The obscured (mu'dal) and the interrupted (munqati') report

The third class of drops from the chain in Ibn Hajar's [[work/nuzhat-al-nazar|Nuzhat al-Nazar]]: if two or more consecutive narrators are missing, the report is obscured (mu'dal); otherwise, if two non-consecutive narrators are missing, in two places for example, it is interrupted (munqati'), and so too if a single narrator is missing, or more than two, provided they are not consecutive. ¹

Between the obscured and the suspended report there is a partial overlap: since the obscured is defined as missing two or more, it coincides with some forms of the suspended; since the suspended is restricted to a compiler's omission at the start of the chain, it parts from it. ² The editor explains: a report missing two together at the beginning of its chain is both suspended and obscured; the suspended alone covers one missing at the beginning or the whole chain dropped; the obscured alone covers two consecutive narrators missing from the middle of the chain. ²

The editor's example of the obscured report is Malik's report from Mu'adh ibn Jabal: "The last counsel the Messenger of God gave me, as I put my foot in the stirrup, was: make your character good for people, Mu'adh ibn Jabal." Between Malik and Mu'adh there are two or more links. He quotes Ibn 'Abd al-Barr that its meaning is sound and attested with full chains. ¹

Ibn Hajar arranges the visible drops in four kinds: the suspended at the start of the chain, the mursal at its end, and the obscured and the interrupted elsewhere. The editor traces the rejection of all of them to one root: the narrator who dropped out is unknown, and caution requires allowing that he may be weak. ² See also inqita'.

Overview

For Ibn al-Salah mu'dal is a name for a special kind of munqati': every mu'dal is munqati' but not every munqati' is mu'dal, and some call it mursal; it means a chain from which two or more narrators have dropped out. ³

The word

Hadith scholars say a'dalahu fa-huwa mu'dal, with a on the d; Ibn al-Salah finds the term's lexical source unclear, says he searched and found the expression amr 'adil, "a hard, locked matter", and pays no heed to mu'dil with i, even though it has the same meaning. ³

Examples

An example is a Follower of the Successors saying "the Messenger of God said", or anyone later citing the Prophet, Abu Bakr or Umar without naming the intermediaries. ^{3 4} Abu Nasr al-Sijzi said that a narrator's "it reached me", as in Malik's "it reached me from Abu Hurayra that the Messenger of God said: the slave is owed his food and clothing", is what hadith scholars call mu'dal. ⁴ Ibn al-Salah adds that when jurists and other authors write "the Messenger of God said such-and-such", all of it is of the mu'dal kind, and that al-Khatib once called it mursal, following those who call every unconnected chain mursal. ⁴

Mu'dal by stopping

Al-Hakim counted as a kind of mu'dal a Follower's report from a Successor that stops at the Successor while others transmit it connected to the Prophet; his example is al-Sha'bi's saying, in al-A'mash's version, "a man will be told on the Day of Resurrection: you did such-and-such…", which al-Sha'bi has connected from Anas from the Prophet. ⁴ Ibn al-Salah approved, since a break of one link combined with stopping amounts to a break of two — the Companion and the Messenger of God — and so better deserves the name. ⁵

Appendices

Ibn al-Salah attaches to this type discussions of chains linked by "from", of suspended chains, and of hadiths some trustworthy narrators give as mursal and others as connected; these have their own cards. ^{5 6 7}