Substantiation from Weak Ahadith Especially Quoted in "Fazail-e-Aamal" and View Point of Popular Jurists

Abstract

Aḥādīth is the second most important source of guidance in Islamic jurisprudence. Aḥādīth is the collection of traditions which consists of the Prophet (PBUH) sayings as well as an account of his daily practice. The companions of the prophet took great care in accounting aḥādīth in light of the Prophet’s (PBUH) sayings. However, the later generations overlooked that diligent practice and attempted to fabricate aḥādīth in order to destroy Islam. This can be illustrated from an event when a person who was about to be hanged mocked caliph Haroon ur Rasheed about four thousand aḥādīth fabricated by him. The Caliph replied that he didn’t know Abdullah bin Mubarak who would sift these aḥādīth. Hence the Ummah felt the urgent need to cleanse the traditions of the Prophet(PBUH)from impure ambitions of liars, and so the practice of delving deep into the background of the narrators of aḥādīth like where they were born, instructed, travelled became important. In this way, the scholars developed the system of Jarhwa Ta'deel through which they divided aḥādīth into different categories according to the life and conduct of narrators. One such category is known as "Weak aḥādīth." In this paper, weak traditions from the book of aḥādīth especially Fazaile A’mal are selected in order to discuss their weaknesses and the scholars’ perspective on them.