Personal ambition was another stimulant which prompted some...

Personal ambition was another stimulant which prompted some to be included among the scholars of hadith through forgery. Fabrication of hadith as a means of procurement of personal gain or of earning goodwill of the caliph in power.[^5] Controversies and differences among jurists (fuqaha') prompted some scholars to fabricate traditions to be invoked in support of their own legal positions.

Story-tellers and reciters of fables, admittedly, were not averse to letting their imagination wander into the domain of hadith.[^6] Due to the above-mentioned and other reasons besides, a critical examination of hadith was necessary.

As a result of the efforts made by Muslim scholars in this regard, a new branch was created in the science of hadith; it came to be called "dirayat al-hadith".[^7] The Nihayat al-dirayah defines dirayat al-hadith in these words: "It is a science which investigates the isnad, contents, subject and the mode of transmission of ahadith, so that acceptable traditions can be separated from unacceptable ones." Dirayat al-Hadith The emergence of `ilm dirayat al-hadith was followed by its division into numerous branches.

Certain rules and guidelines were evolved for distinguishing reliable from unreliable ahadith. The body of such rules came to be called "mustalah al-hadith", which together with `ilm al-rijal (lit. science of men), formed the means of scrutinizing hadith material.

However, for this purpose, knowledge of other preliminaries such as Arabic grammar and syntax, familiarity with literary style and form, knowledge of abrogated (mansukh) and the abrogating (nasikh) verses of the Qur'an, knowledge of the history of Islam and that of various Islamic sects and their beliefs, and other details regarding hadith, is necessary.

Haji Khalifah, in his Kashf al-zunun defines `ilm al-dirayah in this manner: "`Ilm dirayat al-hadith, which discusses the content and meaning of the words of hadith on the basis of Arabic grammar and syntax, and shar`i criteria, and examines their correspondence with the circumstances of the Messenger of Allah (S), linguistic standards of Arabic sciences and reports about the Messenger (S), consists of `ilm al-rijal, (the science of narrators, their names, genealogical lineages, lifetimes, their dates of death, their characters and circumstances of reception and transmission of hadith, as well as its topic or subject) and aims to distinguish acceptable from unacceptable traditions.