—with the shaykh of your shaykh’s shaykh, then the muṣāfaḥa is counted for the shaykh of your shaykh’s shaykh. This kind of elevation is inseparably linked to a corresponding descent; were it not for the descent of Muslim and those like him, you could never have attained any elevation. Allah knows best.
Fourth: Elevation through the earlier death of a narrator. Thus, a report that I transmit through three intermediaries from al-Bayhaqī, from al-Ḥākim, is higher than one I transmit through three intermediaries from Ibn Khalaf, from al-Ḥākim, because al-Bayhaqī died before Ibn Khalaf. As for elevation on account of your own shaykh’s earlier death, al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Jawṣāʾ fixed the threshold at fifty years after the shaykh’s passing, whereas Ibn Mandah set it at thirty.
Fifth: Elevation that precedes by virtue of earlier audition (samāʿ). Much of this overlaps with the previous category, yet it is distinguished in the following way: two students hear from the same shaykh, one of them sixty years ago, the other forty; the number of links back to the Prophet is identical, but the first transmission is higher.
Descent (nuzūl) is the opposite of elevation; it likewise comprises five divisions corresponding to the five just mentioned. In the correct view, held by the majority, descent is inferior and generally disfavoured, though some have preferred it to elevation. If it is accompanied by an additional scholarly benefit, then it is the preferred option. Allah knows best.
The Thirtieth Category
The Mashhūr (Well-Known) Ḥadīth
A mashhūr ḥadīth is of two types, sound and otherwise, and it may be well-known only among the specialists in ḥadīth, or among them as well as the wider community. Included here is the mutawātir that is recognised in the disciplines of fiqh and uṣūl al-fiqh, though the ḥadīth scholars seldom speak of it, and it is scarcely found in their chains. It is that ḥadīth which, from beginning to end, has been transmitted by groups whose truthfulness is known with certainty, each group receiving it from another group of the same calibre.