In the Kütüb-i Sitte Mürsel Hadiths
(İbn Ebî Hâtim’s Kitâbu’l-Merâsil in Particular)
The hadith scholars, from the early period onward, have set forth cer-tain conditions for a hadith to be considered ṣaḥiḥ. Among these are that the narrator must be âdil and zâbıt, that the hadith should not be şâz or afflicted with an ʿillah, and that its isnād must be muttasil. Some hadith scholars have stated that the most important of these conditions is the criterion of the isnād being muttasil. Towards the end of the sec-ond century, while the condition of isnad being muttasıl was required, during the golden age of classification when fundamental hadith collec-tions such as Kütüb-i Sitte were compiled, mursel hadiths were consid-ered weak hadiths. Although it is not precisely known when the concept of mursel first appeared, it is estimated that it began to be used in the first century, at the time when the requirement of ittisal in isnad was emphasized due to the events that arose following the fitne. In general, a hadith in which a tâbiîn transmits directly from the Prophet without mentioning a companion is called mursel. However, some scholars also used this concept for hadiths with a break in the isnad at any point. This situation led to discussions about whether a mursel hadith, like other hadiths with breaks in the isnad, should be regarded as weak. Therefore, the status of a mursel hadith as evidence and its ruling has occupied the agenda of both muhaddis and jurists.
Works were compiled that brought together mursel hadiths and mursil narrators for evaluation, which laid the groundwork for the formation of Merâsil literature. One of these works is İbn Ebî Hâtim er-Râzî’s Kitâbu’l-Merâsîl. Although this work is not widely known in the hadith literature, the mursel chains mentioned in it appear in many hadith works, primar-ily in Kütüb-i Sitte. This study, which examines the mursil narrators and mursel hadiths addressed in İbn Ebî Hâtim’s Kitâbu’l-Merâsîl, aims to iden-tify the presence of these chains in the Kütüb-i Sitte collections. In this way, hadiths with breaks in their isnad in Kütüb-i Sitte will be examined from a different perspective and presented to the scholarly community.
Keywords: Hadith; Six Books; İbn Ebî Hâtim; Mursal; Kitab al Marasil