Documenting Hadith Narrators in Certain Cases according to Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal and Its Effect on Judging Their Narratives

This research tackles the documentation of a weak narrator in certain cases and specific bodies, and its impact on judging the narrator, determining his rank, knowing the degree of hadiths authenticity, distinguishing hadiths, and investigating all that in the light of Imam Ahmad's extrapolation of sayings and rulings, which are among the oldest sources on hadith weaknesses and narrators. These compilations are a major reference for those who came after him, and for the classifications that adopted collecting his sayings, questions of his students to him, the analysis of those sayings and conclusions drawn from his sayings, highlighting its implications, and comparing that with that of other hadith narrators and critics. This matter is one of the most majestic issues of hadith sciences that should be well taken care of and singled out for classification, due to the need for it in weighing hadith authenticity and its narrators. The research has showed the need to take care of relative documentation that is associated with a sheikh, student, place, time, or others, because of its great impact on the narrator and the narrative, what is narrated. It is imperative to consider these aspects when judging narrators and hadiths. Some narrators according to Imam Ahmad may be in a different situation as their sheikh's circumstances are different, or different place of their narrative, or time difference of narration. The author has tracked down these aspects and has compared them with other opinions of hadith critics who may agree or disagree with him. The research has also showed that Imam Ahmad had done relative documentation of some narrators comparing himself to other narrators. The researcher has concluded that most of these relative documenters are peers in terms of age and hadith memorization, and that their authenticity ranks are similar to each other. Hadith narrators and critics may differ with Imam Ahmad in this comparison, or agree with him.