ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Light On the Muhammadan Sunnah Or Defence of the Hadith Disadvantage of Narrating Hadith Through Meaning While the Prophet’s traditions – as previously referred to – were transmitted according to their denotations, and their narrators were permitted to increase or decrease in them, with advancing and delaying their words – accepting the solecist ones – all this caused a great loss and disadvantage to hadith.

In his book Tawjih al-nazar, 149 al-Allamah al-Jaza’iri says: After researching and investigation, it was found out that many among those narrating by meaning have fallen short of conveying the full denotation of hadith. This fact led some of them () to declare: It is necessary to close the door of narration through meaning so as not to empower those incompetent from among those believing themselves to be doing well, as occurred for a large number of narrators in the past and recently.

The loss caused by narration through meaning was so tremendous that it was considered one of factors of disunity among the Ummah. One of the authors 150 said in the introduction to his book in this regard: Disagreement occurred to the Ummah in eight aspects, from which all aspects of difference are produced and ramified. First: Commonness of words and their liability to numerous interpolations. Second: Real meaning and metaphor. Third: Singularity and combination.

Fourth: Specification and generality. Fifth: Riwayah (narration) and naql (transmission). Sixth: Practicing ijtihad in regard of any issue for which no text (nass) was revealed. Seventh: Nasikh (abrogating) and mansukh (abrogated). Eighth: Permissibility and extensiveness.

And under bab “Momentary disagreement in respect of narration and transmission,” he said: The benefit intended to be got from this bab can never be attained but only through recognizing the defects inflicting the hadith and altering its meaning. These defects may delude people to think of presence of contradiction in hadith, or may even create an ambiguity compelling the scholars to seeking the remote interpretation.

We are going to mention number of these defects, and cite an example or examples for each one that can be inferred for other ones, God-willing.