Hadith

Hadith (/ˈhædɪθ/ or /hɑːˈdiːθ/; Arabic: حديث, plural: أحاديث, ahadith) 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" (or 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 be considered as "Daif" (weak Hadith) and even "Mawdou".

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

Because of the prestige and legal power of narratives of the Prophet, there was considerable incentive to fabricate self-serving hadith. One scholar was heard to lament that his fellow scholars were "never so ready to lie as in matters of the hadith". A resident of Kufa was executed in 772 after confessing to having made up 4000 hadith. Storyteller spread questionable anecdotes about Muhammad. Mystics alleged that Muhammad had passed on wisdom to them in their dreams—protected by the agreed on hadith that "no demon could impersonate the Prophet". Even the Sahih hadith, despite their painstaking vetting, include such questionable hadith as how a group of monkeys stoned another for adultery, how cumin is a cure for all maladies; and exhibits male bias in that all the best hadith collections were by men, collected in male public spaces.

Authenticity

The Islamic scholar, theologian and philosopher Israr Ahmad Khan has criticized the traditional methods used to establish authenticity of hadith, 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. Traditional scholars have a set of 5 criteria to judge the chain of narration, with only 2 being relevant to the text itself. In practice, even those criteria which relate to the text have been relegated to internal discussions, while the historic compilers of hadith also did not make much use of such analysis in their own examinations. Those scholars who later in Islamic history called for such attention to be paid to the text itself were largely ignored. In his work "Authentication of Hadith: Redefining the Criteria", Ahmed highlights a list of 10 problems in the traditional analysis of hadith authentication, such as: the inability of some narrators to maintain preciseness of the report; textual conflicts among reports; the 'delusion' of reliable narrators (the common practice to ignore textual analysis merely based on the claim that the hadith was reported by a narrator of good character); and the probability of fabrication, among other issues.

Ahmed further 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. Ahmed also points out examples to prove other defects, such as: contradictions with established scientific and medical research; logical errors giving "rise to doubt concerning the authenticity"; accounts which do not fit with the Arab culture existing at the time; non availability of certain reported predictions etc.

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), a friend of Muhammad Ali Jinnah the founder of Pakistan and a student of the renowned Islamic poet and philosopher Allama Iqbal, was a noted critic of the Hadith and believed that the Quran was sufficient for Muslims to understand and practice Islam, but with the important caveat that the Quran had to be studied using the appropriate rules and conventions of the classical language in which it was revealed. He also rejected the arbitrary authority of the clerical establishment and deemed them counter-productive. He argued that translations and commentaries of the Quran do not accurately reflect the meanings of the original Classical Arabic language and accused the clerical establishment of depriving Muslims of the real message of the Quran intentionally to serve their own self-serving purposes. A fatwa, ruling, signed by more than a thousand orthodox clerics, denounced him as a 'kafir', a non-believer. However, he continued his research and work in Pakistan, having gathered an appreciative audience. The organization which he founded Tolu-e-Islam continues to expand the base of his ideas. His seminal work, Maqam-e Hadith argued that the Hadith were composed of "the garbled words of previous centuries", but suggests that he is not against the idea of collected sayings of the Prophet, only that he would consider any hadith that goes against the teachings of Quran to have been falsely attributed to the Prophet. He was also against mystical interpretations of Islam which relegated Islam to the private sphere, as he believed Islam was not actually a "religion" to be practiced individually and based in a dogmatic blind faith. Pervez argued that since God requires certainty from believers and certainty can only be achieved by reason, therefore true Islam is actually inherently opposed to Religion (See: Ideas of Ghulam Ahmed Pervez,) an argument he elaborated in his scholarly work "Islam: A Challenge to Religion".

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".

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

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."

Famous but unreliable hadiths

A number of hadith are quite famous but of doubtful authenticity, as they do not appear in any of the authoritative collections such as Muhammad al-Bukhari, Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj, and Abu Dawood.

Greater jihad

Al-Suyuti said: al-Khatib al-Baghdadi relates in his "History" on the authority of Jabir: The Prophet came back from one of his campaigns saying: "You have come forth in the best way of coming forth: you have come from the smaller jihad to the greater jihad." They said: "And what is the greater jihad?" He replied: "The striving (mujahadat) of Allah's servants against their idle desires."
Reasons of the contestation : According to the Muslim Jurist Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, in Tasdid al-qaws : "This saying is widespread and it is a saying by Ibrahim ibn Ablah according to Nisa'i in al-Kuna. Al-Bayhaqi narrated it in al-Zuhd al-Kabir (Haydar ed. p. 165 §373 = p. 198 §374) and said: "This is a chain that contains weakness" (hadha isnadun fihi da`f). Al-Khatib narrated it in Tarikh Baghdad (13:493=13:523). Both their chains contain Yahya ibn al-`Ala' al-Bajali al-Razi who is accused of forgery as per Ibn Hajar in the Taqrib, in addition to Layth ibn Abi Sulaym - Ibn Hajar said he was abandoned as a hadith narrator due to the excessiveness of his mistakes in addition to being a concealer of his sources (mudallis).

Ink of scholars

“The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr” or "The ink of scholars (used in writing) is weighed on the Day of Judgment with the blood of martyrs and the ink of scholars out-weighs the blood of martyrs (Shahadah)". It is also mentioned by Ibn Abd al-Bar in his book: "Jamie Bayan al-'Ilm wa Fadlu". As it was also mentioned by Ibn al-Jawzi in his book: "Al-Ilal".

Questions about its truthfulness: Theses hadeeths were narrated from a number of the Sahabah, but they have weak and flimsy, or fabricated isnaads, which we will mention here in brief: From Abu’d-Darda’ (may Allah be pleased with him): It was narrated by Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr in Jaami‘ Bayaan al-‘Ilm (1/150). His isnaad includes Ismaa‘eel ibn Abi Ziyaad, of whom Ibn Hibbaan said: He is a charlatan. Hence al-‘Iraqi classed it as da‘eef in Takhreej al-Ihya’, p. 5 From ‘Abdullah ibn ‘Amr ibn al-‘Aas (may Allah be pleased with him). It was narrated by Abu Na‘eem in Akhbaar Asbahaan (1718) and ad-Daylami in Musnad al-Firdaws. Its isnaad also includes Ismaa‘eel ibn Abi Ziyaad, who is mentioned above. It was also narrated by Ibn al-Jawzi in al-‘Ilal al-Mutanaahiyah (1/81) via another isnaad. He said: This is not saheeh. Ahmad ibn Hanbal said: Muhammad ibn Yazeed al-Waasiti did not narrate anything from ‘Abd ar-Rahmaan ibn Ziyaad. Ibn Hibbaan said: He narrates fabricated reports from trustworthy narrators. However, for this particular Hadith, it should be noted that it is not fully agreed upon (Mutaffakun Alayhee) by all scholars as authentic due to gaps in its chain of narrators and Al-Suyuti himself grades it as da`îf (weak).

Importance of knowledge

• "Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave."

Questions about its truthfulness: While The Qur'an and Sunnah come with numerous encouragements for seeking knowledgeThe Fatwa Department Research Committee - chaired by Sheikh `Abd al-Wahhâb al-Turayrî said : "We could not find any trance of this phrase in the hadîth literature. We could not even find it in any of the compilations the preserve the saying of the Companions and Successors."

• “Seek knowledge even in China”

Questions about its truthfulness: Shaykh al-Albaani said in Da’eef al-Jaami’: “(It is) fabricated.” Narrated from Anas by al-Bayhaqi in Shu`ab al-Imaan and al-Madkhal, Ibn `Abd al-Barr in Jami` Bayaan al-`Ilm, and al-Khatib through three chains at the opening of his al-Rihla fi Talab al-Hadith (p. 71-76 #1-3) where Shaykh Nur al-Din `Itr declares it da`îf (weak). Also narrated from Ibn `Umar, Ibn `Abbas, Ibn Mas`ud, Jabir, and Abu Sa`id al-Khudri, all through very weak chains. The hadith master al-Mizzi said it has so many chains that it deserves a grade of hasan (fair), as quoted by al-Sakhawi in al-Maqaasid al-Hasana. Al-`Iraqi in his Mughni `an Haml al-Asfar similarly stated that some scholars declared it sound (sahîh) for that reason, even if al-Hakim and al-Dhahabi correctly said no sound chain is known for it. Ibn `Abd al-Barr's "Salafi" editor Abu al-Ashbal al-Zuhayri declares the hadith hasan in Jami` Bayaan al-`Ilm (1:23ff.) but all the above fair gradings actually apply to the wording: "Seeking knowledge is an obligation upon every Muslim." The first to declare the "China" hadith forged seems to be Ibn al-Qaysarani (d. 507) in his Ma`rifa al-Tadhkira (p. 101 #118). This grading was kept by Ibn al-Jawzi in his Mawdu`at but rejected, among others, by al-Suyuti in al-La'ali' (1:193), al-Mizzi, al-Dhahabi in Talkhis al-Wahiyat, al-Bajuri's student Shams al-Din al-Qawuqji (d. 1305) in his book al-Lu'lu' al-Marsu` (p. 40 #49), and notably by the Indian muhaddith Muhammad Taahir al-Fattani (d. 986) in his Tadhkira al-Mawdu`at (p. 17) in which he declares it hasan (fair). Al-Munawi, like Ibn `Abd al-Barr before him, gave an excellent explanation of the hadith in his Fayd al-Qadir (1:542). See also its discussion in al-`Ajluni's Kashf al-Khafa' under the hadith: "Seeking knowledge is an obligation upon every Muslim," itself a hasan (fair) narration in Ibn Maajah because of its many chains as stated by al-Mizzi, although al-Nawawi in his Fatawa (p. 258) declared it da`îf (weak) while Dr. Muhammad `Ajaj al-Khaatib in his notes on al-Khatib's al-Jami` (2:462-463) declared it "sound due to its witness-chains" (sahîh li ghayrih). Cf. al-Sindi's Hashya Sunan Ibn Maajah (1:99), al-Munawi's Fayd al-Qadir (4:267) and al-Sakhaawi's al-Maqaasid al-Hasana (p. 275-277).

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.