The well-known report (mashhur)

The mashhur is the second class of report by number of chains for Ibn Hajar and the first kind of solitary report: one with a limited number of chains above two; hadith scholars call it mashhur, "well-known", for its clarity. ² Every mutawatir is mashhur but not the reverse: a report with many chains that fails to yield knowledge is only mashhur. ³

Ibn Hajar says the mashhur is what a group of leading jurists call mustafid, "widespread", from fada (water overflowing); some distinguish the two, the mustafid being equal in number at beginning and end and the mashhur broader; others distinguish them in a way that does not belong to this discipline. ¹ The editor, Nur al-Din 'Itr, counts the discussion of the mustafid among the topics of legal theory that Ibn Hajar brought into his book. ⁴

"Mashhur" is also used for what is current on people's tongues, including reports with a single chain or more, and even with no chain at all. ⁵ The editor distinguishes what is well known among common people, grammarians, jurists and men of letters, and names al-'Ajluni's Kashf al-Khafa' as the fullest collection of such sayings. ⁵

The mashhur is a solitary report, and solitary reports include both accepted and rejected; its standing, like that of the 'aziz, depends on whether the conditions of acceptance are met — it may be sound, good or weak. ^{5 6} Yet Ibn Hajar counts among reports supported by indications, which yield inferential knowledge, the mashhur that has distinct chains free of weak narrators and hidden defects, a view he attributes to Abu Mansur al-Baghdadi and Abu Bakr ibn Furak. ⁷ Such knowledge, he adds, comes only to one deeply versed in hadith, who knows the narrators and the hidden defects. ⁸

The Hanafi sense of mashhur (solitary at first, then mass-transmitted) is noted on the mutawatir card; the legal theorists' views have not yet been taken from their own works.