Clarifying the meaning of tadlis among hadith scholars, with an explanation of its status and ruling.

The Shaykh : We have mentioned to you repeatedly that tadlis, although it is blameworthy in language, because tadlis is equivalent to lying, in the terminology of hadith scholars: tadlis does not necessarily involve lying always and forever, because it is intended to mean: "That a narrator narrates a hadith from a man he lived in the same era as, but he did not meet him, yet he narrates the hadith from him, or he met him but he narrates a hadith from him that he did not hear from him, except that when he narrates from him, he does not narrate it with a form that explicitly indicates hearing, because if he did that, he would be included in the group of liars." He does not say: "I heard so-and-so," when he did not hear from him, even if he had heard some hadiths from him, but in a specific hadith he narrates from him without the form of hearing, this is called a mudallis (one who commits tadlis). As for if he did not hear from him and explicitly stated hearing, he would be a liar. This tadlis is among the subtleties of the science of hadith, and most people today, considering or looking at the science of hadith, are mudallis, and of course, we do not mean that they are liars. The point in that is: that a certain person, if I were to say, for example: "Shaykh Muhammad 'Abduh said," or "Sayyid Rashid Rida said," or "Shaykh Hasan al-Banna said such and such," I would be a mudallis, even though I lived in the same era as all of them, one in the last of his life, and one in the middle of his life, etc., because I am a contemporary of them, so if I say: "So-and-so said," I mislead the listener into thinking that I received it directly from him, but if I say: "I heard from so-and-so," and I did not hear, I would be included in the group of liars, may Allah forbid. So now, if you reflect on this point, how many and how many news items do we narrate every day without an intermediary, for example, one of you says: "Shaykh Nasser said such and such in many issues," and he did not hear it from Shaykh Nasser, but he heard it from the one who heard it from Shaykh Nasser, and perhaps from the one who heard from the one who heard, etc., so all of these people fall into the group of mudallis in the terminology of hadith scholars. And you see that there is no blame in this, but there is a warning against relying on such a narration in which the narrator does not explicitly state direct hearing from the person he is narrating from. Therefore, the care and zeal of hadith scholars in transmitting the hadith from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) reached this extreme precision. al-Hasan al-Basri, one of the great scholars of the Tabi'un, if he said about Samurah ibn Jundub, for example, and he is a famous Companion, or if he said: "Samurah said," his hadith is not used as evidence, and he heard from him and met him, so his hadith is not used as evidence unless he said: "I heard Samurah." And he narrated some hadiths in which he actually said: "I heard Samurah ibn Jundub say: The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said," and he mentioned the hadith of the 'aqiqah.