Does the 'An'anah of Ibn Jurayj and Abu al-Zubayr Make a Hadith Defective? هل عنعنة ابن جريج وأبي الزبير علة في الحديث؟

Questioner: O Shaykh, the 'an'anah [narrating with "from"] of Ibn Jurayj and Abu al-Zubayr — is it a defect? Or does it impair the hadith so that it becomes munkar, or not at all?

[The same questioner also asked about Ibn Taymiyyah on prostrating to an idol; that answer is in Prostrating to an Idol Without Intending It, and Swearing an Oath to a Man-Made Constitution.]

The first question — what is the difference? You mean regarding the 'an'anah of Ibn Jurayj and Abu al-Zubayr?

Questioner: I mean, does 'an'anah have an effect that makes the hadith defective?

In fact I mentioned this a little while ago. We spoke about tadlis, and I said that the 'an'anah of Ibn Jurayj and the 'an'anah of Abu al-Zubayr do not affect the hadith, and that it is never known from any of the early ones that he declared a hadith defective because of the 'an'anah of Ibn Jurayj. Yes, Ibn Jurayj is a mudallis; Abu al-Zubayr has some tadlis, but he does little of it.

But this does not mean rejecting the hadith of one described with tadlis because of 'an'anah. The default in the 'an'anah of Ibn Jurayj is that it is taken as connected and heard, until its disconnection or his tadlis is established — and we know this by tracing the routes and the like.

Questioner: Such as the hadith: "Soon people will beat the livers of camels [travelling far in search of knowledge], and they will not find a scholar more knowledgeable than the scholar of Madinah."

Yes, this is from the narration of Ibn Jurayj from Abu al-Zubayr from Abu Salih from Abu Hurayrah. The 'an'anah has no effect; the 'an'anah of Ibn Jurayj has no effect here at all.

But the hadith is defective through another defect, namely that of being stopped (waqf): the correct view is that it stops at Abu Hurayrah, as Imam Ahmad (may Allah the Exalted have mercy on him) stated in the book al-'Ilal, which Ibn Qudamah transmitted from him, al-Muntakhab min al-'Ilal. Imam Ahmad mentioned that [the hadith] is defective by being stopped. But it also has the ruling of being raised [to the Prophet]; it has the ruling of being raised because there is no room for ijtihad in it, as al-'Iraqi said in his Alfiyyah:

"What comes from a Companion such that it could not ... be said by opinion, its ruling is raised, according to
what [al-Razi] said in al-Mahsul, such as what came ... al-Hakim affirmed raising for this."

As for declaring the hadith defective merely by 'an'anah, it has no effect. The two Shaykhs, al-Bukhari and Muslim, constantly narrate from Ibn Jurayj with 'an'anah, whether in his narration from 'Ata' or from others besides 'Ata'; and likewise Muslim narrates from Abu al-Zubayr with 'an'anah. 'An'anah has no effect because the default is connection; and the 'an'anah may in any case be the doing of a [later] narrator; and even if it were not the doing of a narrator, it has no effect, because he did not commit tadlis.

There is a difference between tadlis and 'an'anah. What caused the confusion among the later scholars is that they do not distinguish between tadlis and 'an'anah; they treat 'an'anah as tadlis, and this is not correct. The early ones did not do this; rather they distinguished between tadlis and 'an'anah.

Tadlis is a kind of disconnection: "he committed tadlis" means he dropped an intermediary. But if he narrated with "from," it does not follow that he dropped an intermediary; the default in it is that he heard.

النص العربي الأصلي