Tadlis al-Taswiyah and Tadlis al-Shuyukh تدليس التسوية وتدليس الشيوخ

Questioner: Tadlis al-taswiyah, O Shaykh — may Allah pardon you?

[This was asked together with questions on "reduce and hasten" and on the hadith "The best remembrance…".]

As for the brother's other question, on tadlis: what is tadlis al-taswiyah? The form of tadlis al-taswiyah is that the shaykh turns to the shaykhs of his own shaykhs, and among them there is weakness, so he drops them and makes the hadith [go] from his shaykh from the shaykhs of his shaykh's shaykhs. Someone with no knowledge of who heard from whom may think this is connected. Al-Walid ibn Muslim and Baqiyyah ibn al-Walid did this.

If it is from al-Awza'i, for example, al-Walid ibn Muslim turns to al-Awza'i's shaykhs and makes the hadith [go] from al-Awza'i from his shaykhs' shaykhs, where al-Awza'i heard from his shaykhs' shaykhs. In that case only the skilled may detect it. That is why tadlis is detected through several means:

The first matter: gathering the routes. By gathering the routes we make clear whether he committed tadlis or not.

The second matter: gathering and mastering the question of who heard from whom (al-sama'at).

The third matter: that one of the imams states that he committed tadlis. Abu Hatim, in his 'Ilal transmitted from him by Ibn Abi Hatim, clarifies a great deal of this kind — as he clarified, for example, the hadith of Baqiyyah ibn al-Walid from al-Awza'i from al-Zuhri from 'Urwah ibn al-Zubayr from 'A'ishah that the Prophet ﷺ said: "Allah loves those who are persistent in supplication." Its chain appears to be authentic, given what has been said about Baqiyyah ibn al-Walid, for he is disputed: some accepted him, some weakened him, and some said he is accepted if he states that he heard, and not accepted if he does not.

And some said: if he narrates from the people of al-Sham he is accepted, and if he narrates from other than the people of al-Sham he is not. The discussion about him is long. But this hadith Baqiyyah took by tadlis: he did not hear it from al-Awza'i; rather he heard it from Ibn al-Safar, and this Ibn al-Safar is abandoned (matruk) in hadith. So Baqiyyah dropped him and narrated it from al-Awza'i, and this is called — it falls under — tadlis al-isnad.

Though in the specific sense it is not called tadlis al-taswiyah; that is only for the shaykh of his shaykh — because something like this may go undetected.

Tadlis al-taswiyah is graver than tadlis al-isnad. (audio unclear) There is what is called tadlis al-shuyukh: he describes his shaykh by something he is not known by, to obscure his identity — such as when his shaykh is weak, he says: "Abu 'Abd al-Rahman narrated to us," so he is not identified. Abu 'Abd al-Rahman may be confused with someone else: someone may come who thinks he is Abu 'Abd al-Rahman al-Hubuli, the reliable one; had he known he was weak, he would have been wary of him.

Or he may not suppose this mix-up between the reliable and the weak, but think him unknown (majhul); then someone comes who is lenient with the hadiths of unknown narrators and strengthens this report — when he may be one of the abandoned narrators, like al-Kalbi: some of them used to disguise him, saying: "Abu al-Janab narrated to us, Abu al-Nadr narrated to us," meaning by it al-Kalbi.

So someone who does not know him may think he is Abu al-Nadr the reliable one, or may think him unknown, when he is this abandoned narrator. Many of the mudallisun used to do this.

النص العربي الأصلي