The Abandoned Report and Its Clarification
…The author—may Allah have mercy on him—said:
31 – An abandoned report is that in which a single narrator stands alone, while they are unanimous in declaring him weak; hence it is rejected.
This is the thirty-first category of ḥadith mentioned in the poem, namely the abandoned (matrūk). The versifier has defined it with the words:
“that which a lone transmitter relates,” meaning that an abandoned report is one in which a single individual is the sole narrator and the scholars unanimously judge him weak.
The pronoun in “they unanimously agreed” refers to the hadith critics.
His phrase “so it is rejected” means that such a report is to be dismissed; the prefixed kāf merely serves a rhetorical purpose.
Thus, according to the author, the abandoned ḥadith is: a narration conveyed by a weak transmitter concerning whose weakness the scholars are in full agreement.
From this definition it follows that:
• A narration transmitted by someone other than a unanimously weak narrator is not considered abandoned; and
• A narration conveyed by a weak narrator about whom the scholars disagree is likewise not deemed abandoned.
This is the position adopted by the author.
Some scholars, among them Ibn Ḥajar in Nukhbat al-Fikar, hold that an abandoned report is one transmitted by a narrator who is accused of fabrication.
For example, if we open Ibn Ḥajar’s Tahdhīb and find a narrator about whom he says, “the scholars are unanimous regarding his weakness,” then, should that narrator transmit a report on his own, we classify the report as abandoned, because there is consensus on his weakness.
If instead we read of him, “he has been accused of lying,” we likewise call his report abandoned, for the narration of one suspected of fabrication is akin to a fabricated report. We do not assert with certainty that it is fabricated, yet the very charge of lying reduces the narration to a level that comes perilously close to outright fabrication.