International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities Research · Vol. 2 No. October Issue (2026)

Contemporary Problems in the Use of Solitary (Āḥād) Reports

Authors

  • Mukhlisa Narzullayeva Specialist of the Department for Women’s Affairs, Muslim Board of Uzbekistan, Tashkent, Uzbekistan, ORCID:0009-0002-0733-7741

Keywords

creed solitary report mass-transmitted report certainty probability Māturīdī doctrine theologians Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim samʿiyyāt

Abstract

The article examines the evidentiary standing of the solitary report (khabar al-āḥād) in the science of creed and the contemporary disputes that surround it. It sets out the division of reports into the mass-transmitted (mutawātir) and the solitary, establishes that the first yields necessary knowledge and certainty while the second yields strong probability (ẓann), and then distinguishes three positions held in this question: those who equate the solitary report with the mass-transmitted one and charge its deniers with unbelief; those who regard it as conveying probability and therefore as a supplementary rather than a foundational proof in creed, which is the position of the majority of the scholars of the people of the Sunna and the Community; and those who reject the solitary report altogether on the ground that the Qurʾān censures conjecture. The article shows, with reference to the two Qurʾānic usages of the word ẓann, that the censure of conjecture in the revealed text does not extend to the probability established by sound solitary reports, and it concludes that matters of creed that are fixed by decisive proof must be affirmed with certainty, whereas questions of the unseen treated in the chapter on the revealed reports (samʿiyyāt) admit the solitary report as a secondary proof.

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