The Muhaddithuun and the Jurists

The Muhaddithuun (scholars of hadiith) will look at a marfuu hadiith. Then, they will judge if it is truly marfuu or if it is actually mauquuf (only a saying of a Companion).

The Muhaddithuun will consider the narrator of the hadiith when he is alone in narrating a hadiith. Does his narration oppose the narration of another who is more trustworthy than him or has better memory?

The Muhaddithuun will look see if there is an addition in a hadiith narrated by a narrator while the addition is not present in the same hadiith when narrated by others.

The Jurists consider these to be extreme examples of caution.

أبو الحسن بن الحصار الأندلسي says this in the following:

إن للمحدثين أغراضاً في طريقهم احتاطوا فيها وبالغوا في الاحتياط ، ولا يلزم الفقهاء اتباعهم على ذلك ، كتعليلهم الحديث المرفوع بأنه روي موقوفاً أو مرسلاً ،وكطعنهم في الراوي إذا انفرد بالحديث أو بزيادة فيه أو مخالفته من هو أعدل منه ، أو أحفظ

Then, he goes on to claim that for the Jurists a hadiith is authentic if it conforms to Usuul or a Verse of the Book of Allaah. That will lead the jurist to accept the hadiith, act on it, and consider it authentic as long as there is no liar in the chain.

وقد يعلم الفقيه صحة الحديث بموافقة الأصول ، أو آية من كتاب الله تعالى ، فيحمله ذلك على قبول الحديث ، والعمل به ، واعتقاد صحته ، وإذا لم يكن في سنده كذاب

Rather, he says there is nothing wrong with declaring a hadiith authentic without restriction when it conforms to the Book of Allaah and all the Usuul of Islamic legislation as long as there is no liar in the chain.

This shows the stark difference in approach between the scholars of hadiith and the Jurists. It also explains why the scholars of hadiith differed in their verdicts from the Jurists.

The scholars of hadiith are much more cautious in what they attribute to the Messenger of Allaah (sallallaahu alayhi wa sallam).

They are much more cautious in which hadiith they use to derive fiqh from.

They Muhaddithuun are on the haqq because even the Rightly Guided Caliphs exercised extreme caution in narrating ahadiith. They narrated very few ahadiith and prevented people from narrating too many ahadiith out of fear of making a mistake.