الْبَابُ الْخَامِسُ: فِي عُلُومِ الْمَتْنِ · Book Five: The Sciences of the Matn

الْفَصْلُ الْأَوَّلُ: فِي عُلُومِ الْحَدِيثِ مِنْ حَيْثُ قَائِلُهُ · Chapter One: Classified by Whom It Is Attributed To

الْحَدِيثُ الْقُدْسِيُّ · The Sacred Hadith (Qudsi)

What is attributed to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and which he in turn traces back to his Lord. Also called the divine or lordly hadith.

الْمَرْفُوعُ · The Elevated (Marfu)

What is attributed to the Prophet ﷺ in particular, of saying, act, tacit approval, or description; connected or not.

الْمَوْقُوفُ · The Stopped (Mawquf)

What is attributed to the Companions and not carried up to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ; it may take the ruling of elevation under certain conditions.

If a stopped report is accompanied by signs, in its meaning or its wording, pointing to it actually going back to the Prophet, it takes the ruling of an elevated report and can be used as proof. Itr lists four such signs.

الْمَقْطُوعُ · The Cut-Off (Maqtu)

What is attributed to a Successor rather than to the Prophet or a Companion; its plural forms are al-maqatiʿ and al-maqatiʿ, spelled المقاطع and المقاطيع, the second with a long i.

Itr flags this immediately, since the two terms look and sound alike and are an easy mix-up for students: maqtu is not the same category as munqati, the interrupted-chain type discussed later. Maqtu describes who a statement is attributed to; munqati describes a missing link in the chain.

Like the other three attribution categories before it, qudsi, marfu, and mawquf, a maqtu report itself divides into sahih, hasan, or da'if depending on its own chain's quality; being maqtu is a statement about attribution, not by itself a grade of reliability.

Itr points to the musannaf-genre collections as the main sourcebooks for both mawquf and maqtu reports, chiefly Abd al-Razzaq al-San'ani's and Ibn Abi Shayba's, since these gather everything said on a given legal topic by Companions and Successors alike, alongside the athar-based tafsir works such as Ibn Jarir al-Tabari's, for the same reason.

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الْفَصْلُ الثَّانِي: فِي عُلُومِ مَتْنِ الْحَدِيثِ مِنْ حَيْثُ دِرَايَتُهُ · Chapter Two: Understanding the Text

غَرِيبُ الْحَدِيثِ · Obscure Wording in the Hadith Text (Gharib al-Hadith)

The unfamiliar words that occur in the texts of hadith and lie beyond ready understanding. Itr treats knowing their meanings as an important science for the hadith scholar, so that he is not merely a pack-beast for reports who does not know what he is transmitting.

The soundest thing to rely on is finding the word already explained inside another narration of the same hadith; the gathering work of the genre is al-Nihaya of Ibn al-Athir (d. 606H).

أَسْبَابُ وُرُودِ الْحَدِيثِ · The Occasions on Which a Hadith Was Said (Asbab Wurud al-Hadith)

Whatever the hadith was spoken about at the time it occurred. Its standing within hadith is what asbab al-nuzul (the occasions of revelation) is to the Qur'an, and it is a strong route into understanding a hadith, since knowing the cause yields knowledge of what it caused.

Sometimes the occasion is carried inside the hadith itself; sometimes it is not, and appears only in one of the hadith's other chains, and that is the case that deserves attention.

نَاسِخُ الْحَدِيثِ وَمَنْسُوخُهُ · Abrogating and Abrogated Hadith

Abrogation is the Lawgiver lifting an earlier ruling of his by a later ruling of his; known by explicit statement, by dating, or by a Companion's report.

مُخْتَلِفُ الْحَدِيثِ · Contradictory Hadith

Also called mushkil al-hadith: a hadith whose outward sense conflicts with the principles and suggests a false meaning, or conflicts with another legal text.

مُحْكَمُ الْحَدِيثِ · The Firm Hadith (Muhkam)

The wording the author endorses (al-Hakim (d. 405H)): reports that have nothing standing against them in any respect at all, whatever the source of the opposition; the opposite of mukhtalif al-hadith.

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