Fourthly: Some hold that it must be proved that one of them really learned the tradition from the other.
Degree of Authenticity of the Narrators as judged by their Acquirements.
The associates of the Prophet, and those persons who lived immediately after them, used to relate, with the exception of the Qurʾān, the sense of the Prophet’s words in their own language, unless they had to use some phrases containing prayers, or when they had to point out to others the very words of the Prophet. It is natural to suppose that deeply-learned persons would themselves understand and deliver, to others, the sense of the sayings better than persons of inferior parts, and therefore narrators have been divided into seven grades.
First: Persons highly conspicuous for their learning and legal acquirements, as well as for their retentive memory. Such persons are distinguished by the title of ايمة الحديث Aʾimmatu ʾl-Ḥadīs̤, that is “Leaders in Ḥadīs̤.”
Second: Persons who, as to their knowledge, take rank after the first, and who but very rarely committed any mistake.
Third: Persons who have made alterations in the pure religion of the Prophet, without carrying them to extremes by prejudice, but respecting whose integrity and honesty there is no doubt.
Fourth: Persons respecting whom nothing is known.
Fifth: Persons who have made alterations in the pure religion of the Prophet, and, actuated by prejudice, have carried them to extremes.
Sixth: Persons who are pertinaciously sceptical, and have not a retentive memory.
Seventh: Persons who are notorious for inventing spurious traditions. Learned divines are of opinion that the traditions related by persons of the first three classes should be accepted as true, according to their respective merits, and also that traditions related by persons coming under the three last classes should be, at once, entirely rejected; and that the traditions related by persons of the fourth class, should be passed over unnoticed so long as the narrator remained unknown.