The etiquette of every seeker of knowledge, which the hadith scholars singled out for the hadith student given the weight of his subject; the first of them is sincerity.
Etiquette needed by anyone who leads gatherings of learning or who teaches. The hadith scholars drew attention to it and urged it especially on whoever takes up narrating from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.
The first arrangement, and the one a student reaches for first. Hadiths on one subject are gathered under a general heading such as Book of Prayer or Book of Sales, then spread over small chapters, each holding one or more hadiths on a single point. The chapter heading has its own name among the hadith scholars: a tarjama.
Its advantage is that it is easy to consult, since the subject of the hadith tells you where to look.
But getting the good out of it takes a trained sense, because an imam may deliberately place a hadith outside the chapter you expect, to bring out a second meaning in it. This is so common in al-Bukhari that it became a mark of his book, and they say his fiqh is in his chapter headings.
الْجَوَامِعُ · The Jami' Collections
السُّنَنُ · The Sunan Collections
الْمُصَنَّفَاتُ · The Musannaf Collections
الْمُسْتَدْرَكَاتُ · The Mustadrak Collections
الْمُسْتَخْرَجَاتُ · The Mustakhraj Collections
The second arrangement files every hadith under the Companion who narrates it. It shows at a glance how much a given Companion narrated and what sort of material it was, and it is one of the working routes for tracing a hadith when you know its Companion.
الْمَسَانِيدُ · The Musnad Collections
الْأَطْرَافُ · The Atraf Indexes
A mu'jam arranges hadiths by the compiler's own teachers, usually in alphabetical order, so he begins with what he narrates from his shaykh Aban, then Ibrahim, and so on. The famous ones are al-Tabarani's three. His Small and Middle are on his teachers; his Large is on the Companions' musnads, and is so well known that when they say the Mu'jam without qualification, or say al-Tabarani recorded it, the Large is what they mean.
The exception among the three.
Arranged by the alphabet on the first word of the hadith. Very quick to consult, on one condition: you must know that first word exactly, or the search is wasted effort.
الْأَحَادِيثُ الْمُشْتَهِرَةُ عَلَى الْأَلْسِنَةِ · Hadiths Famous on People's Tongues
Books that pull together the hadiths of several source collections at once, arranged either by topic or by first word. By topic: Ibn al-Athir's Jami' al-Usul, which strips the chains and explains rare words but leaves the grading of the Sunan material unstated, and al-Muttaqi al-Hindi's Kanz al-Ummal, the fullest of its kind, drawing on ninety-three books by the author's count, though it too is silent on the state of what it carries, and the author adds a second complaint, that it sometimes refers a hadith to a remote and little-used source when the same hadith stands in the Sahih collections. By first word: al-Suyuti's al-Jami' al-Kabir and his al-Jami' al-Saghir, the latter reaching 10,031 hadiths.
A trap worth knowing: the same symbol does not mean the same thing in both of al-Suyuti's books. In al-Jami' al-Saghir the letter qaf marks what the two shaykhs agreed on; in al-Jami' al-Kabir it marks what al-Bayhaqi recorded. The author's standing advice follows from it: the first thing a student does with any hadith compilation is read its introduction, to learn its symbols, its method and its aims.
Books of the surplus: they collect what certain hadith books have over and above certain others, and deliberately leave out everything the two sets share. Two great ones: al-Haythami's Majma' al-Zawa'id, gathering what six important sources add to the Six Books, and stating the condition of each hadith as it goes, and Ibn Hajar's al-Matalib al-Aliya, gathering the surplus of eight musnads.
Books written to trace the hadiths of one particular book back to their sources. Three the author singles out: al-Zayla'i's Nasb al-Raya on the hadiths of al-Hidaya in Hanafi fiqh, which also gathers the reports the opponents of the Hanafis argue from and discusses them all, and which the author praises for its fairness and objectivity as much as for its depth; al-Iraqi's al-Mughni on the hadiths of al-Ghazali's Ihya'; and Ibn Hajar's al-Talkhis al-Habir on al-Rafi'i's great commentary, which became indispensable for legal hadith.
A juz' gathers what is narrated from one single man, whether a Companion or someone later, as in the juz' of Abu Bakr's hadith or of Malik's. The word also covers a study of the chains of one single hadith, and a monograph on one narrow question, such as al-Bukhari's juz' on reciting behind the imam. They are usually short, and the author notes they display an imam's learning precisely because isolating a small question forces him to be exhaustive.
A scholar's register of his own teachers: who they were, what he took from each, and his chain up to the authors of those books. Some are called a fihris or a thabat instead. The author names al-Ru'ayni's and Ibn Khayr's as the best known, both in print.
Books that collect defective hadiths and set out the defect in each.
The author puts this at the summit of what hadith scholars do, because a hidden defect is covered by an outward appearance of soundness, and exposing it takes hard, patient, repeated tracing of the chains.
The question is what makes a young student's hearing count. For the majority the test is not age but discernment: that the one carrying the report takes in what he hears and holds it.
Many fixed a floor of five years, and Ibn al-Salah reports that this is what later practice settled on, so for a child of five and above they write that he heard it, and below five that he was present. The author holds that the age does not compete with the real criterion but estimates it, since five is simply the earliest age at which retention is usually found; al-Qadi Iyad adds that a slow child may not manage it well above that age while a sharp one may manage it below.
One consequence he draws out: a non-Muslim or a sinner may validly hear hadith, and what he received in that state is accepted from him once he becomes Muslim or sincerely repents. The books of sunna and sira carry many such reports, of what Companions heard the Prophet ﷺ say and saw of his state before they accepted Islam.
As for the full measure rather than the minimum, that rests on being ready to grasp the fiqh of what one hears, which needs a greater age; al-Zubayri liked a student to begin writing hadith at twenty, having spent the years before it on the Quran and the obligations. That said, the author keeps both ends: early hearing for the sake of a high chain is exactly why they brought small children to aged shaykhs.
The first mode and the highest. The shaykh speaks and the student hears him; this is how the earliest generation of hadith scholars took the hadith from the Prophet ﷺ and then passed it to people, so it is counted the highest rank of narration by most scholars.
What the mode rests on is hearing the shaykh's own words, and it makes no difference whether he simply recites the hadith or dictates it, from memory or reading out of his book. All of that counts as sama'.
The student reads the text to the shaykh, from memory or from a book in his hands, and the safest wording for it later covers the case where someone else reads and this student only listens. The hadith scholars took this road once writing spread and copies became common. It is a sound way of receiving, and narrating by it is agreed to be permitted.
What they did argue over is where it ranks against hearing: the same, below it, or above it.
The author's own reconciling answer: reading back is the stronger where the student is able to catch an error in what he reads and the shaykh's memory is at its firmest; where that is not the case, hearing is the stronger. He then found Malik saying the same, that he preferred being read to when the reader is accurate, since the one narrating may himself slip or forget.
The teacher says: I permit you to narrate from me Sahih al-Bukhari, or the Book of Faith from Sahih Muslim. On that permission the student narrates the work from him without having heard it from him or read it back to him.
Permission by itself does not finish the job, and this is the author's condition, not an optional refinement: the holder of a permission may not narrate by it until he has corrected his own copy against the author's copy, or against a sound copy that was itself checked against the author's, or one copied and corrected from such checked copies.
Scholars counted many kinds of permission. Al-Qadi Iyad set out six and Ibn al-Salah made them seven. The highest is a named shaykh permitting a named person a named book, both of them knowing that book.
The shaykh hands the student a book or a sheet for him to narrate from him. Its basis is what al-Bukhari cites in the Book of Knowledge: the Prophet ﷺ wrote a letter for the commander of an expedition and told him not to read it until he reached a certain place, and when he reached it he read it to the people and told them the Prophet's command. Al-Bukhari argued from it that handing over is valid.
The first kind, and the strongest form of permission there is: handing over together with permission, with the copy actually made available, as when a shaykh gives him his own corrected copy and says this is my narration, narrate it from me.
The second kind: handing over with permission but without the copy being made available. On the face of it this is no different from plain permission, but the hadith shaykhs give it an edge over permission, and the author explains the edge as an added confirmation of the informing that permission already contains.
The third kind: handing over with no permission at all, where he gives him the book and says no more than this is from my hadith, without telling him to narrate it.
That third kind is defective, and many hadith scholars do not allow narrating by it, though some do allow it, on the same reasoning as being merely informed, which comes next.
The shaykh writes out some of his hadith for the student and sends it to him. Two kinds again, with permission attached or without it. The kind with permission is similar in soundness and strength to handing over with permission.
For the kind with no permission attached, the well known and correct position among hadith scholars is that narrating by it is allowed, since it yields no less knowledge than permission does. The practice of the early generations bears it out: they narrated saying so-and-so wrote to me, saying so-and-so narrated to us, and they counted such a report as connected, with no known disagreement.
The shaykh tells the student that this hadith, or this book, is what he himself heard from so-and-so, but never gives him leave to narrate it: he does not say narrate it from me or I permit you.
Some legal theorists, and Ibn al-Salah with them, hold that narrating on that basis is not allowed, since there may be a flaw in it that is the very reason he withheld permission.
Many hadith scholars, jurists and legal theorists hold the opposite, that what was received this way may be narrated even with no permission. Al-Ramahurmuzi preferred it, and al-Qadi Iyad called it the only view sound reasoning supports, since the shaykh's barring him from narrating, where it rests on no defect and no doubt about the hadith, has no effect: he has already told it to him, and that is not something he can take back.
The author's own reasoning for that side: permission works because it informs the student in a general way that this material is the shaykh's narration. Being told carries the very same sense, and carries it more strongly, because here the shaykh points to this particular book and says this is what I heard from so-and-so.
A weak way of receiving: the shaykh wills that his books be handed to a particular person on his death or when he travels.
Some early scholars allowed the legatee to narrate from the one who bequeathed them, treating the handing over as a sort of leave, close to reading back, handing over, or being told.
Ibn al-Salah rejected that outright and pushed bequest far away from being told, calling the permission either a scholar's slip or a case really meant as finding it in writing, which is the mode that follows.
The author calls Ibn al-Salah's position sound and strong, and gives the reason: a bequest transfers ownership of the copy, so it is like a sale, and owning a book is a different thing altogether from being informed of what is in it.
The last of the eight: a man finds a hadith or a book in someone's handwriting, carrying its chain, without having taken it from him by any of the earlier modes.
He may narrate it only as a report of what he found, saying I found in the handwriting of so-and-so that so-and-so narrated to us. This is exactly how Abd Allah reports parts of his father Ahmad's Musnad. Narrating it with he narrated to us or he informed us, anything suggesting a connected chain, is never allowed, and no scholar worth following is known to have done it.
On acting by it, as against narrating it, they differed. Most hadith scholars and the Maliki jurists and others do not act on it; al-Shafi'i is reported to allow acting on it, and a group of his leading followers held that too.
The author sides with acting on it, and argues it: we are obliged to act on whatever we establish as sound, so once the book we found is established as the author's, acting on it is due. In later ages this became a necessity, since if action waited on formal narration the door of acting on transmitted material would shut.
And this is the fine point of the whole question, which the author says must be noticed: the difference between a narration being valid and action being obligatory. Narrating it in wording that claims a connected chain, I was informed by him or he narrated to me, is not valid, because the mode of receiving that would permit that wording is absent; reporting what you found remains open. Acting on its content is obligatory once you are confident the book really belongs to its author, which for us means the conditions of sound manuscript editing.
Performing a hadith, in the sense of ada, means passing it on and delivering it to the student by one of the recognised ways of delivering it.
What the act rests on: narrating it in one of the recognised ways, in a wording that shows how he received it.
One thing that is not required, and the author says so plainly: the way you deliver a hadith need not be the same way you received it. A man who took it by any of the eight modes may deliver it by any of them.
On narrating from a written copy rather than from memory, some were severe and some were lax. Malik and Abu Hanifa are reported to accept only what a narrator holds in his memory. The author holds with the majority, the middle road between going too far and falling short: a man who received and checked his book properly may narrate from it even after lending it out and losing sight of it, so long as the likelihood is that it stayed free of alteration.
So the phrase a narrator uses has to match the mode he actually took it by, and each of the eight modes has its own wording.
For hearing, the early narrators used any of the wordings loosely. Once writing and permission spread, the critics found that looseness blurred hearing into other modes, so they preferred a wording that says hearing outright: the highest is I heard, then he narrated to us and he narrated to me.
For reading back there is an old split. Al-Bukhari, al-Zuhri and most of the Hijazis and Kufans allow he narrated to us and he informed us for it; al-Shafi'i, Muslim and the people of the East insist on separating the two, barring he narrated to us and choosing he informed us. In the language the two mean the same thing, the author notes; the distinction is the hadith scholars' own convention, and it became the dominant usage.
For permission and handing over, later scholars settled on he announced to us, a word the earlier ones had used for plain informing. Saying he announced to us by permission, or by handing over, is better still.
For writing, al-Layth ibn Sa'd and others allowed the two ordinary wordings, but the author prefers the more explicit wording: so-and-so wrote to me saying so-and-so narrated to us.
Why any of this matters, and it is the payoff of the whole chapter: the wording tells us how the narrator got the hadith we are examining, so we can tell whether that way was sound or defective, and a defective one means a condition of acceptance has failed.
And the abuse it exposes: a narrator who received by a lower mode and then uses a higher expression, saying he narrated to us for what he only holds by permission, is a mudallis, and some scholars went as far as accusing such a man of lying. The author names two: al-Samarqandi, suspected over his many reports from al-Marwazi when he only had permission from him, and Ishaq ibn Rashid al-Jazari, who used he narrated to us for what he had merely found in writing, which is why they counted him among the mudallisin.