I was asked about the two following hadiths, which appear to contradict each other, with regards to the authenticity of their chains and the question of the content being at odds with each other:
On the authority of Abdullah ibn Mas’ud that the Prophet (pbuh) said, ‘The best of people are my generation, then those who come after them, then those who come after them’ (three or four times)….. (Agreed upon)
“My Ummah is like the rain: you don’t know whether its beginning is better, or its end.” (Narrated by Tirmidhi on the authority of Anas ibn Malik)
A: The first hadith is agreed upon by Bukhari and Muslim and speaks of the first three or four generations of Islam being better than all subsequent generations.
The second hadith suggests that a future generation (or generations) towards the end of time may be just as good or better than the first generations.
The second hadith is very weak, and imam Tirmidhi only quoted it to point out its weakness, at least with regard to the chain in which it goes back to Anas ibn Malik. It also comes in other sources via other Companions like Ammar bin Yasir and Imran bin al-Husain, all of which are weak and appear to the experts to be mistakes. What is authentic is the chain going back to the great follower al-Hasan al-Basri, who narrated it in a disconnected way (mursal), attributing it to God’s Messenger ﷺ without naming his source. The experts agree that the mursal narrations of al-Hasan al-Basri are extremely unreliable because al-Hasan al-Basri tooks hadiths from anyone and everyone. There is one weak narration in the Musnad of al-Bazzar, in which al-Hasan al-Basri names his source as the Companion Imran ibn al-Husayn (according to al-Bazzar, this is the best available fully-connected version). If this narration is correct, then the hadith would be authentic (although not according to the strict criteria of Bukhari and Muslim who did not rely on al-Hasan al-Basri’s narrations in their Sahih books). However, it is very unlikely that this narration is correct, and much more likely that it is a mistake, because this only comes via an unknown narrator, whereas many trustworthy narrators narrated it as disconnected from al-Hasan.
The meaning of the second hadith (if true):
Ibn Hibban argued that if the second hadith (of rain) is true, the first hadith (on the first three or four generations) shows that the hadith of rain does not refer to the entire future generation(s). Rather, it is to say that some people, not all, from that future generation(s) will be as good as the people from the early generations.
Ibn Abd al-Barr, who accepted the second hadith, argued (in his book al-Tamhid) that it means: that in the end of times, the reward of good actions by those holding on to their religion in times of difficulty and adversity will be similar to the reward of the early Muslims struggling to establish the religion against adversity.
Hadith discussion:
- The hadith of Anas:
This comes via Thabit al-Bunani the student of Anas. As imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal pointed out, the version narrated by Tirmidhi is a mistake by Hammad al-Abahh, who narrated it from Thabit from Anas from God’s Messenger ﷺ. This Hammad al-Abahh was known to make many mistakes as Imam Bukhari pointed out (See Uqayli’s book of weak narrators, who also quotes this hadith as an example of this narrator’s mistakes). The most trustworthy student of Thabit al-Bunani is Hammad ibn Salamah, and he narrated it from Thabit and two others, all three of whom heard it from al-Hasan al-Basri from God’s Messenger ﷺ (disconnected). [see Ibn Hanbal’s Kitab al-Ilal wa Ma’rifat al-Rijal (the transmission via his son Abdullah), vol. 3, pp. 314-5; see also Ibn Rajab’s commentary on Ilal al-Tirmidhi].
One weak narrator gave this hadith another chain to Anas via Imam Malik from al-Zuhri from Anas. This is a grave error as pointed out by Ibn Hibban, al-Daraqutni, and al-Dhahabi, and is in fact one of the mistakes used by the experts to discredit that narrator (see the discussion by Dr. Bashar bin Awwad). - The Hadith of Amr ibn al-As:
It is not authentic because it only comes via the very weak Abd al-Rahman bin Ziyad bin An’um (source) - The Hadith of Ammar ibn Yasir:
This is the hadith Ibn Hibban accepted. However, as we have seen, Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal rejected all versions except those going back to al-Hasan al-Basri. It is weak because it only comes via Fudayl bin Sulayman al-Numayri, who is not trustworthy (see: source; on this narrator being untrustworthy, see: source). - The Hadith of Imran bin Husayn:
In this version, the hadith goes back to al-Hasan al-Basri who narrated it from Imran bin Husayn from God’s Messenger ﷺ. According to Imam al-Bazzar, this is the best fully-connected chain for this hadith, but it suffers from the problem that it is only narrated back to this Companion from this single chain, and this chain is only narrated by Ismail bin Nasr, who does not have any support for it [see al-Bazzar’s comments in his Musnad]. This Ismail bin Nasr is unknown, and there is no known discussion of him by the hadith experts except one comment by Abu Hatim al-Razi who said, ‘He is someone who narrated some hadiths, but I did not write down anything from him. I do not see any major problems with his narrations.’ As such, someone unknown and of very little narrations like that being the only person giving this hadith a fully connected chain, when three very reliable students of al-Hasan al-Basri narrated it from him as disconnected, makes it extremely likely that this is a mistake, and extremely unlikely (but ultimately possible) that one student of al-Hasan al-Basri (Abbad ibn Rashid) heard his teacher quoting his source.
Therefore, as stated above, it is unlikely that this second hadith is authentic.
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