Forty Gems of Beauty — Page 2
2 Prophet (May peace and blessings of Allah be on him), have laid down such inviolable cannons and criteria as to make a discrimination of the stable from the unstable A ha d i th an easy task, through proper scrutiny. The Method of Narration The method of narrating A ha d i th consisted, on the part of a companion who had personally heard the Holy Prophet (May peace and blessings of Allah be on him) make a statement or seen him do a particular thing, in communicating it for the purpose of disseminating knowledge to such others as had not so heard or seen the Holy Prophet or had not seen the blessed period of the Holy Prophet (May peace and blessings of Allah be upon him). The statement, narrating the Hadith, would ordinarily run like this: “I heard it from so and so that he heard from such and such companion of the Holy Prophet (May peace and blessings of Allah be on him) that he heard the Holy Prophet (May peace and blessings of Allah be on him) say on such and such occasion or saw him do such and such a thing. ” They would thus convey the report to the other with a view to refreshing faith or spreading knowledge. Thus, it was, that the A ha d i th of the Holy Prophet (May peace and blessings of Allah be on him), were preserved for the succeeding generations through a regularly linked and unbroken chain of narrators. Categories of Narrators Narrators of A ha d i th are divided into several categories. The highest of them is the Muslim narrator who heard or saw personally the Holy