(9) The various states and circumstances in which the different narrators saw the Prophet.
Apocryphal Ḥadīs̤.
There exists no doubt respecting the circumstance of certain persons having fabricated some ḥadīs̤ in the Prophet’s name. Those who perpetrated so impudent a forgery were men of the following descriptions:—
(1) Persons desirous of introducing some praiseworthy custom among the public, forged ḥadīs̤ in order to secure success. Such fabrication is restricted exclusively to those ḥadīs̤ which treat of the advantages and benefits which reading the Qurʾān and praying procure to any one, both in this world and the next; which show how reciting passages from the Qurʾān cures every disease, etc.: the real object of such frauds being to lead the public into the habit of reading the Qurʾān and of praying. According to our religion, the perpetrators of such frauds, or of any others, stand in the list of sinners.
(2) Preachers, with a view of collecting large congregations around them, and of amusing their hearers, invented many traditions, such traditions being only those which describe the state and condition of paradise and of hell, as well as the state and condition of the soul after death, etc., in order to awaken the fear of God’s wrath and the hope of salvation.
(3) Those persons who made alterations in the religion of the Prophet, and who, urged by their prejudices, carried the same to extremes, and who, for the purpose of successfully confronting their controversial antagonists, forged such traditions in order to favour their own interested views.
(4) Unbelievers who maliciously coined and circulated spurious ḥadīs̤. Learned men, however, have greatly exerted themselves in order to discover such fabricated traditions, and have written many works upon the subject, laying down rules for ascertaining false traditions and for distinguishing them from genuine ones.
The modes of procedure were as follows: Such persons examined the very words employed in such traditions, as well as their style of composition; they compared the contents of each ḥadīs̤ with the commands and injunctions contained in the Qurʾān, with those religious doctrines and dogmas that have been deduced from the Qurʾān, and with those ḥadīs̤ which have been proved to be genuine; they investigated the nature of the import of such traditions, as to whether it was unreasonable, improbable, or impossible.
It will, therefore, be evident that the ḥadīs̤ considered as genuine by Muḥammadans, must indispensably possess the following characters: The narrator must have plainly and distinctly mentioned that such and such a thing was either said or done by the Prophet; the chain of narrators from the last link up to the Prophet, must be unbroken; the subject related must have come under the actual ken of its first narrators; every one of the narrators, from the last up to the Prophet, must have been persons conspicuous for their piety, virtue, and honesty; every narrator must have received more than one ḥadīs̤ from the narrator immediately preceding him; every one of the narrators must be conspicuous for his learning, so that he might be safely presumed to be competent both to understand correctly, and faithfully deliver to others, the sense of the tradition; the import of the tradition must not be contrary to the injunctions contained in the Qurʾān, or to the religious doctrines deduced from that Book, or to the traditions proved to be correct; and the nature of the import of the tradition must not be such as persons might hesitate in accepting.
Any tradition thus proved genuine can be made the basis of any religious doctrine; but notwithstanding this, another objection may be raised against it, which is, that this tradition is the statement of one person only, and therefore, cannot, properly, be believed in implicitly. For obviating this, three grades have been again formed of the ḥadīs̤ proved as genuine. These three grades are the following: متواتر Mutawātir, مشهور Mashhūr, and خبر احد K͟habar-i-Aḥad.