Shaykh : Abu Ishaq.

The Shaykh: In the name of Allah.
Now, it seems they are having a meal.