In the name of Allah, Most Compassionate, Most Merciful.
DEFINITION OF SAHEEH (AUTHENTIC) HADITH
Saheeh literally means healthy.
A saheeh hadith is one which has a connected chain of upright narrators, who have excellent retentions, and which is free of any irregularities or defects.
Therefore, for a hadith to be classified as saheeh, five conditions have to be met:
- The narrators should be upright. (العدل)
- The narrators should have excellent retentions. (تام الضبط)
- The chain should be connected. (متصل السند)
- There should be no irregularities. (عدم الشذوذ)
- There should be no defects. (عدم العلة)
The Muhadditheen explain the above by saying:
- The narrators should be upright. (العدل)
An upright person is one who is steadfast on taqwa and decency.
By taqwa we mean he stays away from sinful acts like shirk, fisq and bidah.
By decency we mean that he stays away from those things which are considered bad-manners by people of sound intellect like, urinating on the side of the roads or eating there.
- The narrators should have excellent retentions. (تام الضبط)
The retention of the narrator could either be a result of his excellent memory or by his recording of the hadith in his book and protecting it from changes and then narrating it from the book.
- The chain should be connected. (متصل السند)
This means that each narrator of the chain took the hadith from the narrator above him directly.
- There should be no irregularities. (عدم الشذوذ)
Irregularity is when a narrator contradicts a narrator who is stronger than him in memory, or he contradicts many other accurate narrators.
- There should be no defects. (عدم العلة)
Defect (illah) is a hidden defect that causes the hadith to become weak. A hadith may seem sound, but after extensive investigation a muhaddith may find a defect that was hidden which would cause the hadith to become weak.
