Hadith: Difference between revisions

==Historians' views on the reliability of the hadith==

Ignác Goldziher, considered one of the "founder[s] of modern Islamic studies in Europe", wrote the following:

{{Quote|{{citation|author=Ignác Goldziher|year=1971|publisher=Allen and Unwin|volume=II|page=148|ISBN=|editor1=C.R. Barber|editor2=S.M. Stern|ISBN=9780042900094|title=Muslim Studies}}|It is not at all rare in the literature of traditions that sayings are ascribed to the Prophet which for a long time circulated in Islam under the authority of another name. So-called ''ahadith mawqufa'', i.e. sayings traced back to companions or even successors, were very easily transformed into ''ahadith marfu'a'', i.e. sayings traced back to the Prophet, by simply adding without much scruple a few names at random which were necessary to complete the chain.}}

Joseph Schacht, the leading scholar on the history of Islamic law during his time, wrote the following:

{{Quote|{{citation|author=Joseph Schacht|year=1979|page=3|publisher=Clarendon Press|ISBN=9780198253570|title=The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence}}|We shall have to conclude that, generally and broadly speaking, traditions from Companions and Successors are earlier than those from the Prophet.}}{{Quote|{{citation|author=Joseph Schacht|year=1979|page=149|publisher=Clarendon Press|ISBN=9780198253570|title=The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence}}|We shall not met any legal tradition from the prophet which can positively be considered authentic.}}{{Quote|{{citation|author=Joseph Schacht|year=1979|page=165|publisher=Clarendon Press|ISBN=9780198253570|title=The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence}}|[T]he backwards growth of the ''isnads'' in particular is identical with the projection of doctrines back to higher authorities. Generally speaking, we can say that the most perfect and complete ''isnads'' are the latest.}}

G.H.A. Juynboll was a leading scholar of hadith. His contributions to hadith studies have been called "substantial and groundbreaking"<ref>Brown, Jonathan A. C. (2008). "Book Reviews". ''Journal of Islamic Studies''. '''19''' (3): 391. doi:10.1093/jis/etn054. JSTOR 26200800.</ref>, and he has been called "talented and tireless".<ref>REINHART, A. KEVIN (2010). "Juynbolliana, Gradualism, the Big Bang, and Hadîth Study in the Twenty-First Century" (PDF). ''Journal of the American Oriental Society''. '''130''' (3): 417. Retrieved 4 June 2020.</ref>

{{Quote|{{citation|author=G.H.A. Juynboll|ISBN=9780511752155|title=Muslim Tradition: Studies in Chronology, Provenance and Authorship of Early Hadith|year=1983|page=5|url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/muslim-tradition/1C075FD8E0A868B1C8D1929CB90965BB|publisher=Cambridge University Press}}|In my view, before the institution of the isnad came into existence roughly three quarters of a century after the prophet’s death, the ''ahadith'' and the qisas (mostly legendary stories) were transmitted in a haphazard fashion if at all, and mostly anonymously. Since the isnad came into being, names of older authorities were supplied where the new isnad precepts required such. Often the names of well-known historical personalities were chosen but more often the names of ficti­tious persons were offered to fill the gaps in isnads which were as yet far from perfect.}}

Patricia Crone was the leading scholar of early Islamic history during her time and held academic positions at institutions including Princeton, Oxford, and Cambridge universities.

{{Quote|{{citation|author=Patricia Crone|publisher=Cambridge University Press|page=33|url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/roman-provincial-and-islamic-law/2096ACD8148FC23080C492300269441A|title=Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law: The Origins of the Islamic Patronate|ISBN=9780511522246|year=1987}}|Bukhari is said to have examined a total of 600,000 traditions attributed to the Prophet; he preserved some 7,000 (including repetitions), or in other words dis­missed some 593,000 as inauthentic. If Ibn Hanbal examined a similar number of traditions, he must have rejected about 570,000, his collection containing some 30,000 (again including repetitions). Of Ibn Hanbal’s traditions 1,710 (including repetitions) are transmitted by the Companion Ibn Abbas. Yet less than fifty years earlier one scholar had estimated that Ibn Abbas had only heard nine traditions from the Prophet, while another thought that lhe correct figure might be ten. If Ibn Abbas had heard ten traditions from the Prophet in tire years around 800, but over a thousand by about 850, how many had he heard in 700 or 632? Even if we accept that ten of Ibn Abbas’ traditions are authentic, how do we identify them in the pool of 1,710? We do not even know whether they are to be found in this pool, as opposed to that of the 530,000 traditions dis­missed on the ground that their chains of authorities were faulty. Under such cir­cumstances it is scarcely justified to presume Hadith to be authentic until the contrary has been proved.}}

Robert G. Hoyland, Professor of Late Antique and Early Islamic Middle Eastern History at New York University and a leading historian of early Islam, writes:

{{Quote|{{citation|author=Robert G. Hoyland|year=2015|publisher=Oxford University Press|url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/In_God_s_Path/i3LDBAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0|title=In God's Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire|pages=136-137|ISBN=9780199916368}}|Muhammad’s practice and legislation was of course important to his community: the Arabs “kept to the tradition of Muhammad, their instructor, to such an extent that they inflicted the death penalty on anyone who was seen to act brazenly against his laws,” says the seventh-century monk John of Fenek. But new laws, the Umayyads would argue, were the business of caliphs. Religious scholars soon began to challenge this view, as we have said, and some did this by claiming that the doings and sayings of Muhammad had been accurately transmitted to them. It was rare in the first couple of generations after Muhammad: “I spent a year sitting with ‘Umar I’s son ‘Abdallah (d. 693),” said one legal scholar, “and I did not hear him transmit anything from the prophet.” Not much later, though, the idea had won some grass-roots support, as we learn from another scholar, writing around 740, who observes: “I never heard Jabir ibn Zayd (d. ca. 720) say: ‘the prophet said. . .’ and yet the young men round here are saying it twenty times an hour.” A little later again Muhammad’s sayings would be put on a par with the Qur’an as the source of all Islamic law. In Mu‘awiya’s time, though, this was still far in the future, and for the moment caliphs made law, not scholars.}}

==See also==