The overall route-based division of reports can be laid out as follows:
1. Mutawatir — all requirements of tawatur are fulfilled and the relevant certainty results.
2. Mashhur — more than two independent routes but below tawatur.
3. Aziz — no solitary point in the relevant chains and a minimum of two at a bottleneck.
4. Gharib — a single transmitter is alone at some specified point.
«وَكُلُّهَا أَيْ أَيِ الْأَقْسَامِ الْأَرْبَعَةِ الْمَذْكُورَةِ سِوَى الْأَوَّلِ وَهُوَ الْمُتَوَاتِرُ آحَادٌ»
Of these four categories, all except the first, mutawatir, fall within ahad.
The scheme shows that ahad includes different degrees of route multiplicity. The numeral “one” in the technical name should not be read as requiring exactly one narrator in every case.