The author—may Allah have mercy on him—said:
21. When a trustworthy narrator contradicts the company,
The two ensuing kinds are the anomalous and the inverted.

These are the twenty-first and twenty-second types of hadith identified in this poem: the shādh (anomalous) and the maqlūb (inverted).

Shādh derives from shudhūdh, which denotes departing from an established norm or from what people generally follow. The Prophet ﷺ said, “Keep to the congregation, for Allah’s hand is over the congregation; whoever breaks away will break away into the Fire.”1 Thus, an anomalous report is one in which a reliable narrator disagrees with the company—that is, the group. A group is naturally closer to correctness and carries more weight than a lone transmitter. Hence the author’s phrase, “When a reliable narrator contradicts the company,” should be read as illustrative: the guiding rule is that a hadith is called anomalous whenever a trustworthy narrator differs from others who are stronger than he is, whether by virtue of their number, their uprightness, or their precision.

The author explicitly mentioned the first factor—superiority in number—because al-malāʾ signifies a group. Some, however, understand al-malāʾ to mean the nobles, as in Allah’s words, “The chiefs of his people who were arrogant said…” (Qur’an 7:88). In hadith terminology the “nobles” are the accurate and upright preservers (ḥuffāẓ ʿudūl). Consequently, the author’s wording includes anyone who surpasses the solitary narrator in number, integrity, or retention.

Example of numerical superiority: a group narrates a hadith from their shaykh, then one member—though trustworthy—reports it in wording that contradicts the group. We would deem his version anomalous because he has opposed transmitters who outweigh him in number.

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