Found in a book is not the same as authentic

A saying can be printed in a respected hadith book and still be graded weak by the scholars of hadith. That is why Takhrij never stops at «it is in book X». It shows the book and number, and next to them the words of the graders, each under his own name.

Three grades, and a fourth word

al-Nawawī opens his handbook of hadith terms with one line: «الحديث: صحيح - وحسن - وضعيف», «hadith is ṣaḥīḥ, ḥasan or ḍaʿīf» (al-Taqrīb, p. 25). The definitions below are quoted from him and from the work he abridged, Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ's Muqaddima. The Arabic is as printed, without vowel marks; the translations are ours.

Ṣaḥīḥ (sound). Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ:

أما الحديث الصحيح: فهو الحديث المسند الذي يتصل إسناده بنقل العدل الضابط عن العدل الضابط إلى منتهاه، ولا يكون شاذا، ولا معللا.

The ṣaḥīḥ hadith is a hadith traced back without a break: each narrator, upright and precise, takes it from another upright and precise narrator, all the way to its end, and it is neither anomalous (shādhdh) nor flawed by a hidden defect (muʿallal). (Muqaddima, pp. 11–12)

al-Nawawī adds what the word does and does not claim:

وإذا قيل صحيح فهذا معناه لا أنه مقطوع به، وإذا قيل غير صحيح فمعناه لم يصح إسناده

When it is called ṣaḥīḥ, this is what is meant, not that it is certain; and when it is called «not ṣaḥīḥ», it means its chain is not sound. (al-Taqrīb, p. 25)

Ḥasan (good). al-Tirmidhī made the term widely used, and he explained it himself at the end of his Jāmiʿ:

وما ذكرنا في هذا الكتاب حديث حسن فإنما أردنا به حسن إسناده عندنا كل حديث يروى لا يكون في إسناده من يتهم بالكذب ولا يكون الحديث شاذا ويروى من غير وجه نحو ذاك فهو عندنا حديث حسن

Wherever we say in this book «a ḥasan hadith», we mean that its chain is good in our view: every hadith that is narrated with no one in its chain who is accused of lying, that is not anomalous, and that is narrated through more than one route in a similar way, is to us a ḥasan hadith. (Kitāb al-ʿIlal, p. 758)

al-Nawawī calls al-Tirmidhī's book «أصل في معرفة الحسن، وهو الذي شهره», «the basic source for knowing the ḥasan; he is the one who made it known» (al-Taqrīb, p. 30).

Ḍaʿīf (weak). Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ:

كل حديث لم يجتمع فيه صفات الحديث الصحيح، ولا صفات الحديث الحسن المذكورات فيما تقدم، فهو حديث ضعيف.

Every hadith in which the qualities of the ṣaḥīḥ hadith are not all present, nor those of the ḥasan hadith described above, is a weak hadith. (Muqaddima, p. 41)

al-Nawawī adds that weakness comes in degrees, «ويتفاوت ضعفه كصحة الصحيح», «its weakness varies as the soundness of the sound varies», and that some kinds of weak hadith have names of their own, «كالموضوع، والشاذ», «such as the fabricated and the anomalous» (al-Taqrīb, p. 31).

Mawḍūʿ (fabricated). Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ heads the chapter «معرفة الموضوع وهو المختلق المصنوع», «knowing the fabricated, which is the invented, the made-up», and writes:

اعلم أن الحديث الموضوع شر الأحاديث الضعيفة، ولا تحل روايته لأحد علم حاله في أي معنى كان إلا مقرونا ببيان وضعه

Know that the fabricated hadith is the worst of the weak hadiths. No one who knows what it is may narrate it, whatever its subject, unless he states plainly that it is fabricated. (Muqaddima, p. 98)

The scholars do not always agree on which reports are fabricated. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ says of the al-Mawḍūʿāt compiled in his own time, in about two volumes, that its compiler «أودع فيها كثيرا مما لا دليل على وضعه، إنما حقه أن يذكر في مطلق الأحاديث الضعيفة», «put into it much for which there is no proof of fabrication, which ought rather to be listed among the weak hadiths» (Muqaddima, p. 99). al-Nawawī repeats the point and names its author: «أعني أبا الفرج بن الجوزي», «I mean Abū al-Faraj ibn al-Jawzī» (al-Taqrīb, p. 46). This is one reason Takhrij quotes graders by name instead of merging their words into one verdict.

Why the two Ṣaḥīḥs are different

al-Bukhārī and Muslim set out to collect only sound hadith. al-Nawawī:

أول مصنف في الصحيح المجرد، صحيح البخاري، ثم مسلم، وهما أصح الكتب بعد القرآن

The first book devoted to the sound hadith alone was the Ṣaḥīḥ of al-Bukhārī, then Muslim's; they are the soundest books after the Quran. (al-Taqrīb, p. 26)

On the same page he notes that they did not try to include every sound hadith («ولم يستوعبا الصحيح ولا التزماه»), and that for other books a hadith's presence is not enough: its soundness must be stated, «ولا يكفي وجوده فيها إلا في كتاب من شرط الاقتصار على الصحيح», «its being found in them is not enough, except in a book whose rule is to contain only the sound».

The Sunan follow a different rule. al-Nawawī corrects al-Baghawī, who in his Maṣābīḥ had called everything taken from the Sunan «ḥasan»:

لأن في السنن الصحيح، والحسن، والضعيف، والمنكر.

For the Sunan contain the sound, the good, the weak and the rejected (munkar). (al-Taqrīb, p. 30)

Even inside al-Bukhārī's book there is a difference. Some reports appear with the start of their chain left out. al-Nawawī explains that al-Bukhārī's firm wording («قال، وفعل، وأمر») is a judgement that the report is sound up to the person named, while uncertain wording («يروى، ويذكر، ويحكى») is not, though such a report «ليس هو بواه لإدخاله في الكتاب الموسوم بالصحيح», «is not feeble, because it was placed in the book called the Ṣaḥīḥ» (al-Taqrīb, pp. 27–28). Takhrij marks these reports as muʿallaq and does not present them as the main body of the Ṣaḥīḥ.

Abū Dāwūd's letter to the people of Mecca

The people of Mecca wrote to Abū Dāwūd (d. 275 AH) to ask about his Sunan, and he answered in a letter that survives.

فإنكم سألتم أن أذكر لكم الأحاديث التي في كتاب السنن أهي أصح ما عرفت في الباب

You asked me to tell you whether the hadiths in my book of Sunan are the soundest I knew on each subject. (Risāla, p. 22)

His answer was yes, with one exception: «فاعلموا أنه كذلك كله إلا أن يكون قد روى من وجهين صحيحين فأحدهما أقوم اسنادا والآخر صاحبه أقدم في الحفظ فربما كتبت ذلك ولا أرى في كتابي من هذا عشرة أحاديث», «know that it is all like that, unless it was narrated through two sound routes, one with the more upright chain and the other with the narrator senior in memorising; then I may have written the latter, and I do not think there are ten such hadiths in my book» (p. 23). Then he explains how to read his silence:

وما كان في كتابي من حديث فيه وهن شديد فقد بينته ومنه مالا يصح سنده

Whatever hadith in my book has a serious weakness, I have pointed it out; and some of it has a chain that is not sound. (p. 27)

ما لم أذكر فيه شيئا فهو صالح وبعضها أصح من بعض

What I say nothing about is fit (ṣāliḥ), and some of it is sounder than the rest. (p. 27)

He also writes «وإذا كان فيه حديث منكر بينت أنه منكر», «if there is a rejected hadith in it, I have shown that it is rejected» (p. 25), and estimates the size of his book: «ولعل عدد الذي في كتابي من الأحاديث قدر أربعة آلاف وثمانمائة حديث ونحو ستمائة حديث من المراسيل», «perhaps the hadiths in my book number about four thousand eight hundred, and about six hundred hadiths of the mursal kind» (p. 32). He does not say whether the six hundred are counted within the four thousand eight hundred.

So Abū Dāwūd himself tells his readers that his book holds reports of different strength, and that his own comments are part of the book. A quotation from it that leaves out his comment leaves out part of what he wrote.

al-Tirmidhī grades as he goes

al-Tirmidhī often ends a hadith with his own judgement. Three examples, quoted from the printed edition of Shākir, ʿAbd al-Bāqī and ʿAwaḍ, without vowel marks:

• After «إنما الأعمال بالنية»: «هذا حديث حسن صحيح … ولا نعرفه إلا من حديث يحيى بن سعيد الأنصاري», «this is a ḥasan ṣaḥīḥ hadith … and we know it only as a hadith of Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-Anṣārī» (Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī 1647, vol. 4, p. 180).
• After Ibn ʿAbbās's report of the Prophet's ﷺ words to Mecca: «هذا حديث حسن صحيح غريب من هذا الوجه», «ḥasan ṣaḥīḥ, gharīb by this route» (3926, vol. 5, p. 723).
• After a report on the merit of knowledge (2682, vol. 5, p. 49):

ولا نعرف هذا الحديث إلا من حديث عاصم بن رجاء بن حيوة، وليس هو عندي بمتصل. هكذا حدثنا محمود بن خداش بهذا الإسناد. وإنما يروى هذا الحديث عن عاصم بن رجاء بن حيوة، عن الوليد بن جميل، عن كثير بن قيس، عن أبي الدرداء، عن النبي ﷺ وهذا أصح من حديث محمود بن خداش، ورأى محمد بن إسماعيل هذا أصح

We know this hadith only as a hadith of ʿĀṣim ibn Rajāʾ ibn Ḥaywa, and in my view it is not connected. This is how Maḥmūd ibn Khidāsh narrated it to us, with this chain. It is narrated, rather, from ʿĀṣim ibn Rajāʾ ibn Ḥaywa, from al-Walīd ibn Jamīl, from Kathīr ibn Qays, from Abū al-Dardāʾ, from the Prophet ﷺ, and this is sounder than the hadith of Maḥmūd ibn Khidāsh. Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl [al-Bukhārī] considered this sounder. (translation ours)

The last one matters. al-Tirmidhī's remark is about the route he had, and he names a sounder one; HadeethEnc grades the report across its routes: HadeethEnc: حسن (entry 6267). A grade belongs to a route, or to the routes taken together, and two careful graders can weigh them differently.

One more caution comes from al-Nawawī: «وتختلف النسخ منه في قوله: حسن، أو صحيح ونحوه», «the manuscripts of [al-Tirmidhī's] book differ in his words ḥasan, ṣaḥīḥ and the like» (al-Taqrīb, p. 30). This page quotes al-Tirmidhī's comments from a named edition for that reason, and Takhrij names the source of every grade it shows.

This is an old problem

Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ writes that a saying of Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal had reached him («وكما بلغنا عن أحمد بن حنبل … أنه قال», «as it has reached us from Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal that he said»):

أربعة أحاديث تدور عن رسول الله - ﷺ - في الأسواق ليس لها أصل

Four hadiths go round the markets in the name of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and they have no basis. (Muqaddima, pp. 265–266)

Later scholars checked this saying in turn, and doubted that Aḥmad said it, because he himself included one of the four in his Musnad. al-ʿIrāqī:

قلت لا يصح هذا الكلام عن الإمام أحمد فإنه أخرج حديثا منها في المسند وهو حديث للسائل حق وإن جاء على فرس

I say: this statement is not authentic from Imam Aḥmad, for he included one of these hadiths in the Musnad, the hadith «للسائل حق وإن جاء على فرس». (al-Taqyīd wa-l-Īḍāḥ, p. 263; translation ours)

al-Zarkashī writes «وفي صحة هذا عن احمد نظر», «that this is authentic from Aḥmad is doubtful» (al-Tadhkira, p. 32), and al-Abnāsī «والظاهر أن هذا لا يصح عن أحمد», «it appears that this is not authentic from Aḥmad» (al-Shadhā al-Fayyāḥ, vol. 2, p. 435).

So the lesson applies twice. A sentence carried by a great name, whether the Prophet's ﷺ or a famous scholar's, is a claim to check, and the scholars checked even this one. Today the markets are group chats. The question to ask is the same: where is it written, and what did the scholars who checked it say?

What Takhrij shows

• For the main body of al-Bukhārī's and Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥs, it says that the compiler included the report in his Ṣaḥīḥ.
• For reports without a full chain in those books (muʿallaq), and for their introductions, it says so.
• For every other book, it quotes the graders' own words with their names and the edition, and says plainly when our data has no grading.
• It never adds a grade of its own.

The definitions are quoted from al-Nawawī, al-Taqrīb wa-l-Taysīr, ed. al-Khisht (Beirut, 1985), and Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, Muqaddima, ed. ʿItr (Damascus, 1986); Abū Dāwūd's letter from al-Ṣabbāgh's edition (2nd printing, Beirut: Dār al-ʿArabiyya, 1394/1974; pages as in turath.io's text); al-Tirmidhī's definition from his Kitāb al-ʿIlal, ed. Shākir et al.; al-Tirmidhī's comments from the edition of Shākir, ʿAbd al-Bāqī and ʿAwaḍ (Cairo: al-Ḥalabī, 1395/1975). The other works are listed with the sources. Each passage was read in turath.io's text of the printed edition on 25 or 26 October 2026. The translations are ours.