Grey shades in Ilm al Rijal

Synopsis: Rijal of ibn al Ghadairi (available here in English) is arguably the best book of rijal for us Shias, being one of the oldest extant works of rijal, and most importantly, it actually seeks to provide jarh and ta'deel of narrators unlike the works of Tusi and Najahi which are primarily concerned with recording the books of the early shia authors and do not provide the same level of information on jarh and ta'deel as ibn al Ghadairi (perhaps, it is due to this reason, that the biggest marja of the time, Ayatullah Sistani, prefers rijal ibn al Ghadairi over the faharis of Tusi and Najashi). Yes, the authenticity of the book available now is disputed, however it is beyond the scope of this post to analyse that.

 The point of this post is to simply examine, that is the field of ilmur rijal that black and white, and simple, as some people think (..or wish) it to be? To investigate this, this post looks at whether ibn al Ghadairi simply made blanket judements, that so and so is weak and reject all his ahadith, or is it actually a more detailed and complex matter, and if so, then how have the scholars approached it? As we shall see, in most cases, ibn al Ghadairi did not make blanket black and white judgements, instead he would often say "sometimes (his ahadith) are accepted and other times not", this post investigates this issue further.

أصول الحديث - تأليف : الدكتور الشيخ عبد الهادي الفضلي

"Principles of hadith" by Ayatullah Dr Abdul Hadi al Fadli 

 قال الشيخ المامقاني في الفائدة الخامسة من مقدمة كتابه (تنقيح المقال): (إنه قد تكرر من أهل الرجال، سيما ابن الغضائري (ره) في حق جماعة من رجالنا قولهم: (يعرف حديثه وينكر) أو (يعرف تارة وينكر أخرى) وإنا وإن كرنا في (مقباس الهداية) ما ذكروه في المراد بالعبارة، إلا أنا لكثرة وقوعه في كلمات أصحابنا أهمنا شرح الكلام فيه هنا أيضا، فنقول: قد صدر منهم في المراد بالعبارة (أقوال):

أحدها: أن بعض أحاديثه معروف وبعضها منكر.

وأن المراد بالمنكر ما لا موافق له في مضمونه من الكتاب والسنة، وبالمعروف ما يوافق مضمونه بعض الأدلة.

ثانيها: أن بعض أحاديثه منكر مخالف للأدلة في مضمونه، وبعضها معروف له موافق فيها.وهذا يقرب من سابقه.

ثالثها: أن المراد بالمنكر الأعاجيب على حد ما قاله الشيخ (ره) في ترجمة جعفر بن محمد بن مالك ⁽¹⁾، ويقابله قوله (يعرف).

رابعها: ان المراد أنه يقبل تارة ولا يقبل أخرى.

خامسها: ان المراد به أنه يعرف معنى حديثه، وينكر بمعنى أنه مضطرب الألفاظ... وقد اختار هذا التفسير بعضهم حيث قال: إن الظاهر من قول ابن الغضائري: (يعرف وينكر) اضطراب الحديث.

سادسها: أن قوله (يعرف وينكر) تفسير لقوله (مختلط)، ومعنى اختلاف الحديث أنه لا يحفظه على وجهه

Shaikh al Mamqani wrote in the fifth section of the preface of his book "Tanqihul maqal": The authors of rijal, especially Ibn al Ghadairi, would often use the phrase "his hadith is accepted and rejected" or "sometimes accepted and rejected at other times" while profiling our ahadith narrators. Although we explained this in our book "Miqbasul hidayah", but due to the constant occurence of this phrase, we considered it important to explain this here as well.

So we say, scholars have offered the following explanations

Some of his ahadith are accepted and some are rejected

Some of his ahadith contain content that is supported by external evidences, and some others have content which is not supported

The ahadith which are rejected are the ones which mention strange things in its content, as mentioned for example by Shaikh Tusi in the biography of Ja'fer b. Muhammad b. Malik, and the ones which do not have such strange content are accepted

Sometimes his ahadith are accepted and at other times not

The meaning of his ahadith are accepted but it is not considered an exact word to word rendition from the infallibles (as). Some scholars adopted this explanation, saying Ibn al Ghadairi's phrase "accepted and rejected" means that the hadith is not a word to word rendition

It referes to mix-up, in that he does not remember the ahadith as it is