Formerly the stature of hadith was exalted. The throngs of hadith students were massive and the capabilities of the experts in the discipline and the transmitters of hadith were high.
Through their living the different sciences of hadith were made vital, through their continued existence the branches of various sub-disciplines of hadith were kept fresh and the abodes of hadith were occupied by its students. These students and experts have now died off and the sciences of hadith have been obliterated to such an extent that the practitioners in hadith are only a tiny band, few and weak in number.
For the most part, in taking up hadith they are concerned with nothing more than hearing them heedlessly, and in recording hadith they do not expend more effort than to write them down defectively. They toss aside the various sciences of hadith through which the strature of hadith became exalted and they have made themselves remote from the bodies of knowledge which made it magnificent. Just when someone examining a difficulty in the science of hadith could hardly find anyone capable of explaining it and someone who wanted to pursue the science of hadith could hardly come across anyone knowledgeable in it.