HADITS SHAHIH OR NOT ?

Briefly, Hadith may be classified into two broad categories. (1) Acceptable; and (2) Unacceptable.

For a Hadith to be acceptable/authentic, it has to meet 5 conditions:

It must have a continuous and unbroken chain of narrators [FROM THE COMPILER, BACK TO THE PROPHET ﷺ]
ALL of these narrators be trustworthy in their character and religion.
These narrators have precised memories and make no mistakes. So they must also be trustworthy in their memory.
The Hadith not contradict anything more authentic than it. If it does it is called Shadz (شاذ).
There has no hidden defects (called 'Ilal (علل)) in the Hadith or its chain. —And this is the most difficult aspect to verify; Only a Hadith master has the capability of doing this.

Any Haidth that meets all of these five conditions is called Sahih (صحيح). —And that is the highest level of Hadith.

If however, one or more of the narrator(s) does not have as strong of memory as others, yet overall he is still reliable and he does have good character and an acceptable memory, then the Hadith will be lower to the status of Hasan (حسن)/Good. But not as high as Sahih. So a Hasan Hadith differs from a Sahih Hadith in only one of these five conditions (which is, the 3rd condition). It is not that he is weak in his memory, it is just that he might not be as famous as those in the Sahih category.

If on the other hand, one of these five conditions is not met, and yet at the same time there is no known fabricator or liar in its chain, the Hadith should be categorized as Weak or even Very-weak —Dhaif (ضعيف) or Dhaif-jiddan (ضعيف جدا). And there are MANY different types of weak Hadith; over 30 different types of weak Hadith.

If a weak Hadith is reported from 2 different chains, (and in general each weak Hadith supports the other one), thus the Hadith itself raised to a category of Hasan. We call it Hasan-li-ghairihi (حسن لغيره) or Hasan-due-to-external-factors.

A weak Hadith is of doubtful authenticity. We are not sure if the Prophet ﷺ said it or not. —This is in contrast to a Sahih or even a Hasan Hadith where we are pretty certain (or in fact in some cases certain 100%) that the Prophet ﷺ did indeed said that Hadith.

Obviously, if a Hadith is fabricated and Mawdu' (موضوع), there is no doubt in our minds that Prophet ﷺ did not said this Hadith.




Getting back to the topic at hand, we accept Sahih and Hasan Hadith; And we base our theology and our legal law on them. This is the case regardless of whether the Hadith has been narrated through one (Ahad (أحد)) or a few chains of narrations (Mutawatir (متواتر)). Of course there is no doubt that a Mutawatir Hadith is stronger than Ahad Hadith. And Ahad Hadith is not to the level of the Mutawatir. The point being that: an Ahad Hadith is not disqualified merely because it is Ahad. And this is the opinion of ALL of the scholars of Ahlil Sunnah Wal Jama'ah that: an Ahad Hadith can indeed be used for theology and for Fiqh. And there is some slight disagreement amongst the scholars in the final details of applying this rule, but overall rule is agreed upon, and that is that: an Ahad Hadith is accepted and is something that we should act upon/believe in as long as it is authentic and it has met the five conditions listed above.

Regarding Weak and Very-weak Hadith, then by the unanimous consensus of the scholars, this cannot be used to base our theology on. Some scholars were a bit more lax about taking Weak Hadith in the performance of some voluntary-acts-of-worship (amalan sunat). But there is no difference of opinion regarding the inadmissibility of using Weak Hadith for 'Aqidah/Theology. Therefore, any Hadith that is weak regarding our theology cannot and should not be taken as a source of our beliefs.