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hadith

[hah-deeth]

hadith, a tradition or the collection of the traditions of Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, including his sayings and deeds, and his tacit approval of what was said or done in his presence. The term, which literally refers to an individual tradition, is also used as a synonym of sunna, the normative custom of the Prophet and his companions, and as the name of a scholarly discipline. Hadith, as a discipline, consists of two branches, the first concerned with the validation of the individual traditions through the process of biographic examination of its chain of transmitters back to the Prophet (isnad), and the second concentrating on the actual content of the validated traditions (matn) as a source of religious authority. Since the formalization of Islam, this source of authority has been viewed as second only to the Qur'an. Hadith currently exists in two main sets of collections, corresponding to the Sunni and Shiite division within Islam. Sunni Islam recognizes as authoritative the collections of Bukhari and Muslim followed in importance by those of Abu Dawud, Tirmidhi, an-Nasai, and Ibn Maja. Shiite Islam accepts only traditions traced through Ali's family. The major Shiite collections are those of al-Kulini, al-Babuya al-Qummi, and al-Tusi.

See W. A. Graham, Divine Word and Prophetic Word in Early Islam (1977); G. H. A. Juynboll, Muslim Tradition (1981).

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Licensed from Columbia University Press

Hadith

Hadith (الحديث , pl. aḥadīth; lit. "narrative") are oral traditions relating to the words and deeds of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Hadith collections are regarded as important tools for determining the Sunnah, or Muslim way of life, by all traditional schools of jurisprudence.

Definition and usage

Linguistically the word ‘hadith’ means: that which is new from amongst things or a piece of information conveyed either in a small quantity or large. The Arabic plural is . In English academic usage, hadith is often both singular and plural. And hadith is what is spoken by the speaker. Tahdith is the infinitive, or verbal noun, of the original verb form . Therefore, hadith is not the infinitive, rather it is a noun.

In Islamic terminology, the term hadith refers to reports about the statements or actions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, or about his tacit approval of something said or done in his presence. Classical hadith specialist Ibn Hajar says that the intended meaning of "hadith" in religious tradition is something attributed to Muhammad, as opposed to the Qur'an. Other associated words possess similar meanings: "khabar" (news, information) often refers to reports about Muhammad, but sometimes refers to traditions about his companions (sahāba) and their successors from the following generation (tābi'īn); conversely, "athar" (trace, vestige) usually refers to traditions about the companions and successors, though sometimes connotes traditions about Muhammad. The word sunnah (custom) is also used in reference to a normative custom of Muhammad or the early Muslim community.

Format

A hadith consists of two aspects: the text of the report (matn) containing the actual narrative; and the chain of narrators (isnad, or sanad), which documents the route by which the report has been transmitted. The "sanad" is so named due to the reliance of the hadith specialists upon it in determining the authenticity or weakness of a hadith. The sanad consists of a ‘chain’ of the narrators each mentioning the one from whom they heard the hadith until mentioning the originator of the matn along with the matn itself. The first people who received hadith were the companions; so they preserved and understood it, knowing both its generality and particulars, and then conveyed it to those after them as they were commanded. Then the generation following them, the Followers received it thus conveying it to those after them and so on. So the companion would say, “I heard the Prophet say such and such.” The Follower would then say, “I heard a companion say, ‘I heard the Prophet.’” The one after him (after the Follower) would then say, “I heard someone say, ‘I heard a Companion say, ‘I heard the Prophet …’’” and so on.

Overview

Hadiths were originally oral traditions of Muhammad's actions and customs. From the first Fitna of the 7th century people questioned the sources of hadiths. This resulted in a list of transmitters, for example "A told me that B told him that Muhammad said."

Hadith were eventually written down, evaluated and gathered into large collections mostly during the reign of Umar II (bin Abdul Aziz, grandson of Umar bin Khattab(RAA)2nd Caliph) during 8th century, and also in the 9th century. These works are referred to in matters of Islamic law and History to this day.

History

Traditions of the life of Muhammad and the early history of Islam were passed down orally for more than a hundred years after Muhammad's death in AD 632.

Muslim historians say that khalifa Osman (the third khalifa, or successor of Muhammad, who had formerly been Muhammad's secretary), was the first to urge Muslims to write the Qur'an in a fixed form, and to record the hadith.Osman's labours were cut short by his assassination, at the hands of aggrieved soldiers, in 656.

The Muslim community (ummah) then fell into a prolonged civil war, which Muslim historians call the Fitna. After the fourth khalifa Ali ibn Abi Talib was assassinated in 661, the Umayyad dynasty seized control of the Islamic empire. Ummayad rule was interrupted by a second civil war (the Second Fitna), re-established, and ended in 758 when the Abbasid dynasty seized the khilafat, and held it, at least in name, until 1258.

Muslim historians say that hadith collection and evaluation continued during the first Fitna and the Umayyad period. However, much of this activity was presumably oral transmission from early Muslims to later collectors, or from teachers to students. If any of these early scholars committed any of these collections to writing, they have not survived. The histories and hadith collections we have today were written down at the start of the Abbasid period, more than a hundred years after Muhammad's death.

Scholars of the Abbasid period were faced with a huge corpus of miscellaneous traditions, some of them flatly contradicting each other. Many of these traditions supported differing views on a variety of controversial matters. Scholars had to decide which hadith were to be trusted as authentic and which had been invented for political or theological purposes. To do this, they used a number of techniques which Muslims now call the science of hadith.

At the beginning of the 7th century, those receiving the hadith started to question the sources of the saying. The hadith were eventually recorded in written form, had their Isnad evaluated, and were gathered into large collections during the 8th century.

Use

The overwhelming majority of Muslims consider hadith to be essential supplements to and clarifications of the Qur'an, Islam's holy book. In Islamic jurisprudence, the Qur'an contains many rules for the behavior expected of Muslims but there are no specific Qur'anic rules on many religious and practical matters. Muslims believe that they can look at the way of life, or sunnah, of Muhammad and his companions to discover what to imitate and what to avoid. Muslim scholars also find it useful to know how Muhammad or his companions explained the revelations, or on what occasion Muhammad received them. Sometimes this will clarify a passage that otherwise seems obscure. Hadith are a source for Islamic history and biography. For the vast majority of devout Muslims, authentic hadith are also a source of religious inspiration.

Non-Muslim scholars note that there is a great overlap between the records of early Islamic traditions. Accounts of early Islam are also to be found in:

sira (biographies of Prophet Muhammad)
tafsir (exegesis on the Qur'an)
fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence)

Science of hadith

The science of hadith (Arabic: `Ulum al-hadith) is a method of textual criticism developed by early Muslim scholars in determining the veracity of reports attributed to Muhammad. This is achieved by analyzing the text of the report, the scale of the report's transmission, the routes through which the report was transmitted, and the individual narrators involved in its transmission. On the basis of these criteria, various classifications were devised for hadith. The earliest comprehensive work on the science of hadith was Abu Muhammad al-Ramahurmuzi's "al-Muhaddith", while another significant work was al-Hakim al-Naysaburi's "al-Ma`rifat `ulum al-hadith". Ibn al-Salah's "`Ulum al-hadith" is considered the standard classical reference on the science of hadith.

Hadith are generally categorized as sahīh (sound, authentic), da`īf (weak), or mawdū` (fabricated). Other classifications used also include: hasan (good), which refers to an otherwise sahīh report suffering from minor deficiency, or a weak report strengthened due to numerous other corroborating reports; and munkar (ignored) which is a report that is rejected due to the presence of a solitary and generally unreliable transmitter. Both sahīh and hasan reports are considered acceptable for usage in Islamic legal discourse. Classifications of hadith may also be based upon the scale of transmission. Reports that pass through many reliable transmitters at each point in the isnad up until their collection and transcription are known as mutawātir. These reports are considered the most authoritative as they pass through so many different routes that collusion between all of the transmitters becomes an impossibility. Reports not meeting this standard are known as ahad, and are of several different types.

Another area of focus in the study of hadith is biographical analysis (`ilm al-rijāl, lit. "science of people"), in which details about the transmitter are scrutinized. This includes analyzing their date and place of birth; familial connections; teachers and students; religiosity; moral behaviour; literary output; their travels; as well as their date of death. Based upon these criteria, the reliability (thiqāt) of the transmitter is assessed. Also determined is whether the individual was actually able to transmit the report, which is deduced from their contemporaneity and geographical proximity with the other transmitters in the chain. Examples of biographical dictionaries include Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani's "Tahdhīb al-Tahdhīb" or al-Dhahabi's "Tadhkirat al-huffāz.

Views

Currently there is little communication between the world of Muslim hadith scholarship and Western academia. Muslim scholars reject the Westerners as Orientalists who are hostile to religion in general and Islam in particular. Western academics tend to dismiss Muslim scholars as irrelevant, bound as they are to a millennia-old technique of hadith evaluations which modern scholarship regards as out-dated.

However, some Muslim scholars have undergone Western academic training and attempted to mediate between the traditional Muslim and the secular Western view. Notable among these was Fazlur Rahman Malik (1919-1988) who argued that while the chain of transmission of the hadith may often be spurious, the matn can still be used to understand how Islam can be lived in the modern world. Liberal movements within Islam tend to agree with Rahman's views to varying degrees.

Muslim view

Muslims who accept hadith believe that trusted hadith are in most cases the words of Muhammad and not the word of God, like the Qur'an. Hadith Qudsi forms a partial exception; these (few) hadith are said to recount divine revelations given to Muhammad but not included in the Qur'an. However, the words (as opposed to the substance) are believed to be Muhammad's own, and not divine.

While both hadith and Qur'an have been translated, most Muslims believe that translations of the Qur'an are inherently deficient, amounting to little more than a commentary upon the text. There is no such belief regarding hadith. Practicing Muslims cleanse themselves (wudu) before reading or reciting the Qur'an; there is no such requirement for reading or reciting the hadith. Even for Muslims who accept the hadith, they are lower in rank when compared to the Qur'an.

Muslims also use the Ahadith to interpret parts of the Qur'an when verses are not clear or even when verses are clear to achieve an in-depth understanding. This process is called Tafsir.

Sunni view

The Sunni canon of hadith took its final form more than 230 years after the death of Muhammad (632 AD). Later scholars may have debated the authenticity of particular hadith but the authority of the canon as a whole was not questioned. This canon, called the Six major Hadith collections, includes:

Name	Collector	Size
Sahih Bukhari	Imam Bukhari (d. 870)	7275 hadiths
Sahih Muslim	Muslim Ibn al-Hajjaj (d. 875)	included 9200
Sunan Abi Da'ud	Abu Da'ud (d. 888)
Sunan al-Tirmidhi	al-Tirmidhi (d. 892)
Sunan al-Sughra	al-Nasa'i (d. 915)
Sunan Ibn Maja	Ibn Maja (d. 886)

Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim are usually considered the most reliable of these collections. There is some debate over whether the sixth member of this canon should be Ibn Maja or the Muwatta of Imam Malik, which is the earliest hadith canon but predates much of the methodology developed by the classic hadith scholars.

While there are still many traditional Muslims who rely on the ulema and its long tradition of hadith collection and criticism, other contemporary Sunni Muslims are willing to reconsider tradition. Liberal Muslims are most apt to trust the individual conscience, but there are also Salafis who demand the same freedom. The Salafis claim that the ordinary believer can trust his or her own judgment (even if he or she is not trained in Islamic scholarship) if he or she relies on Bukhari and Muslim, the commentators deemed to be sahih, and ignores the weak hadith.

Shi'a view

Shi'a Muslims do not use the Six major Hadith collections followed by the Sunni because the majority of the companions who passed down these hadith (in the Six major Hadith collections) are considered to have erred by accepting the Caliphate of Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman in preference to Ali, and consequently, Shia believe, cannot be regarded as reliable transmitters of hadith. Shia trust traditions transmitted by the Imams, Muhammad's descendants through Fatima Zahra.

Although Twelver Shi'ism is by far the largest branch of Shi'i Islam, there are various branches within Shi'ism and within each branch, various traditions of scholarship. Each branch and scholar may differ as to the hadith to be accepted as reliable and those to be rejected.

Four prominent Twelver Shi'a hadith collections are written by three authors who are known as the `Three Muhammads`. They are:

Name	Collector	Size
Usul al-Kafi	Muhammad ibn Ya'qub al-Kulayni al-Razi(329 AH)	15,176 hadith
Man la yahduruhu al-Faqih	Muhammad ibn Babuya	9,044
Al-Tahdhib	Shaykh Muhammad Tusi	13,590
Al-Istibsar	Shaykh Muhammad Tusi	5,511

Unlike Akhbari Twelver Shi'a, Usuli Twelver Shi'a scholars do not believe that everything in the four major books are sahih. Every hadith must be individually examined through the process of ilm-ul-hadith. Any hadith that conflicts with the Quran or logic is excluded. Nizari Ismaili have a book of speeches of Ali called Qalam-e-Mowla. For Mustaali Ismaili, a book of hadith called Daim al-Islam narrates events of the Imams of the Fatimid Empire.

Ibadi view

Ibadi Islam (found mainly in the Arabian kingdom of Oman) accepts many Sunni hadith, while rejecting others, and accepts some hadith not accepted by Sunnis. Ibadi jurisprudence is based only on the hadith accepted by Ibadis, which are far less numerous than those accepted by Sunnis. Several of Ibadism's founding figures - in particular Jabir ibn Zayd - were noted for their hadith research, and Jabir ibn Zayd is accepted as a reliable narrator by Sunni scholars as well as Ibadi ones.

The principal hadith collection accepted by Ibadis is al-Jami'i al-Sahih, also called Musnad al-Rabi ibn Habib, as rearranged by Abu Ya'qub Yusuf b. Ibrahim al-Warijlani. A large proportion of its narrations are via Jabir ibn Zaid or Abu Yaqub; most are reported by Sunnis, while several are not. The total number of hadith it contains is 1005, and an Ibadi tradition recounted by al-Rabi has it that there are only 4000 authentic prophetic hadith. The rules used for determining the reliability of a hadith are given by Abu Ya'qub al-Warijlani, and are largely similar to those used by Sunnis; they criticize some of the companions, believing that some were corrupted after the reign of the first two caliphs. The Ibadi jurists accept hadith narrating the words of Muhammad's companions as a third basis for legal rulings, alongside the Qur'an and hadith relating Muhammad's words.

Non-Muslim views

Early Western exploration of Islam consisted primarily of translation of the Qur'an and a few histories, often supplemented with disparaging commentary. In the nineteenth century, scholars made greater attempts at impartiality, and translated and commented upon a greater variety of texts. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Western scholars of Islam started to critically engage with the Islamic texts, subjecting them to the same agnostic, searching scrutiny that had previously been applied to Christian texts (see higher criticism). Ignaz Goldziher is the best known of these turn-of-the-century iconoclasts, who also included D. S. Margoliuth, Henri Lammens, and Leone Caetani. Goldziher writes, in his Muslim Studies:

... it is not surprising that, among the hotly debated controversial issues of Islam, whether political or doctrinal, there is not one in which the champions of the various views are unable to cite a number of traditions, all equipped with imposing isnads

The next generations of Western scholars were also sceptics, on the whole: Joseph Schacht, in his Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence (1959), argued that isnads going back to Muhammad were in fact more likely to be spurious than isnads going back to the companions. John Wansbrough, in the 1970s, and his students Patricia Crone and Michael Cook were even more sweeping in their dismissal of Muslim tradition, arguing that even the Qur'an was likely to have been collected later than claimed.

Contemporary Western scholars of hadith include:

Herbert Berg, The Development of Exegesis in Early Islam (2000)
Fred M. Donner, Narratives of Islamic Origins (1998)
Wilferd Madelung, Succession to Muhammad (1997)

Madelung has immersed himself in the hadith literature and has made his own selection and evaluation of tradition. Having done this, he is much more willing to trust hadith than many of his contemporaries.

Some quotes:

Wilferd Madelung

work with the narrative sources, both those that have been available to historians for a long time and others which have been published recently, made it plain that their wholesale rejection as late fiction is unjustified and that with [not without] a judicious use of them, a much more reliable and accurate portrait of the period can be drawn than has been realized so far.

Harald Motzki:

the mere fact that ahadith and asanid were forged must not lead us to conclude that all of them are fictitious or that the genuine and the spurious cannot be distinguished with some degree of certainty.

Gregor Schoeler:

The current research on the life of Muhammad is characterized by the fact that two groups of researchers stand directly opposed to one another: The one group advocates, somewhat aggressively, the conviction that all transmitted traditions, in part because of great inner contradictions, legendary forms, and so forth, are to be rejected. The other group is opposed to that view. According to these researchers, the Islamic transmission, despite all these defects, has at least a genuine core, which can be recognized using the appropriate source-critical methods. The difficulty certainly consists of finding criteria by which the genuine is to be differentiated from the spurious.

Ignaz Goldziher was of the opinion that most hadiths had been invented by the transmitters to justify certain opinions of their own. According to him hadiths should not be seen as authentic historical accounts. Goldzihers suggestion has been refuted to a certain level by Fuat Sezgin. According to Fuat Sezgin most Hadiths are authentic.

Notes

References

Berg, H. (2000). The development of exegesis in early Islam: the authenticity of Muslim literature from the formative period. Routledge. ISBN 0700712240.
Lucas, S. (2004). Constructive Critics, Hadith Literature, and the Articulation of Sunni Islam. Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 9004133194.
Robinson, C. F. (2003). Islamic Historiography. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521629365.
Hadith. In Encyclopaedia of Islam Online Brill Academic Publishers. ISSN 1573-3912. .