Hadith

Hadith (/ˈhædɪθ/ or /hɑːˈdiːθ/; Arabic: حديث ḥadīṯ, plural: أحاديث, ʼaḥādīṯ) are the collections of the reports claiming to quote what the prophet Muhammad said verbatim on any matter. The term comes from the Arabic meaning "report", "account" or "narrative". Hadiths are second only to the Quran in developing Islamic jurisprudence, and regarded as important tools for understanding the Quran and commentaries (tafsir) on it. Many important elements of traditional Islam such as five salat prayers, the abhorrence of paintings and sculpture of living things, stoning adulterers, are mentioned in hadith but not the Quran. Some hadith are neutral in the view of Muslims while sunnah is recommended duty for Muslims.

The hadith literature is based on spoken reports that were in circulation in society after the death of Muhammad. Unlike the Quran itself, which was compiled under the official direction of the early Islamic State in Medinah, the hadith reports were not compiled by a central authority. Hadith were evaluated and gathered into large collections during the 8th and 9th centuries, generations after the death of Muhammad, after the end of the era of the "rightful" Rashidun Caliphate, over 1000 km from where Muhammad lived.

Each hadith is based on two parts, a chain of narrators reporting the hadith (isnad), and the text itself (matn). Individual hadith are classified by Muslim clerics and jurists as sahih ("authentic"), hasan ("good") or da'if ("weak"). However, there is no overall agreement: different groups and different individual scholars may classify a hadith differently.

Different branches of Islam (Sunni, Shia, Ibadi, Ahmadiyya) refer to different collections of hadith, and the small heterodox Quranists, reject the authority of the hadith collections.

Etymology

In Arabic, the word ḥadīth (Arabic: حديث ḥadīth  IPA: [ħaˈdiːθ]) means a "report, account, narrative". The Arabic plural is ʾaḥādīth (أحاديث) (IPA: [ʔaħaːˈdiːθ]). Hadith also refers to the speech of a person. It is a noun.

Definition

In Islamic terminology according to Juan Campo, the term hadith refers to reports of statements or actions of Muhammad, or of his tacit approval or criticism of something said or done in his presence, though some sources (Khaled Abou El Fadl) limit hadith to verbal reports and include the deeds of Muhammad and reports about his companions only in the Sunnah.

Classical hadith specialist Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani says that the intended meaning of hadith in religious tradition is something attributed to Muhammad but that is not found in the Quran. Other associated words possess similar meanings including: khabar (news, information) often refers to reports about Muhammad, but sometimes refers to traditions about his companions and their successors from the following generation; 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.

See also: Categories of Ahadith

Components

The two major aspects of a hadith are the text of the report (the matn), which contains the actual narrative, and the chain of narrators (the isnad), which documents the route by which the report has been transmitted. The sanad, literally 'support', is so named due to the reliance of the hadith specialists upon it in determining the authenticity or weakness of a hadith. The isnad consists of a chronological list 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 to hear hadith were the companions who preserved it and then conveyed it to those after them. Then the generation following them received it, thus conveying it to those after them and so on. So a 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 would then say, "I heard someone say, 'I heard a Companion say, 'I heard the Prophet..." and so on.

Different schools

Different branches of Islam refer to different collections of hadith, though the same incident may be found in hadith in different collections:

• In the Sunni branch of Islam, the canonical hadith collections are the six books, of which Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim generally have the highest status. The other books of hadith are Sunan Abu Dawood, Jami` at-Tirmidhi, Al-Sunan al-Sughra and Sunan ibn Majah. However the Malikis, one of the four Sunni "schools of thought" (madhhabs), traditionally reject Sunan ibn Majah and assert the canonical status of Muwatta Imam Malik. The Fath al-Bari commentary on Sahih al-Bukhari and Al-Nawawi's commentary on Sahih Muslim are studied alongside the hadith, although they are sharh and not part of the hadith themselves.
• In the Shi'a branch of Islam, the canonical hadith collections are the Four Books: Kitab al-Kafi, Man la yahduruhu al-Faqih, Tahdhib al-Ahkam, and Al-Istibsar.
• In the Ibadi branch of Islam, the main canonical collection is the Tartib al-Musnad. This is an expansion of the earlier Jami Sahih collection, which retains canonical status in its own right.
• The Ahmadiyya branch of Islam generally relies on Sunni hadith collections.

Some minor heterodox groups, collectively known as Quranists, reject the authority of the hadith collections.

The hadith also had a profound and controversial influence on moulding the commentaries (tafsir) on the Quran. The earliest commentary of the Quran by Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari is mostly sourced from the hadith. The hadith was used in forming the basis of 'Shariah' law. Much of early Islamic history available today is also based on the hadith and is challenged for lack of basis in primary source material and contradictions based on secondary material available.

History, tradition and usage

History

Traditions of the life of Muhammad and the early history of Islam were passed down mostly orally for more than a hundred years after Muhammad's death in AD 632. Muslim historians say that Caliph Uthman ibn Affan (the third khalifa (caliph) of the Rashidun Empire, or third successor of Muhammad, who had formerly been Muhammad's secretary), is generally believed to urge Muslims to record the hadith just as Muhammad suggested to some of his followers to write down his words and actions.

Uthman's labours were cut short by his assassination, at the hands of aggrieved soldiers, in 656. No sources survive directly from this period so we are dependent on what later writers tell us about this period.

According to British historian of Arab world Alfred Guillaume, it is "certain" that "several small collections" of hadith were "assembled in Umayyad times."

In 851 the rationalist Mu`tazila school of thought fell from favor in the Abbasid Caliphate. The Mu`tazila, for whom the "judge of truth ... was human reason," had clashed with traditionists who looked to the literal meaning of the Quran and hadith for truth. While the Quran had been officially compiled and approved, hadiths had not. One result was the number of hadiths began "multiplying in suspiciously direct correlation to their utility" to the quoter of the hadith (Traditionists quoted hadith warning against listening to human opinion instead of Sharia; Hanafites quoted a hadith stating that "In my community there will rise a man called Abu Hanifa [the Hanafite founder] who will be its guiding light". In fact one agreed upon hadith warned that, "There will be forgers, liars who will bring you hadiths which neither you nor your forefathers have heard, Beware of them.") In addition the number of hadith grew enormously. While Malik ibn Anas had attributed just 1720 statements or deeds to the Prophet Muhammad, it was no longer unusual to find find people who had collected a hundred times that number of hadith.

Faced with a huge corpus of miscellaneous traditions supported differing views on a variety of controversial matters—some of them flatly contradicting each other—Islamic scholars of the Abbasid sought to authenticate hadith. 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.

Shia and Sunni textual traditions

Sunni and Shia hadith collections differ because scholars from the two traditions differ as to the reliability of the narrators and transmitters. Narrators who took the side of Abu Bakr and Umar rather than Ali, in the disputes over leadership that followed the death of Muhammad, are seen as unreliable by the Shia; narrations sourced to Ali and the family of Muhammad, and to their supporters, are preferred. Sunni scholars put trust in narrators, such as Aisha, whom Shia reject. Differences in hadith collections have contributed to differences in worship practices and shari'a law and have hardened the dividing line between the two traditions.

Extent and nature in the Sunni tradition

In the Sunni tradition, the number of such texts is ten thousand plus or minus a few thousand. But if, say, ten companions record a text reporting a single incident in the life of the prophet, hadith scholars can count this as ten hadiths. So Musnad Ahmad, for example, has over 30,000 hadiths—but this count includes texts that are repeated in order to record slight variations within the text or within the chains of narrations. Identifying the narrators of the various texts, comparing their narrations of the same texts to identify both the soundest reporting of a text and the reporters who are most sound in their reporting occupied experts of hadith throughout the 2nd century. In the 3rd century of Islam (from 225/840 to about 275/889), hadith experts composed brief works recording a selection of about two- to five-thousand such texts which they felt to have been most soundly documented or most widely referred to in the Muslim scholarly community. The 4th and 5th century saw these six works being commented on quite widely. This auxiliary literature has contributed to making their study the place of departure for any serious study of hadith. In addition, Bukhari and Muslim in particular, claimed that they were collecting only the soundest of sound hadiths. These later scholars tested their claims and agreed to them, so that today, they are considered the most reliable collections of hadith. Toward the end of the 5th century, Ibn al-Qaisarani formally standardized the Sunni canon into six pivotal works, a delineation which remains to this day.

Over the centuries, several different categories of collections came into existence. Some are more general, like the muṣannaf, the muʿjam, and the jāmiʿ, and some more specific, either characterized by the topics treated, like the sunan (restricted to legal-liturgical traditions), or by its composition, like the arbaʿīniyyāt (collections of forty hadiths).

Extent and nature in the Shia tradition

Shi'a Muslims do not use the six major hadith collections followed by the Sunni, as they do not trust many of the Sunni narrators and transmitters. They have their own extensive hadith literature. The best-known hadith collections are The Four Books, which were compiled by three authors who are known as the 'Three Muhammads'. The Four Books are: Kitab al-Kafi by Muhammad ibn Ya'qub al-Kulayni al-Razi (329 AH), Man la yahduruhu al-Faqih by Muhammad ibn Babuya and Al-Tahdhib and Al-Istibsar both by Shaykh Muhammad Tusi. Shi'a clerics also make use of extensive collections and commentaries by later authors.

Unlike Sunnis, Shia do not consider any of their hadith collections to be sahih (authentic) in their entirety. Therefore, every individual hadith in a specific collection must be investigated separately to determine its authenticity.

Today usage

The mainstream sects consider hadith to be essential supplements to, and clarifications of, the Quran, Islam's holy book, as well as for clarifying issues pertaining to Islamic jurisprudence. Ibn al-Salah, a hadith specialist, described the relationship between hadith and other aspect of the religion by saying: "It is the science most pervasive in respect to the other sciences in their various branches, in particular to jurisprudence being the most important of them." "The intended meaning of 'other sciences' here are those pertaining to religion," explains Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, "Quranic exegesis, hadith, and jurisprudence. The science of hadith became the most pervasive due to the need displayed by each of these three sciences. The need hadith has of its science is apparent. As for Quranic exegesis, then the preferred manner of explaining the speech of God is by means of what has been accepted as a statement of Muhammad. The one looking to this is in need of distinguishing the acceptable from the unacceptable. Regarding jurisprudence, then the jurist is in need of citing as an evidence the acceptable to the exception of the later, something only possible utilizing the science of hadith."

Studies

Main article: Hadith studies

Hadith studies use a number of methods of evaluation 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 in hadith studies was Abu Muhammad al-Ramahurmuzi's al-Muhaddith al-Fasil, while another significant work was al-Hakim al-Naysaburi's Ma‘rifat ‘ulum al-hadith. Ibn al-Salah's ʻUlum al-hadith is considered the standard classical reference on hadith studies.

Terminology: admissible and inadmissible hadiths

Main article: Hadith terminology

By means of hadith terminology, hadith are categorized as ṣaḥīḥ (sound, authentic), ḍaʿīf (weak), or mawḍūʿ (fabricated). Other classifications used also include: ḥasan (good), which refers to an otherwise ṣaḥīḥ report suffering from minor deficiency, or a weak report strengthened due to numerous other corroborating reports; and munkar (denounced) which is a report that is rejected due to the presence of an unreliable transmitter contradicting another more reliable narrator. 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 aahad, and are of several different types.

Some hadith are also called hadith qudsi (sacred hadith), Like Ziyarat Ashura. It is a sub-category of hadith which some Muslims regard as the words of God (Arabic: Allah). According to as-Sayyid ash-Sharif al-Jurjani, the hadith qudsi differ from the Quran in that the former are "expressed in Muhammad's words", whereas the latter are the "direct words of God". However, note that a hadith qudsi is not necessarily sahih, it can also da‘if or even mawdu‘.

An example of a hadith qudsi is the hadith of Abu Hurairah who said that Muhammad said:

When God decreed the Creation He pledged Himself by writing in His book which is laid down with Him: My mercy prevails over My wrath.

Biographical evaluation

Main article: Biographical evaluation

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: Abd al-Ghani al-Maqdisi's Al-Kamal fi Asma' al-Rijal, Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani's Tahdhīb al-Tahdhīb and al-Dhahabi's Tadhkirat al-huffaz.

Criticism

See also: Criticism of Hadith § Criticism of the Hadith by Muslims, and Quranism

Authenticity

Professor Wael Hallaq has argued that the most central problem associated with Prophetic hadith has undoubtedly been their authenticity. By the 11th century Islamic scholars began to question the "Sahih" hadith, and Al-Nawawi argued that any hadith which is not classed as "mutawatir" (multiple independent chains of narration with the highest probabilistic chance of being authentic) can not attain the level of certainty. On the other hand Ibn al-Salah argued that if a hadith is present in both the Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim collections, then it can be considered "certain knowledge," merely based on the fact that both of these collections are regarded by Muslims has authoritative. Hallaq terms the consequences of Ibn al-Salah's argument as follows:

The implications of ignoring lines of transmission and the character of transmitters as the established criteria of proof in favour of an extraneous method of evaluation are grave. For Ibn al-Salah's position amounts in effect to arguing that the Muslim community, in and by itself, is empowered to legislate, by elevating, for instance, the status of a source of law from a level of probability to certainty. More importantly, his argument, once taken to its logical conclusion, destroys the very foundations of consensus as a source of law, since, as I have shown elsewhere, it traps it in the insoluble quandary of a petitio principii.

— Wael Hallaq

Ibn al-Salah was reproached by other Islamic scholars, like Abd al-Salam for this approach. The problem; however, which Ibn al-Salah was trying to solve is the rarity of this class of hadith which qualify as "mutawatir." In fact, this class of hadith is "virtually non existent." Saleh himself had stated that:

He who is asked to produce an example of a hadith that is transmitted in a mutawdatir [fashion] will be exhausted by his search.

— Ibn al-Salah

Such hadiths are so rare that Ibn al-Salah could only find a single hadith which met the mutawatir criteria in his own search. Ironically, that hadith found by Ibn al-Salah, which is narrated by a hundred independent sources, quotes the Prophet warning others against the fabrication of hadith. Later Islamic legal theoreticians, like Ansari and Abd al-Shakur managed to find a few additional cases of mutawatir hadith. Still, the total number of mutawatir narrations was still "short of even eight or nine." This small set also does not include the hadith which alleges the infallibility of Muslim Community's consensus, which is classed as "tawatur ma nawi", a lower probabilistic reliability rating than mutawatir. Hallaq further argues against Ibn al-Salah's argument (regarding accepting those hadiths as certain, which are present in both Bukhari and Muslim,) as it "cannot be taken seriously by modern scholars" based on the fact that such a claim was even controversial among a significant majority of Muslim scholars for logical and epidemiological reasons, as well as the fact that it is theological in nature and can not be evaluated according to the standard established by Muslim traditionists themselves.

Professor Israr Khan has focused on Sahih hadith, and has criticized the traditional methods used to establish their authenticity, which rely almost entirely on the personal characters of the reported narrators, without paying enough attention to the actual content of the hadith being evaluated. Ahmed claims that even the most well regarded compilers of hadith, such as Bukhari, did not examine the actual text of the hadith they were compiling, against any universal criteria, as they were convinced that establishing authenticity of the chain of narration equaled proving the authenticity of the text itself. Such a criteria of compilation brings up obvious problems, such as contradictory accounts of an event being included in the same collection, because both accounts were reported to have reliable narrators.]] has argued that the most central problem associated with Prophetic hadith has undoubtedly been their authenticity. By the 11th century Islamic scholars began to question the "Sahih" hadith, and Al-Nawawi argued that any hadith which is not classed as "mutawatir" (multiple independent chains of narration with the highest probabilistic chance of being authentic) can not attain the level of certainty. On the other hand Ibn al-Salah argued that if a hadith is present in both the Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim collections, then it can be considered "certain knowledge," merely based on the fact that both of these collections are regarded by Muslims has authoritative. Hallaq terms the consequences of Ibn al-Salah's argument as follows:

The implications of ignoring lines of transmission and the character of transmitters as the established criteria of proof in favour of an extraneous method of evaluation are grave. For Ibn al-Salah's position amounts in effect to arguing that the Muslim community, in and by itself, is empowered to legislate, by elevating, for instance, the status of a source of law from a level of probability to certainty. More importantly, his argument, once taken to its logical conclusion, destroys the very foundations of consensus as a source of law, since, as I have shown elsewhere, it traps it in the insoluble quandary of a petitio principii.

— Wael Hallaq

Ibn al-Salah was reproached by other Islamic scholars, like Abd al-Salam for this approach. The problem; however, which Ibn al-Salah was trying to solve is the rarity of this class of hadith which qualify as "mutawatir." In fact, this class of hadith is "virtually non existent." Saleh himself had stated that:

He who is asked to produce an example of a hadith that is transmitted in a mutawdatir [fashion] will be exhausted by his search.

— Ibn al-Salah

Such hadiths are so rare that Ibn al-Salah could only find a single hadith which met the mutawatir criteria in his own search. Ironically, that hadith found by Ibn al-Salah, which is narrated by a hundred independent sources, quotes the Prophet warning others against the fabrication of hadith. Later Islamic legal theoreticians, like Ansari and Abd al-Shakur managed to find a few additional cases of mutawatir hadith. Still, the total number of mutawatir narrations was still "short of even eight or nine." This small set also does not include the hadith which alleges the infallibility of Muslim Community's consensus, which is classed as "tawatur ma nawi", a lower probabilistic reliability rating than mutawatir. Hallaq further argues against Ibn al-Salah's argument (regarding accepting those hadiths as certain, which are present in both Bukhari and Muslim,) as it "cannot be taken seriously by modern scholars" based on the fact that such a claim was even controversial among a significant majority of Muslim scholars for logical and epidemiological reasons, as well as the fact that it is theological in nature and can not be evaluated according to the standard established by Muslim traditionists themselves.

Professor Israr Khan has focused on Sahih hadith, and has criticized the traditional methods used to establish their authenticity, which rely almost entirely on the personal characters of the reported narrators, without paying enough attention to the actual content of the hadith being evaluated. Ahmed claims that even the most well regarded compilers of hadith, such as Bukhari, did not examine the actual text of the hadith they were compiling, against any universal criteria, as they were convinced that establishing authenticity of the chain of narration equaled proving the authenticity of the text itself. Such a criteria of compilation brings up obvious problems, such as contradictory accounts of an event being included in the same collection, because both accounts were reported to have reliable narrators.

Islamic scholars through history

Early criticism of the Hadith predates the time of Al-Shafii (d. 204 AH/820 CE) and is found in a text that Muslim tradition holds to be a letter from the Kharijite Abd Allah Ibn Ibad to the Caliph Abd al-Malik in 76/695. Though the authorship and dating of this letter are in some dispute, it still predates al-Shafii and its importance as a challenge to the authority of the Hadith remains undented. A key passage of this letter criticizes the Kufans for taking "Hadiths" for their religion abandoning the Quran. "They believed in a book which was not from God, written by the hands of men; they then attributed it to the Messenger of God." A group referred to as Ahl al-Kalam, who lived during the time of Al-Shafii and mentioned in his Kitab Jima al-Ilm rejected the Hadith on theological grounds. Their basic argument was that the Quran was an explanation of everything (16:89). They contended that obedience to the Prophet was contained in obeying only the Qur'an that God has sent down to him, and that when the Qur'an mentioned the Book together with Wisdom, the Wisdom was the specific rulings of the Book." Daniel Brown notes that the principal argument of Ahl al-Kalam was that the Hadith does not accurately reflect the Prophetic example, as the transmission of Hadith reports was not reliable. The Prophetic example, they argued, "has to be found elsewhere – first and foremost in following the Qur’an." And according to them, "the corpus of Hadith is filled with contradictory, blasphemous, and absurd traditions."

Mutazilites, who represented one of the earliest rationalist Muslim theological schools, and are the later Ahl al-Kalam, also viewed the transmission of the Prophetic sunnah as not sufficiently reliable. The Hadith, according to them, was mere "guesswork and conjecture" and "the Quran was complete and perfect, and did not require the Hadith or any other book to supplement or complement it."

Syed Ahmed Khan (1817–1898) is often considered the founder of the modernist movement within Islam, noted for his application of "rational science" to the Quran and Hadith and his conclusion that the Hadith were not legally binding on Muslims. He "questioned the historicity and authenticity of many, if not most, traditions, much as the noted scholars Ignaz Goldziher and Joseph Schacht would later do." He doubted Hadith compilers’ capacity to judge the character of Hadith transmitters of several past generations involved in oral Hadith transmission, and notes, "it is difficult enough to judge the character of living people, let alone long dead. The muhaddithun [Hadith scholars/transmitters] did the best they could, but their task was almost impossible." His student, Chiragh ‘Ali, went further, suggesting nearly all the Hadith were fabrications.

Ghulam Ahmed Pervez (1903–1985), notes, “No steps were taken by the Prophet or by his immediate followers to preserve the integrity of Hadith.”

The 1986 Malaysian book "Hadith: A Re-evaluation" by Kassim Ahmad was met with controversy and some scholars declared him an apostate from Islam for suggesting that "the hadith are sectarian, anti-science, anti-reason and anti-women".

Western academic scholarship

Early Western exploration of Islam consisted primarily of translation of the Qur'an and a few histories. In the 19th century, scholars translated and commented upon a great variety of Muslim religious texts; by the beginning of the 20th century, Western scholars of Islam started to critically engage with these Islamic texts. Ignaz Goldziher is the best known of these turn-of-the-century critics, who also included D. S. Margoliuth, Henri Lammens, and Leone Caetani. Goldziher writes, in his Mohammedan 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".

John Esposito notes that "Modern Western scholarship has seriously questioned the historicity and authenticity of the hadith", maintaining that "the bulk of traditions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad were actually written much later." He mentions Joseph Schacht as one scholar who argues this, claiming that Schacht "found no evidence of legal traditions before 722," from which Schacht concluded that "the Sunna of the Prophet is not the words and deeds of the Prophet, but apocryphal material" dating from later.

Contemporary Western scholars of hadith include Herbert Berg, Fred M. Donner, Patricia Crone, John Burton, and Wilfred Madelung. Crone noted that early traditionalists were "still developing the conventions of the isnad" and provided isnads that by later standards were sketchy/deficient though they were closer to the historical material. Later hadith, though they possessed "impeccable isnads", were more likely to be fabricated.

John Burton in his book The collection of the Quran (1977) argues that certain hadith which are widely accepted and used as a basis for formulating Sharia Law, were invented and forged to provide legal cover for the efforts to preserve the status-quo favoring the political elite.

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. Madelung said of hadith: "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 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 said: "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."

See also

• Prophetic biography
• List of hadith authors and commentators
• Table Talk (Luther), a collection of sayings of Martin Luther

References

• Kadri, Sadakat (2012). Heaven on Earth: A Journey Through Shari'a Law from the Deserts of Ancient Arabia ... macmillan. pp. 78–9. ISBN 9780099523277.

Bibliography

• Berg, H. (2000). The development of exegesis in early Islam: the authenticity of Muslim literature from the formative period. Routledge. ISBN 0-7007-1224-0.
• Lucas, S. (2004). Constructive Critics, Hadith Literature, and the Articulation of Sunni Islam. Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 90-04-13319-4.
• Robinson, C. F. (2003). Islamic Historiography. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-62936-5.
• Robson, J. "Hadith". In P.J. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs (ed.). Encyclopaedia of Islam Online. Brill Academic Publishers. ISSN 1573-3912.{{cite encyclopedia}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)
• Swarup, Ram. Understanding Islam through Hadis. Exposition Press, Smithtown, New York USA (n/d).
• Brown, Jonathan A. C. (2004). "Criticism of the Proto-Hadith Canon: Al-daraqutni's Adjustment of the Sahihayn". Journal of Islamic Studies. 15 (1): 1–37. doi:10.1093/jis/15.1.1.
• Recep Senturk, Narrative Social Structure: Anatomy of the Hadith Transmission Network, 610-1505 (Stanford, Stanford UP, 2006).
• Jonathan Brown, The Canonization of al-Bukhārī and Muslim. The Formation and Function of the Sunnī Ḥadīth (Leiden, Brill, 2007) (Islamic History and Civilization. Studies and Texts, 69).

Further reading

• 1000 Qudsi Hadiths: An Encyclopedia of Divine Sayings; New York: Arabic Virtual Translation Center; (2012) ISBN 978-1-4700-2994-4
• Hallaq, Wael B. (1999). "The Authenticity of Prophetic Ḥadîth: A Pseudo-Problem". Studia Islamica (89): 75–90. doi:10.2307/1596086. ISSN 0585-5292. JSTOR 1596086.
• Brown, J. (2007). The Canonization of al-Bukhari and Muslim: The Formation and Function of the Sunni Hadith Canon. Leiden: Brill, 2007.
• Juynboll, G. H. A. (2007). Encyclopedia of Canonical Hadith. Leiden: Brill, 2007.
• Lucas, S. (2002). The Arts of Hadith Compilation and Criticism. University of Chicago. OCLC 62284281.
• Musa, A. Y. Hadith as Scripture: Discussions on The Authority Of Prophetic Traditions in Islam, New York: Palgrave, 2008. ISBN 0-230-60535-4
• Fred M. Donner, Narratives of Islamic Origins (1998)
• Warner, Bill. The Political Traditions of Mohammed: The Hadith for the Unbelievers, CSPI (2006). ISBN 0978552873
• Tottoli, Roberto, "Hadith", in Muhammad in History, Thought, and Culture: An Encyclopedia of the Prophet of God (2 vols.), Edited by C. Fitzpatrick and A. Walker, Santa Barbara, ABC-CLIO, 2014, Vol I, pp. 231–236.

External links

• Importance of hadith
• Hadith – Search by keyword and find hadith by narrator
• Hadith by Narrator – Find hadith by narrators
• Hadith Advanced Search – Search by keyword
• "Hadith" . New International Encyclopedia. 1905.
• "Hadis" . Encyclopedia Americana. 1920.