Youth Lecture: 10/06/2011

Bismillah wal-hamdulillah

On Friday night, we were lectured on three topics: definition of tafsir & hadith, the levels of hadith, and bringing oneself to account.

Tafsir is the explanation of the meaning of the Qur'an. Scholars of tafsir are called 'mufassirin'. Some famous mufassirin were Imam Ibn Kathir, Imam al-Jalalayn, Imam Qurtubi, Imam at-Tabari and Imam al-Baghawi.

However, Hadith are the sayings and actions of the Prophet. Scholars of Hadith are called 'mutahaddithin'. Some examples of mutahaddithin are Imam al-Bukhari, Imam Muslim & Imam Abu Dawud.

The second topic we were lectured on was on the levels and classification hadith. There are many classifications of hadith, depending what aspect of the hadith you are talking about; there are five aspects. We learnt about the classifications in two of these aspects.

The first aspect was according to the number of reporters involved in each stage of the isnad (chain).

The first classification is 'mutawatir' (consecutive). This kind of hadith is reported by such a large number of people that they cannot be expected to agree upon a lie, all of them together.

There are two kinds of mutawatir hadiths. The first one is mutawatir by wording. It is a hadith which is narrated by such a large number of narrators to make it reach the status of mutawatir, in a manner that all the narrators have reported it with the exact same words.
The second one is mutawatir by wording. This means that a hadith which is narrated by such a large number of narrators to make it reach the status of mutawatir, however, the wording is different among the narrators. However, all these hadiths agree on the same concept.

The second one is 'ahad' (isolated). This is a hadith which is narrated by people whose number does not reach that of the mutawatir.

It is further classified into:
Mash-hur (famous): hadith reported by three or more reporters but is not mutawatir.
Aziz (rare, strong): at any stage in the isnad, only two reporters are found to narrate the hadith.
Gharib (strange): At some stage of the Isnad, only one reporter is found relating it.

The second aspect of hadiths was relating to the reliability of the narrators. There are four classifications.

1. Sahih (authentic): a strong hadith in which all the narrators in the isnad (chain of narrators) are reliable.
2. Hasan (good): the hadith is acceptable to be acted upon, however, not to the extent of sahih.
3. Da`if (weak): a hadith that is weakened due to a charecteristic of one or more of the narrators that can make him unreliable, such as telling lies or having bad memory.
4. Mawdu` (fabricated): these are hadiths which are made up, and are the most unreliable hadiths.

The third topic we were lectured on was bringing oneself to account, a topic which already has been discussed before and can be seen here.

Wallahu A`lam wa Ahkam

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Assalamualaikum weldone Ismail