Transmitters of the Ghadir Khumm narration

(as listed by 'Allamah al-'Amini in Al-Ghadir)

• from the first generation -  110 Companions (sahabah) of the Prophet [s]
• from the second generation - 84 Successors (tabi'un) who came after the Companions
• from the third generation onwards - 360 Scholars ('ulama) of the Islamic world, from the first to the fourteenth century AH (seventh to twentieth century CE)

• from over 200 Other Scholars of the Islamic world, from the first to the fourteenth century AH (seventh to twentieth century CE)

The Ghadir Khumm narration is certainly mutawatir based on the statistics and definitions given below.  In addition, several of its individual chains of narration are of the highest category of sahih and many more have been consideredhasan.  Click on the icon below to see some of these statements by notable scholars. 

(Source: Muhammad Zubayr Siddiqi, 'Ulum al-Hadith, Hadith and Sunnah - Ideals and Realities, pp. 89-90)

The Mutawatir are the traditions which have been transmitted throughout the first three generations of the Muslims by such a large number of transmitters as cannot be reasonably expected to agree on a falsehood.  There is a difference of opinion about the number of the transmitters necessary for it during each of the first three generations of the Muslims.  Some authorities fix it at seven, some at forty, some at seventy, and some at a much higher number.  Very few of the traditions received by us belong to the category of the Mutawatir.

Ibn Hajar [al-'Asqalani] has dealt with different classes of Hadith in the Sharh Nukhbat al-Fikr at great length.  The most important division of Hadith is into mutawatir (continuous) and ahad (isolated).  A Hadith is said to be mutawatir (lit. repeated successively or by one after another) when it is reported by such a large number that it is impossible that they should have agreed upon falsehood, so that the very fact that it is commonly accepted makes its authority unquestionable.  To this category belong Hadith that have been accepted by every Muslim generation down from the time of the Holy Prophet.[52]  The mutawatir Hadith are accepted without criticizing their narrators.

A mutawatir hadith is one which is reported by such a large number of people that they cannot be expected to agree upon a lie, all of them together.

Al-Ghazali (d. 505) stipulates that a mutawatir narration be known by the sizeable number of its reporters equally in the beginning, in the middle and at the end.  He is correct in this stipulation because some narrations or ideas, although known as mutawatir among some people, whether Muslims or non-Muslims, originally have no tawatur.  There is no precise definition for a "large number of reporters"; although the numbers four, five, seven, ten, twelve, forty and seventy, among others, have all been variously suggested as a minimum, the exact number is irrelevant... [from Ibn Hajar al-'Asqalani, Sharh Nukhbah al-Fikr (ed. M 'Aud & M.G. Sabbagh, Damascus, 1410/1990, pp. 8-9]