The Islamic Personality by Sheikh Taqīuddīn An-Nabahānī

The narrators of the Hadeeth are the Sahaabah, the Al Taabi'oun (the followers) and Taabi'ou Al Taabi'ine (the followers of the followers), and none other than them is considered to be from the narrators of the Hadeeth at all. That is guided to by the narration of the Tirmizthi from Ibn Omar that he said: Omar delivered a khutbah to us at the Jaabyah he said: O people, I stood in front of you like the standing of the Messenger of Allah (SAW) in front of us, He said: you command I to follow my companions then those who come after them then those who come after them then the lie gets spread" so He (SAW) occasioned the spreading of the lie by the extinction of the third (generation). So in the generation after, then the one after, until the resurrection day; the lie has spread as stated in this text. Al Bukhari narrated on the authority of Obaidah, from AbdAllah Ibn Mas'ood (mAbpwh) that the Messenger (SAW) said: the best people are my generation, then those who come after them, then those who come after them, then will come people the testimony of the one of them proceeds his oath, and his oath proceeds his testimony". He (Al Bukhari) also narrated on the authority of Imraan Ibn Al Husayn (mAbpwh) that he said: the :said) SAW (Allah of Messenger "ُ" The best of my nation are my generation then those who come after them, and then those who come after them, Imraan said: I don’t know whether He mentioned two generations or three after His generation. Then will come after you people who testify without being requested to do so, and they betray and can not be trusted, and they make vow (nazthr) and don’t carry out their nazthr, and fatness appears on them". So these ahaadeeth guide that the sayings of those who come after the three generations are object of accusation, which means that their narrations are not accepted. The three generations are the generation of the Sahabah, the Taabi'ine and the Taabi'y al Taabi'ine. Although these ahaadeeth are not explicit texts to limit the narration to those generations; they guide to that. But what determines that those are the only narrators of the Hadeeth is that the narration of the Hadeeth ends after the ahaadeeth got recorded in the books, so there is no narration of the Hadeeth after the time of registering the ahaadeeth in the books, and that is the time of Al Bukhari, Muslim and the other compilers of the Sunnah, that is because the narration is the transmission and this transmission had ended. Therefore, the narrators of the Hadeeth are the Sahabah, the Taabi'oun (the followers) and Taabi'ou Al Taabi'ine (the followers of the followers), because their narration ended by registering the ahaadeeth. It is true that some people said that the narrators of the Hadeeth are the Sahabah, the Taabi'oun and whoever below them; since there is no text prohibits the narration of the Hadeeth of the Messenger (SAW) until the resurrection day, but realistically there was no place for the narration nor for the narrators after the registration of the ahaadeeth and the ending of the transmission, and thereby the era of the narration has practically ended since the writing down of the ahaadeeth, i.e. the era of the Taabi'y al Taabi'ine, and therefore the practical narration of the Hadeeth is limited to those three eras: the era of the Sahabah: the era of the Taabi'ine and the era of Taabi'y Al Taabi'ine. The history of the narrators of the ahaadeeth verily got written, and every one of them is known and they are not infallible. But the narration of the Sahabah is accepted and they don’t need justification for what came in the Qur'aan and the Sunnah of praising them, and for the saying of the Messenger of Allah (SAW): "my companions are like the stars which ever one of them you imitate; you will be guided" narrated by Ruzayn, and it is a Hassan Hadeeth, the scholars and the jurisprudents accepted it and used it as they accepted this kind of Al Hadeeth Al Hassan, as the scholars of the Hadeeth terminology stated. Therefore the narration of the Sahabah is unrestrictedly accepted without any justification, as for other then the Sahabah; the condition for the one whose narration is accepted is to be just and knowledgeable of what he narrates.