Usool al Hadith - Forever Islam

ecorded by others.5. Authentic hadeeths according to the criteria of al-Bukhaaree alone recordedby others.6. Authentic hadeeths according to the criteria of Muslim alone recorded byothers.7. Authentic hadeeths not according to the criteria of either al-Bukhaaree orMuslim.Hadeeth HasanLinguistically the term hasan means “beautiful; fair; good.” However, accordingto the science of hadeeth evaluation, it refers to a hadeeth that is graded betweensaheeh and da‘eef (inauthentic). At-Tirmithee, who was the first to use the termhasan consistently in a technical way, defined it as a hadeeth that does not have inits chain a narrator suspected of lying, nor does it conflict with superior texts andit is transmitted via more than one chain of similar strength. This definition isquite general and could include the hadeeth saheeh lighayrih (saheeh due toexternal corroboration). Or it could define one dimension of the hadeeth hasan,namely the hasan lighayrih (hasan due to external corroboration).Ibn Hajar, on the other hand, gave the most accurate definition of the hadeethhasan as one transmitted by upstanding narrators in a continuous chain ofnarration, free from any hidden defects or conflict with superior texts. Except thatit contains a narrator or narrators whose accuracy is inferior. Such a hadeeth isregarded as hasan lithaatih (hasan by itself). 12 In other words, a hadeeth isconsidered hasan if it fulfills all the requirements of Sihhah except Dabt(accuracy). If the memory of a narrator was only considered fair (sadooq), that is,he was known to make a few mistakes. The hadeeth is lowered from the level ofsaheeh to the level of hasan. In the early days, some scholars like Ibn Khuzaymah(one of al-Bukhaaree’s teachers) made no distinction between the hadeeth saheehand the hadeeth hasan. Ibn Hibban and al-Haakim also followed this practice.The following is an example of a hadeeth hasan from the Sunan of Imaam at-Tirmithee:12 The Science of Authenticating the Prophet’s Traditions, pp. 47-8.