Mastering Hadith: The Weight of the Chain
This is the third in a series of articles on mastering the hadith sciences, drawn from Shaykh Issam Eido’s seminar. The full seminar can be found here: Mastering the Core Islamic Sciences: Hadith.
Why would scholars keep seeking license to transmit hadith, long after every major collection had already been compiled?
Ongoing Transmission
By the time scholars had finished compiling the canonical books of the third century and the voluminous collections of the fourth and sixth centuries, one might expect the work of hadith sessions to end. Yet scholars continued pursuing them. They kept seeking licenses (ijazat) and sitting before their teachers to listen to the hadith.
Al-Hafiz Ibn al-Salah addressed this question directly. Across the first three centuries, the license (ijaza), audition, and the hadith sessions all served to preserve the Sunna. Once scholars had preserved the Sunna, they kept the tradition alive for a different reason: to preserve the chain of narration itself.
He believed this chain was unique to the Muslim community. No other nation in history maintained a comparable tradition. For this reason alone, Muslims could not simply set aside this instrument of transmission [Ibn al-Salah, Muqaddima].
Genres Born from Transmission
The very act of transmitting hadith gave rise to new genres: the awaʾil (openings), the musalsal (continuous hadith), and the thabat (catalogs).
The Awaʾil: Opening Hadith
The awaʾil works gathered the first hadith of many collections. Today, a student might travel to Istanbul with only a week available. They would bring a book of al-awaʾil, perhaps containing a hundred hadith. Each one represents the first hadith of a different collection: the opening of Sahih al-Bukhari, then Sahih Muslim, then Sunan Abi Dawud, and so on.
The student reads each of these hadith aloud to the teacher. They then request a license on that basis. Because the student has read the opening hadith of every book, the teacher grants a license that covers the entirety of each collection. This often culminates in a general permission to narrate any of the teacher’s books, based solely on reading their first lines.
The Musalsal: Hadith Bound by Connection
The second genre comprises the musalsal—hadith that share a common feature running through their chain of transmission. Examples include the first hadith one hears from their teacher (hadith al-musalsal bil-awwaliyya), or hadith that begin with expressing love (hadith al-musalsal bil-mahabba).
Consider this example from Imam Nasa’i:
Muʿadh ibn Jabal (may Allah be pleased with him) narrates saying, “The Messenger of Allah (may Allah bless him and give him peace) took me by the hand and said, ‘I love you! O’ Muʿadh So I said, ‘I love you! O’ Messenger of Allah.’ So the Messenger of Allah said, “Then do not abandon saying after every prayer:
رَبِّ أَعِنِّي عَلَى ذِكْرِكَ وَشُكْرِكَ وَحُسْنِ عِبَادَتِكَ
O’ my Lord, help me in remembering you, show gratitude to you, and worship you in a beautiful manner.” [Nasa’i]
This genre typically comprises twenty to fifty hadith. A student comes to the teacher to hear them narrated aloud. They then carry these hadith forward to others in turn.
The Thabat: The Catalog of Transmission
The thabat represents a larger work altogether—a dictionary cataloguing all of a scholar’s teachers. It also lists every license (ijaza) the scholar received from them.
When a teacher grants a license through their catalog, they grant permission to an entire library of works. The catalog maps every book, every teacher, and every thread of narration the teacher received.
Transmission Through Western Eyes
Western researchers have focused on hadith transmission for two centuries. Yet this attention does not extend to hadith comprehension (diraya) or hadith verification (thubut).
Their verification approaches hadith from the perspective of narration and origin. Researchers focus above all on the first two Islamic centuries. They investigate what took place in this period, how collectors assembled hadith, what shifts occurred between the two centuries, and how scholars can date the hadith themselves.
Comprehension (diraya) forms a major part of the hadith sciences in its own right. The next stage of this series turns to that essential field.
Related Articles
Mastering Hadith: The Science of Transmission – A look at how hadith formed through its early centuries, outlining its two branches and the early efforts of preservation. First in this series.
Mastering Hadith: The Science of Preservation – A look at how hadith scholarship narrowed its focus to the Prophet’s ﷺ words and developed. Second in this series.
