Dirayat al-hadith: Difference between revisions

Definitions of Sunni scholars may be classified into three.

In his classification of sciences and disciplines, Ibn Kafani has, for the first time, divided the discipline of hadith into two branches concerning riwayat (narration) and dirayat (comprehension) of hadiths, giving definitions for each. He takes the discipline of riwayat al-hadith to study [[the Prophet (s)]]'s words and acts, an accurate report thereof, and a correction of words in hadiths. Dirayat al-hadith, he says, is a discipline concerning the nature of narrating a hadith, conditions and types of such narration and the verdicts concerning them, the condition of the narrator of hadiths, and everything related to this.

Ibn Jama'a has summarized the issues discussed in dirayat al-hadith, taking it to be a discipline concerned with the laws and regulations of the condition, the chains of narrators, and the text of hadiths.

However, Tashkupri Zada has provided a totally different definition of the disciplines of riwayat al-hadith and dirayat al-hadith. He admits that a major part of dirayat al-hadith is concerned with the narrative chains of hadiths, but he takes it to discuss the status of narrators with respect to their honesty and reliability and the way hadiths are connected to the Prophet (s), given that some hadiths may be disconnected from the Prophet (s) in their chains of narrators (e.g. at least one person in the chain of narrators is dropped).

The definitions provided by [[Shiite]] scholars of dirayat al-hadith may be classified into three main ones:

  a discipline in which the text of hadith and its attributes, such as correctness and illness, are discussed in order to tell acceptable hadiths apart from the unacceptable ones.

with some changes into al-Shahid al-Thani's definition, he takes dirayat al-hadith to be a discipline in which the narrative chain (sanad) of hadiths, its text, the manners of receiving and narrating a hadith are discussed.

  he has modified al-Shahid al-Thani's definition, restricting dirayat al-hadith to the narrative chain of hadiths, taking it to discuss the attributes of the narrative chains of hadiths, in ways related to their reliability and unreliability.