The investigators have stated generalities through which recognizing which hadith being fabricated becomes feasible:
Its contradiction to the Qur’an and authentic successive Sunnah or decisive unanimity or determined rules of the Shari’ah, or to the rational proof, or to the senses and conspicuousness and all certainties. Or the hadith’s including temerities in regard of promise and threats, reward and punishment. Or its being contradictory to the rules brought by the clear Sunnah, or the hadith’s being invalid by itself, or its invalidity being established by correct evidences. Or the hadith’s being unlike the speech of prophets, or its being nearer to the speech of physicians, or its containing the chronicles of coming days, or its being awkward or a laughing-stock or other than this. Among them also are those traditions on whose baselessness several veracious evidences, or established knowledge experiments, or those ones that be poor in meaning.
Ibn Hajar al-Asqallani writes: From the word ‘poor’ the meaning is intended, and whenever it is found it indicates presence of fabrication, as this religion (Islam) comprises only good points, while poorness in wording never indicates this, due to the possibility that the hadith being reported according to meaning by the narrator who might exchange its words with non-eloquent ones.
Ibn al-Jawzi said: The disapproved hadith makes knowledge-seeker shudder, with causing his heart to have aversion to it, particularly that one using the terms of the law-maker, having experience in them, their splendour and resplendence.
He also said: When finding the hadith contrary to the reasonable or incongruous to the manqul (transmitted), or opposite to the usul (principles), only then you should know that it is fabricated.
Al-Rabi’ ibn Khaytham says: Hadith has a light identical to the daylight that is manifest for all, and a darkness like that of night that is ignored, (reported by al-Khatib).
Ibn Abi Hatam reported from Ibn Mas’ud as saying: Whenever I relate to you any hadith I verily give you an evidence confirming it from the Book of Allah.
Ibn Jubayr says: I never received any hadith with its shape, without finding its confirmation in the Book of Allah.233
Al-Bayhaqi reported on the authority of Ibn Abbas that he said: Whenever I relate to you any hadith from the Messenger of Allah, the confirmation of which you can never find in the Book,234 or it may seem good in the eyes of people, it will be verily false.235
It is out of scope here to enumerate all the composed traditions, of which Ibn al-Jawzi and al-Suyuti and others compiled numerous volumes, to which any knowledge-seeker can refer.
In his book Qawa’id al-tahdith, al-Qasimi has dedicated a section on the fabricated hadith, concluding it with two chapters, the titles and summary
