_ living islam : Islamic tradition _ https://www.livingislam.org/ Reliability Of Hadith Chains In Various Books May Allah most High shower His blessings on this Umma on this blessed occasion and make this month a month of goodness and universal mercy. Q: > Regarding those texts whose author has included in them the chain of > transmission of each narration cited, should one assume that the author > found the chain to be sound by virtue of him citing the chain? Or do they > cite them so that their students can check them? A: The latter. Q: > Are there some books whose author clearly did not care about what kind of > narrations he included in them? If you could name a few of the common > ones it would be greatly appreciated as I would like to avoid such books. A: There are too many to list in a brief answer but, generally speaking, the books of the Shi`a in hadith, tafsir and fiqh, by the standards of Ahl al-Sunna, meet the above description. In the Sunni heritage there are various reasons for which forgeries crept into the compilations such as doctrine (e.g. counter-Jahmi forgeries in al-Sunna attributed to `Abd Allah ibn Ahmad ibn Hanbal or al-`Arsh by Abu Ja`far Ibn Abi Shayba, counter-Shi`i forgeries in Tarikh Dimashq by Ibn `Asakir etc.), or tasawwuf (e.g. Qut al-Qulub, Ihya' `Ulum al-Din, al-Ghunya, etc.), or inclusion of Israelite reports such as in many Tafsirs including al-Wahidi's, al-Zamakhshari's, al-Tha`alibi's... My introduction to Mulla `Ali al-Qari's Dictionary of Forgeries covers this field of knowledge with many examples and documentation of the literature in that regard, which hopefully will help form a culture of awareness as to what is primarily reliable or otherwise for the English-speaking public, in sha Allah. GF Haddad 2008-12-08