Narrators Judged as discredited and endorsed in Abu Dawood Al-Sijistani’s Sunan and not in Abu Ubaid Al-Ajuri’s Inquiries: A Comparative Critical Study

Abstract

Abstract:
This study focuses on the principles of discrediting and endorsement in Abu Dawood’s Sunan, highlighting narrators he evaluated as weak or reliable but not addressed in Abu Ubaid Al-Ajuri’s Inquiries, showcasing whether Abu Dawood’s evaluations align with or diverge from those of other scholars. The study consists of an introduction, three sections, and a conclusion. The introduction explores Abu Dawood’s role among prominent critics and the sources of his critiques and validations. Section one addresses narrators explicitly endorsed in Abu Dawood’s Sunan. Section two examines narrators discredited in Abu Dawood’s Sunan but not referenced in Al-Ajuri’s Inquiries. Section three investigates narrators both criticized and validated in Abu Dawood’s Sunan, not in Al-Ajuri’s Inquiries. Results revealed that, unlike Al-Ajuri’s Inquiries, Abu Dawood evaluated seventeen narrators as weak or reliable in his Sunan, with his judgments consistently aligning with those of other critics. Findings also showed that most of Abu Dawood’s evaluations in this study were also documented in the Inquiries, except for the terms (unknown) and (not well-known), which were absent. Abu Dawood’s Sunan preserved his assessments of narrators from Mecca, Medina, Yemen, Kufa, and Basra, unlike Al-Ajuri’s Inquiries.