The author—may Allah have mercy on him—said:
- A ḥasan (fair) report is one whose routes are known,
whose transmitters—though not like those of the ṣaḥīḥ (sound)—are nonetheless renowned.
The author now moves on to define the ḥasan, which in the poem is the second category of hadith. In saying “maʿrūf ṭuruqan” he means that its lines of transmission are identifiable: we know, for instance, that this narrator reports from the scholars of Basra, that one from Kufa, another from Syria, another from Egypt, another from the Hijaz, and so forth.
His words, “its men are not like those of the ṣaḥīḥ,” indicate that its transmitters are lighter in precision than the transmitters of a ṣaḥīḥ hadith. Hence he continues, “not like the ṣaḥīḥ it became famous.” The point is that a ḥasan report differs from a ṣaḥīḥ report only in the degree of accuracy found in its narrators.
For this reason the later scholars who expanded this discipline—such as al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar (d. 852 AH)—said: the single distinction between a ṣaḥīḥ hadith and a ḥasan hadith is that, whereas a ṣaḥīḥ chain features a narrator of complete precision (tāmm al-ḍabṭ), a ḥasan chain features a narrator of lighter precision (khafīf al-ḍabṭ). All the other conditions required for ṣaḥīḥ are likewise present in ḥasan.
Accordingly, a ḥasan hadith is defined as: a report transmitted by an upright narrator of light precision, with a continuous chain of transmission, free of anomaly (shudhūdh) and any detrimental flaw (ʿillah qādiḥah).