The Fabricated Report and Its Clarification

The author—may Allah have mercy on him—then said:

32 – “The contrived, manufactured lie
against the Prophet—that is the fabricated report.”

This is the thirty-second category of ḥadith mentioned in the poem, namely the fabricated (mawḍūʿ). The versifier has defined it with the phrase: “the contrived, manufactured lie…,” that is, a statement some people have invented and attributed to the Prophet ﷺ; in technical usage we call it fabricated.

Does the term mawḍūʿ mean that the scholars have ‘put it down’ in the sense of discarding it and paying it no heed, or that its transmitter has ‘placed it upon’ the Prophet ﷺ? In truth, it covers both: the scholars have indeed set it aside, and it is mawḍūʿ in that its narrator foisted it upon the Prophet.

Fabricated aḥadith are plentiful. The scholars have produced independent works that collect them and have also discussed individual reports in detail. Among the books authored on this subject are al-Laʾāliʾ al-Maṣnūʿah fī al-Aḥādīth al-Mawḍūʿah, al-Fawāʾid al-Majmūʿah fī al-Aḥādīth al-Mawḍūʿah by al-Shawkānī, and al-Mawḍūʿāt by Ibn al-Jawzī. Ibn al-Jawzī, however, is lax in branding reports fabricated; it is even said that he listed a ḥadith recorded by Muslim in his Ṣaḥīḥ and still declared it fabricated. Hence the adage: “No weight is given to Ibn al-Jawzī’s labeling of a report as fabricated, nor to al-Ḥākim’s authentication, nor to Ibn al-Mundhir’s consensus,” for these scholars are lenient. Nevertheless, I have examined Ibn al-Mundhir’s works and found that whenever he transmits a consensus saying, “We know of no disagreement concerning it,” he has thereby discharged his responsibility before Allah Almighty.

Fabricated reports arise for several reasons—among them partisan zeal for, or against, a particular school or group,