History of Hadith

:"This is a sub-article to Hadith.

This article goes through the historical evolution of the hadith literature from its beginning in the 7th century to present day

Introduction

Traditions regarding the life of Muhammad and the early history of Islam were passed down orally for more than a hundred years after the death of Muhammad in 632 Facts|date=February 2007.

History

7th century

Muslim historians say that it was the caliph Uthman (the third caliph, or successor of Muhammad, who had formerly been Muhammad's secretary), who first urged Muslims both to write down the Qur'an in a fixed form, and to write down the hadith. Uthman's labors were cut short by his assassination, at the hands of aggrieved soldiers, in 656 Facts|date=February 2007.

The Muslim community ("ummah") then fell into a prolonged civil war, termed the "Fitna" by Muslim historians. After the fourth caliph, Ali ibn Abi Talib, was assassinated, control of the Islamic empire was seized by the Umayyad dynasty in 661 Facts|date=February 2007.

610s CE

There were very few Arabs that could read or write in the beginning of Muhammad's era: The majority were unlettered, and according to Sunni traditions, so was Muhammad [http://www.islamanswers.net/sunna/when.htm When the traditions recorded? ] ] . Shi'a only content that he was not formally educated Fact|date=February 2007. When the Qur’an began to be revealed, its first verse contained the command to read. Thus, a desire to learn to read and write was aroused among the Arabs, and Muhammad encouraged them to do so . One example of Muslims reading from the Qur'an is Fatimah bint al-Khattab Fact|date=February 2007.

Despite this, there are very few hadith from that period. As an explanation, Sunnis cite hadith were Muhammad is quoted as "Do not write anything belonging to me. Whoever has written something received from me outside the Qur’an let him destroy it" [Muslim, “Zuhd,” 72; Darimi, “Muqaddima,” 42.] and other hadith [Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, Taqyid al-‘Ilm, 34: Abu Hurayra narrates:

God’s Messenger once came near us while some friends were writing down what they had heard from him. He asked what they were writing. ‘We are writing what we heard from you’, they answered. The Messenger warned: ‘Do you know that the communities preceding you went astray because they wrote down from others beside the Book of God.’] , arguing that Muhammad feared that it would be confused with the ongoing "revelation" and collection of the Qur'an . Shi'a do not hold the quoted hadith as authentic, and ascribe the lack of hadith to a ban imposed by the Sunni Caliphs in combinations with book and hadith burnings, in order to control the population Fact|date=February 2007.

620s CE

Among the prisoners of war taken at the Battle of Badr those who were literate were released after each taught ten Muslims how to read and write [Ibn Sa'd, Tabaqat, 2.22.] ] .

Sahih Bukhari states that Abd-Allah ibn Amr wrote down his hadith [Bukhari, “‘Ilm,” 39.] . As reported from himself, ‘Abdullah ibn ‘Amr used to write down whatever he heard from Muhammad. Some people said to him: ‘You are writing down every-thing coming from the mouth of Muhammad. Muhammad is a human being. There are times when he is angered and times when he is pleased.’ ‘Abdullah referred the matter to Muhammad, who answered him, pointing to his mouth: Write down, for, I swear by Him in Whose hand is my life, nothing comes out from this except truth. [Abu Dawud, “‘Ilm,” 3; I. Hanbal, 2.162; Darimi, “Muqaddima,” 43.]

A man came to Muhammad and complained about his memory, saying: ‘O Messenger of Allah: We hear many things from you. But most of them slip our minds because we cannot memorize them’. Muhammad replied: Ask your right hand for help. [Tirmidhi, “‘Ilm,” 12.] . Muhammad meant that he should write down what he heard.

When Rafi‘ ibn Khadij asked Muhammad whether they could write what they heard from him, the answer came: Write, no harm! [Hindi, Kanz al-‘Ummal, 10.232.] . Another sources quotes Muhammad advising: Record knowledge by writing. [Darimi, “Muqaddima,” 43.]

During the conquest of Mecca, Muhammad gave a sermon. A man from the Yemen, named Abu Shah, stood up and said: ‘O Allah’s Messenger! Please write down these [words] for me!’ Muhammad ordered: Write down for Abu Shah! [Abu Dawud, “‘Ilm,” 3; Tirmidhi, “‘Ilm,” 12.]

Muhammad sent a letter which contained commandments about the blood money for murders and injuries and the law of retaliation to Amr ibn Hizam [Darimi, “Diyat,” 12.] . This letter was handed down to his great grandson, Abu Bakr ibn Muhammad . Among other things, like some of his letters other head of states Fact|date=February 2007, some scroll transferred to Abu Rafi was handed down to Abu Bakr ibn ‘Abd Al-Rahman ibn Harith, belonging to the first generation after the Companions.

630s CE

Among Sunnis, Umar ibn al-Khattab is the primary locus for many accounts about hadith collection. He is portrayed by Sunnis as desiring to initiate this project but as unwilling to do so, fearing that Muslims might then neglect the Qur'an http://people.uncw.edu/bergh/par246/L21RHadithCriticism.htm] . Shi'a give the opposite view, stating that Umar forbade people to talk the privous events, what Shi'a view was a military Coup d'état against Ali and ordered the burning of several hadith collections Facts|date=February 2007.

Umar is also said by Sunnis that he due to fear and concerns, he sometimes warned people against careless narration of hadith .

650s CE

Starting the first Islamic civil war of the 7th century, those receiving the hadith started to question the sources of the saying, something that resulted in the development of the Isnad.

Muhammad ibn Sirin (d. 110/728) stated:

690s CE

Ibn Abbas left behind a camel-load of books, which mostly contain what he had heard from Muhammad and other Sahaba [M. ‘Ajjaj al-Khatib, op. cit. 352.] .

8th century

Ummayad rule was interrupted by a second civil war (the "Second Fitna"), re-established, then ended in 758, when the Abbasid dynasty seized the caliphate, to hold it, at least in name, until 1258 Facts|date=February 2007.

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 possess today were written down at the start of the Abbasid period, more than one hundred years after the death of Muhammad Facts|date=February 2007.

The 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 narrations and which had been invented for various political or theological purposes. For this purpose, they used a number of techniques which Muslims now call the science of hadith Facts|date=February 2007.

710s CE

Generally, Umar II is credited with having ordered the first collection of hadith material in an official manner, fearing that some of it might be lost. Abu Bakr ibn Muhammad ibn Hazm and Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri, are among those who compiled hadiths at `Umar II’s behest .

750s CE

In AH|134|751|+, paper was introduced into the Muslim world [ [http://web.mit.edu/CIS/www/mitejmes/issues/200310/br_lane.htm Mit-Ejmes ] ]

9th century

The efforts culminated with the six canonical collections after having received impetus from the establishment of the sunna as the second source of law in Islam, particularly through the efforts of the famous jurist Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafi'i .

The method of criticism and the conclusions it has reached have not changed significantly since the ninth century. Even much of modern Muslim scholarship, while continuing to debate the validity or authenticity of individual hadiths or perhaps the hadiths of a particular transmitter, employs the same methods and biographical (or rijal) materials .

810s

*Muhammad ibn Idris ash-Shafi`i

9th century

The classification of Hadith into Sahih (sound), Hasan (good) and Da'if (weak) was firmly established by Ali ibn al-Madini (d. 234 AH)http://www.jamiat.org.za/isinfo/tirmidhi04.html] .

Later, al-Madini's student Muhammad al-Bukhari (d. 256 AH.) authored a collection that he stated contained only Sahih hadith.

al-Tirmidhi (d. 279 AH) was the first traditionist to base his book on al-Madini's classification .

13th century

*Abd al-Ghani al-Maqdisi [ [http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/scienceofhadith/asa3.html USC-MSA Compendium of Muslim Texts ] ]
*Ibn al-Nafis [Nahyan A. G. Fancy (2006), "Pulmonary Transit and Bodily Resurrection: The Interaction of Medicine, Philosophy and Religion in the Works of Ibn al-Nafīs (d. 1288)", p. 67-77, "Electronic Theses and Dissertations", University of Notre Dame. [http://etd.nd.edu/ETD-db/theses/available/etd-11292006-152615] ]

19th century

In 1848, Gustav Weil, noted that Muhammad al-Bukhari deemed only 4,000 of his original 600,000 hadiths to be authentic and argued that a European critic was required to reject without hesitation at least half of these 4,000. He was soon followed by Aloys Sprenger, who also suggests that many of the hadiths cannot be considered authentic .

20th century

Ignaz Goldziher was a large contributor of innovative theories to the West. The subsequent direction the Western debate took, a direction which has focussed on the role of hadiths in the origin and development of early Muslim jurisprudence, is largely due to the work of Joseph Schacht . The Common-Link Theory, invented by Joseph Schacht and widely accepted in modern scholarship, argues that hadith authorities knowingly and purposefully placed traditions in circulation with little care to support these hadiths with satisfactory isnads (chains of transmitters). G. H. A. Juynboll, Michael Cook and other Schachtians subsequently embraced and elaborated upon this theory. In 2006, Fahad A. Alhomoudi in his thesis “On the Common-Link Theory” [On the Common-Link Theory, Fahad A. Alhomoudi, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada,Copyright 2006 All rights reserved.] challenges the accuracy of Schacht’s founding theory.Because of the interconnectedness of Schacht’s many theses about hadith and Islamic law, the findings of Alhomoudi’s thesis did not only challenge the significant Common-Link Theory in legal hadith studies, but also open the door for scholars to question other important theories held by Schacht and his followers with regard to larger issues in Islamic legal history.

21st century

Harald Motzki .

The Turkish government's Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı has commissioned a team of scholars at Ankara University to draft a new compilation of the hadith that follows a liberal interpretation of Islam, and that would omit numerous hadith considered historically inauthentic by these scholars. [ [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7264903.stm BBC NEWS | Europe | Turkey in radical revision of Islamic texts ] ]

ee also

*Science of hadith
*Ilm ar-Rijal

References

* [http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Hadith/ Islamic Awareness, Issues Concerning Hadith]