Hasan-Ghareeb hadeeth acceptable to At-Tirmithi

12-10-2017 | IslamWeb

Question:

Greetings again, Scholars. I saw your latest answer on the Hasan-Ghareeb (good-strange) hadith according to At-Tirmidhi, and you laid down its definition as meeting the conditions of Hasan but having something different in its text. However, you did not say if a Hasan-Ghareeb hadith is considered weak or authentic/reliable according to At-Tirmidhi. Due to this, I was wondering, is the Hasan-Ghareeb hadith considered reliable or not by At-tirmidhi? Please do not give me a link to another fatwa, as you did not address this specific question in the previous one.

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Answer:

All perfect praise be to Allah, the Lord of the worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allah and that Muhammad is His slave and Messenger.

The statement of Imaam At-Tirmithi on the hadeeth, that it is Hasan-Ghareeb, means that this hadeeth is acceptable to him and not weak; rather, it is stronger than the hadeeth regarding which he says Hasan only without the term Ghareeb.

Al-Albaani said, "The hadeeth about which At-Tirmithi says Hasan-Ghareeb is stronger than the hadeeth about which he says Hasan only. That is because the former means that it is Hasan in and of itself (Hasan li-thaatih), while the latter means that it is Hasan by the support of other ahaadeeth (Hasan li-ghayrih).

At-Tirmithi clarified (his terminology of) the Hasan hadeeth at the end of his book As-Sunan, and Ibn Hajar highlighted it in Sharh An-Nukhbah (p. 11 – Al-Maymaniyyah), and then he declared (on p. 25) that this kind of hadeeth is inferior to the rank of Hasan li-thaatih [i.e. Hasan Ghareeb]."

Allah knows best.