The prevailing view in the disciplines of fiqh and uṣūl is that all of these variations are classified as mursal. Al-Khaṭīb adopts this position categorically. The difference, therefore, is purely one of terminology and wording. When al-Zuhrī and other junior Successors say, “The Prophet ﷺ said…,” the majority of those who reserve the label mursal for the narration of a Successor treat it as mursal just as they do with senior Successors; others maintain that it is not mursal but munqaṭiʿ. Likewise, when the formula is, “So-and-so from a man from So-and-so…,” al-Ḥākim judges the report munqaṭiʿ rather than mursal, while others consider it mursal. Allah knows best.

According to the overwhelming majority of ḥadith critics, al-Shāfiʿī, and many jurists and scholars of legal theory, the mursal is a weak ḥadith. Mālik, Abū Ḥanīfah, and a group of scholars, however, regard it as sound. If the route of a mursal report is corroborated by another chain—whether fully connected (musnad) or by a second mursal path transmitted through narrators other than those of the first—it is deemed authentic. This establishes the reliability of the mursal, and both routes are then considered ṣaḥīḥ; should they be contradicted by a lone ṣaḥīḥ report from another chain, precedence is given to the corroborated narrations when reconciliation is impossible. All of this pertains to the mursal of someone other than a Companion. As for the mursal of a Companion, the sound opinion is that it is automatically accepted as ṣaḥīḥ. Another view treats it like any other mursal unless the Companion is clearly narrating from a fellow Companion. Allah knows best.

The tenth category:
Al-munqaṭiʿ

The sound definition adopted by the jurists, al-Khaṭīb, Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, and other ḥadith scholars is that the munqaṭiʿ is any report whose chain is not continuous, irrespective of where or how the break occurs. In practical usage, the term is most often applied to a narration in which someone below the level of the Successors reports directly from a Companion, such as Mālik narrating from Ibn ʿUmar. Others say it also covers every chain in which a transmitter prior to the Successor is missing, whether that individual is omitted altogether or left unnamed.