Sihha (validity in law: what makes an act valid, its difference from ijza' and from void acts, the effect of health on duties, and the rules of sound hadith)

In language sihha (soundness, validity) is the opposite of sickness; it also means the going away of illness. The word is borrowed for other senses: a prayer is said to be sound (sahih) when it clears the duty to repeat it, and a contract when its effect follows. Among the usulis it is one of the kinds of the declaratory legal ruling (al-hukm al-wad'i). ¹

The majority say that validity is an act's agreement with the law, whether or not it must be repeated, so it covers acts of worship and contracts. The Hanafis say that in worship validity is the clearing of the duty to repeat, and in contracts that the intended effect follows. The difference shows in a man who prays believing himself in a state of purity and then learns he was not: his prayer is valid for the majority, since it matched the command at the time, while for the Hanafis it is not valid, since the duty to repeat is not cleared. ¹ Among jurists, a sound act of worship or contract is one whose pillars and conditions are complete, so that it counts for the ruling. What does not reach the worldly purposes of the duty, such as ownership of the thing sold in a sale or enjoyment in a marriage, is called void or corrupt. ¹

Ijza' (sufficiency) for the majority is an act's agreement with the lawgiver's command by having all the conditions it depends on; the Hanafis add that the duty to repeat is cleared by it. In use validity and ijza' are near synonyms, ijza' being one effect of validity. ² Batil (voidness) in worship means that the act is not counted at all, as with prayer without ablution. In contracts the Hanafis say voidness is a transaction made in a way unlawful in its root and in its attribute; the majority say corruption (fasad) is a transaction made in a way unlawful in its root, its attribute, or both. Ada' (performance) is doing an act within its time before the time ends; qada' (making up) is doing it after its time has passed, to make good what was missed. Both are attributes that come with validity. ²

A person's capacity for legal duties rests on two things: understanding the address, which is by reason, and acting on it, which is by the body. For this reason jurists count illness among the factors that affect capacity, since the sick person is granted many concessions meant to lighten his load. ² Jurists state that some rulings require bodily health: the prayer leader of healthy people must be free of excuses such as urinary leakage, wind, a bleeding wound or a nosebleed; jihad is obligatory only for one who is not harmed and is able; the holder of the greater imamate must have sound senses and limbs enough to carry out its duties; and among the conditions for the obligation of the pilgrimage is the capacity of the body, which must be free of diseases and defects that prevent it. ³ Bodily health is not a condition for carrying out stoning or retaliation, since the life itself is taken. For flogging, if the illness is expected to heal, the majority postpone the punishment while the Hanbalis do not; if it is not expected to heal, or the offender is frail, the punishment is carried out at once with blows that do not risk death. A healthy person may not take the concessions meant for the sick, since they were granted for the excuse of illness and are limited to it. ³

The hadith scholars define a sound hadith as one whose chain of narrators is unbroken through reliable transmitters, who are upright and precise, with no irregularity (shudhudh) and no hidden defect ('illa). They set five conditions: that the chain is connected, which excludes the broken, the omitted, the suspended, the concealing and the sent-up (mursal) report; that the narrators are upright, which excludes the unknown and the known for weakness; that they are precise, which excludes the careless and the frequently mistaken; that the report has no irregularity; and that it has no damaging hidden defect. ^{3 4} Jurists and usulis differed with them: they made the soundness of a report depend on the uprightness of its narrators, in the sense required for accepting testimony, and they were less strict about irregularity and defect. Usulis prefer the report of one who affirms a fact over one who denies it when he is more numerous or more retentive, whereas the scholars of hadith call that report irregular. Some jurists accepted the sent-up report, in which a Successor says "the Messenger of God ﷺ said so-and-so", while the hadith scholars rejected it, since the omitted narrator may be a Companion or a Successor, and an unknown person is no proof. ⁴