A weak hadith is one that lacks one or more of the hadith acceptance conditions. As
it is known, the acceptance conditions of the hadith are generally three. The first is
that the chain of conveyors is muttasil, the second is that all narrators are reliable
and there isn’t any malady.
Weakness in hadith generally arises from two reasons.
1st: The inqitʻa in the chain.
2nd: A condition of a narrator that requires confutation (djarh).
In this article, we will talk about the methods applied in the detection of hadiths that
are weak due to any cut-off in chain of conveyors.
The first condition for the hadith to be valid is that the sanad (chain of conveyors)
is uninterrupted. The fact that the narrators in the chain met each other or took the
hadiths directly from each other is of great importance in terms of the health of the
hadith.
The fact that the chain is muttasil is that each narrator in the chain received the hadith from his teacher through one of the methods of learning and teaching hadiths.
Inqitʻa means the lack of at least one narrator in the chain.
A hadith is among the weak ones, with the breakdown of the contiguousness in
the chain, the occurrence of a cut-off, or the disappearance of the condition. What
should be understood from a cut-off from the chain is that the chain of conveyors
becomes disconnected, intentionally or unintentionally, because of the absence of
one or more narrators in the beginning, in the middle or in the end of the chain.
The term munqaṭiʻ is generally used for the hadith that has any cut-off in its chain.
Accordingly, if one or more narrators are cut-off from any part of the chain, or
an ambiguous narrator is mentioned in any part of the hadith, the hadith is called
munqaṭiʻ. It takes various names according to the situation of the breach occurred
in the chain. Hadith scholars used four names according to the step where the narrators were dropped, and the number of narrators did so: al-mursal al-muʻallaq.
al-muʻḍal al-munqaṭiʻ.
Although it sometimes is clearly understood that a narrator has fallen off from the
chain for there are two narrators who did not live in the same period, sometimes it
is determined that the narrators were not acquainted with each other even though
they lived in the same period, or even if they were, the narration of hadith never
took place between them; therefore it is determined that there is a secret inqitaʻ in
the chain. In other words, the narrator conveys all the hadiths from his teacher, the
ones he received or heard from his teacher and the ones he did not, without distinguishing them from each other, and because it creates the conviction that he conveyed all the hadiths he heard, while in reality he did not, he is seen to be to conceal
his faults and mistakes, and the secret inqitaʻ occurs.
Apart from this, there are also hadiths which weak narrators were dropped off from,
and which were conveyed by the remaining narrators whose reliability were high
and close to each other. That is, a narrator portrays a hadith by narrating only reliable narrators skipping narrators who are weak in reliability or smaller than him
in order to render the hadith as sound. In addition, the narrator is to mention his
teacher, whom he wants to hide in plain sight, praising his non-existing high qualities, or to mention his teacher with an unknown name, tag, or nickname, in order
not to appear to be narrating constantly from the same person.
Hadiths conveyed by the narrator in this way by concealing a defect and suggesting that
this defect has not been found, are generally called mudalles hadith or mursal khafi'.
The cut-off in the chain is divided into two according to its clarity and cloudiness.1st: Open inqitaʻ This kind of disconnection, which occurs due to the lack of any
encounter between each narrator and his teacher in the chain, is known for the discovery that either he did not reach the period of his supposed teacher, or that he did
reach, but he never met his supposed teacher. Mursal hadith, munqaṭiʻ hadith, muʻḍal
hadith, and muʻallaq hadith are generally evaluated in the category of open inqitaʻ.
2nd: Secret inqitaʻ. Sometimes it is judged that there is a hidden disconnection between the narrator and his teacher, and the hadith is called mudalles, or mursal
khafi'. It points to the statement that a conveyor narrates any hadith from a conveyor
that he did not meet, or did not receive any hadith from even though the lived in
the same era.
Judgment is made about the joining of the chains by investigating whether the narrators are acquainted with each other or not, and whether the relationship between
them is anything similar to that of a teacher and a student. Whether there is teacherstudent relations in the chain is determined by referring to the tardjamas (books
of conveyors), which contain information such as dates of birth and death in the
relevant history books, the regions where they lived and traveled, to the teacher
student lists given by the scholars on narrators, and especially to the evaluations
made in the books such as ʻilal and sualat. The hadiths that are determined to have
any cut-off by these means in the chain are named in various ways according to the
nature of the aforesaid cut-off.
In addition, although the hadiths that lost the attributes that require their authenticity due to the disconnection in the chain form a group called "weak", they are in
different degrees of weakness according to the importance of the attributes they lost.
For this reason, some are weaker than others.