The Weak Report and its Varieties

The author—may Allah have mercy on him—said:
6. Whatever falls below the rank of the ḥasan,
that is the weak report, and its kinds are many.

The weak ḥadīth is the third category mentioned in the poem; it is any report that does not reach the rank of a ḥasan ḥadīth.

Obviously, if it fails to attain the rank of ḥasan it also falls short of ṣaḥīḥ. Hence we define a weak ḥadīth as one in which the conditions of soundness and fairness are not fulfilled, that is, a report that is neither ṣaḥīḥ nor ḥasan. For example, if the narrator is upright but his precision is poor—worse than light precision—the report is weak; or if the chain is broken, it is likewise weak, and so on.

Up to this point the author has listed three categories of ḥadīth:
1 – ṣaḥīḥ.
2 – ḥasan.
3 – ḍaʿīf.

In fact, as Ibn Ḥajar and others have refined the matter, the categories are five:
1 – ṣaḥīḥ in itself.
2 – ṣaḥīḥ owing to corroboration.
3 – ḥasan in itself.
4 – ḥasan owing to corroboration.
5 – ḍaʿīf.

Ṣaḥīḥ in itself has already been defined.

Ṣaḥīḥ owing to corroboration is a ḥasan report whose routes have multiplied; it is termed “sound on account of others” because it reaches the level of soundness only through that multiplicity.

For instance, if a report comes to us through four separate isnāds, each one containing a narrator of light precision, we would then judge that it has now risen to the level of ṣaḥīḥ and has become