Tashih (correction and validation: of a hadith, a contract, an act of worship, and inheritance shares)

Tashih is removing an error. For the hadith scholars it is ruling a hadith sound once its conditions are met; for the people of inheritance it removes the fractions between shares and heads; for the jurists it is removing what spoils a worship or a contract. ¹ Correcting a spoiling error is a duty once known. ⁸

A hadith whose chain runs from a trustworthy, exact narrator to the end, without oddity or hidden defect, is ruled sound without dispute. ⁸ The scholars differ on some conditions: al-Hakim required that the narrator be known for seeking hadith, Abu Hanifa required the narrator's jurisprudence, and al-Bukhari required proof of hearing, not mere contemporaneity. ² A scholar's practice or fatwa in line with a hadith is not a ruling that it is sound, since it may be caution or another proof; his acting against it does not impugn it. ^{2 3} Ibn al-Salah held that correction had ended in later times, and al-Nawawi allowed it to one who is able. ²

Apart from the Hanafis, the jurists do not in general separate void from defective contracts, and the Shafiis and Hanbalis hold that a contract does not become valid by removing its defect. ³ For the Malikis, a sale is valid when the defective condition is dropped, except four conditions that invalidate it even when dropped, among them an unknown term or a defect in an option. ^{3 9} The Hanafis distinguish void from defective, and a defective contract is corrected by removing the defect if the defect is weak; if it lies in the core of the contract, it is not. ⁴ A contract may also be validated by being treated as another valid contract, as a surety becomes a transfer of debt when the principal is freed. ¹⁰

What befalls worship and cannot be undone, such as eating, drinking, speech, breach of ablution, or intercourse, spoils it, and it must be repeated. What can be removed quickly is corrected: a worshipper whose judgement of the qibla changes turns and builds on his prayer, as the people of Quba did when the qibla was changed; one who has a dry impurity on him and removes it quickly keeps his prayer; one whose awrah is uncovered and covers it quickly keeps it. ^{5 11} In tawaf, one who learns of an impurity removes it and builds on the circuits unless the gap is long. ¹¹ By the rule that the invalidity of the particular does not invalidate the general, one who starts an obligatory prayer before its time has it turn into a voluntary prayer. ^{11 12}

To correct the shares one takes the smallest number from which every share is whole. The breaks fall on one group of heirs or on several, and the numbers of heads may agree, overlap or be unrelated; the arithmetic multiplies the numbers accordingly. ^{12 6 13 7} The jurists of the schools agree with the Hanafis on the method. ¹⁴