we find the expressions differ greatly between what is agreeing with what was commonly known of speech of Arabs and what was unknown. Hadn't the case been another way, it was unjustifiable for the narrators to report hadith on basis of meaning, in contravention to the case with transmitting poetry and utterances of Arabs, as the intention in quoting them being the words not the meaning, as indicated by tongue rules. Hence the grammarians cared much for inference from the speech of Arabs reported from trustworthy men, leaving the traditions reported due to possibility of the narrator's perverting the wording of the hadith from the Arabic criterion (standard), the fact leading to base it on other than the origin, and that was one of the things they prohibited for safeguarding the tongue rules. If we make a glance at their ijtihad in taking from the Arabs we would be astonished, as it was not abominable in their view to refrain from inferring the Prophetic traditions and deducing from them. How is that while they used to depend upon the narrations reported by men of readings, from the Qur'anic words, since they paid much attention to reporting of words. Then he (al-Shatibi) said: I have never known any other one among the earlier grammarians be equal to him (Ibn Malik) but only Ibn Kharuf. It is probable that Ibn Malik has Allah knows better adopted the opinion of forbidding from narration of hadith through meaning outright, which is a weak notion refuted by the determined reporting of the same issues through different words, the fact that was not specified to the time of the Sahabah alone, not to the Arabs other than them. Whoever pondering over books of hadith will verily find a lot of such instances, with a large number of words that are perverted from their Arabic origin, to the extent leading to charge with error the narrators among the scrutinizing imams and ulama' knowledgeable of speech of Arabs, without distinguishing them from others. Al-Shaykh Abu Ishaq al-Shatibi says: Ibn Malik is surely not right in respect of this rule... etc. The dear reader may have noticed in this book abundance of quotations of utterances of leaders of grammar about this theme. That was
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