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From: zama@midway.uchicago.edu
Newsgroups: soc.religion.islam
Subject: Hadith
Message-ID: <1991May27.094847.1878@nntp-server.caltech.edu>
Date: 27 May 91 09:48:47 GMT
Sender: bes@nntp-server.caltech.edu (Behnam Sadeghi)
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
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(I would like to continue my proposed "hadith series" in the
organized manner I started it--on the other hand, knowing my 
laziness, I don't know when I'll get around to it.  So as
a compromise, I would like to post an exchange I had with a
friend on the net on this subject...)


>I am 
>interested in gaining some elementary knowledge of this discipline. (Maybe
>some time in future, after I master Arabic, I can begin serious study).  Can
>you recommend English language texts on this subject?

	My favorite author who writes in English in this is Muhammad
Mustafa al-A`zami.  His dissertation was later published in book
format as "Studies in Early Hadith Literature."  This is an excellent
work.  (more on it later).  As an "introduction to the field" he also
has a brief book (almost a "manual") called ...something like "Hadith
Terminology" though I am not sure of the title.  The problem with this
book is that its English is somewhat "Indian"!  I don't know quite
what happened--since his English is quite reasonable in his
dissertation: maybe that work went through more editing?  In any case,
the material in it is very good...

>I am also curious about your opinion on something that has confused and 
>disturbed me.  There seem to be three views regarding the authenticity of 
>ahadith:
>
>1) the predominant Muslim view that the traditions, especially in the Sahihan,
>are by and large authentic.

This is actually, in my opinion, a red herring.  The issue is not so much
one of traditions being "by and large" authentic...far more the issue is
whether the muhaddithin had a methodology which was anywhere near adequate
to the problem of sorting reliable material from less reliable material.
If we are willing to see this as the focus of the controversy there are
two "lemmas": 

	(i) there is no problem in disputing the authenticity of a
specific hadith *AS LONG AS* the *REASON* for questioning a judgement
is BASED on method and not on vague things like somethig being
"likely" or unlikely.  In fact, Dara Qutani has criticized thirty-two
(the number may be off by a few) hadiths in Bukhari's Sahih.
Similarly he has a number of hadiths in Muslim which he argues with.
The point to note, though: Dara Qutani's arguments are based on
*method* not on results.  In other words, it is not as if he has
decided that a certain hadith is "unlikely" then he tries to marshall
evidence to support it.  Rather, he has developed a methodology from
the study of hadiths, and in the light of these methods he feels that
these thirty two places are place where Bukhari's judgement is
inaccurate.  Thus, although others have argued against Daqra Qutani,
no one has "called him names"--it is seen as a serious scholarly
disagreement.

	(ii) as a *subsidiary result* of the proposition that the
methods of the classical muhaddithin were basically adequate to the
problem of sorting authentic material from inauthentic material *it
follows* that hadiths in Bukhari and Muslim are probably in large
part authentic.  Bukhari and Muslim were leaders in the field of
hadith criticism according to the classical method.  Now, if they
chose to stake their reputations on some hadiths which they gather
together in their collections, then simply by virtue of their expertise,
one would expect that it is highly likely that if you disagree with
them, you are probably wrong and they are probably right....Thus,
one does get the result you mention--but the *way* one gets to it...
as a subsidiary result and not the focus of the controversy...is
essential. 

>2) the view initiated mainly by Ignaz Godziher in his _Muslim Studies_ that
>the ahadith mostly came into circulation long after Prophet Mohammad's (pbuh) 
>death.

	And you could add Schacht's name to this.

>3) the view held by people like Fazlur Rahman and John Esposito that the truth
>lies somewhere between #1 and #2.  This view is all the more troublesome 
>because as of now it doesn't provide a concrete and logical method for using 
>the ahadith.

	And you could add Juynboll (Muslim Tradition) to this.

>What do you think?

	What I think is this if one views the controversy as one over method,
groups (2) and (3) really collapse into one: both parties make a claim
about the methods of the muhaddithin--then both have different "speculations"
regarding the "real" nature of events....

	In my opinion, the field of hadith studies is a really profound
one and no one in the West has really given it the attention it deserves.
What has happened inevitably, is that a scholar will be interested in
some grand theseis, and then as a subsidiary to this interest he will
read up on the hadith which is relevant to his interest.  Thus, he will 
use the hadiths in a manner which fits his thesis, rather than paying
it full attention.

	What is this "full attention"?  Well, the method of the
classical hadith scholars is quite sophisticated.  Briefly: you take
all the "versions" of a hadith which you are able to get from
different chains of narration (eg: a recent study conducted in this
manner dealt with 114 different "versions" of one text).  Then, say
you have 15 versions from Zuhri.  You compare the texts of these
versions and you find that say 12 say the thing in one manner and
three say it in different ways.  So you put a mark next to these
three.  Then as this type of situation recurs, you eventually get to
the position where you can say with some certainty that, "of Zuhri's
students so and so was really poor in his transmission of texts...so
and so was very good..." This variety could be because of
carelessness, because one took better notes than the other, because
one lost his books at some stage, or because one just had a better
method of retaining the hadiths (in whatever fashion that might be).

	Having accumulated some such hunches you come back to the
material and test it out....For example, suppose you find that 
although 12 of Zuhri's students are saying it in one way, the three
which are opposing the twelve are really the most "generally" 
reliable.  You might consider giving preference to the three over
the twelve in such a case: after all, the number of narrations
from a certain person which have survived is not necessarily a
function of his "reliability" -- it could very well have to
do with, for example, his living in a big city...or his having
travelled widely.

	The muhaddithin's book are full of such judgements and
judgements which are far more precise than this...such as
statements which say "so and so went senile in year x, and
anyone who heard in the period before x is ok, everyone else
is carrying bad info."  Then you get a list of the people,
some normally very reliable, whose narrations are discredited
because they heard in the period of senility...

	I find it impossible to brush aside this sophistication
by the very simplistic claims of Schacht and Goldziher.  Actually,
to see how simplistic these claims are, take a look at A'zami's
latest work "On Schacht's Origins of Muhammaden Jurisprudence."
Basically he goes through Schacht's book and shows, example by
example, how Schacht either misunderstood, misquoted or simply
wasn't aware of much material which totally blows apart his
theses....

	Fazlur Rahman was a fine man.  But in my two years of study
with him it became very clear to me that he was a very sloppy thinker.
In addition, when it came to hadith, he really knew very little.  And
this has been the problem.  Everyone who works with Islam as a
religion, or early Islamic history, *has* to take a stand on hadith.
On the other hand, simply working on Islam or on early Islamic history
is definitely not enough to even create the ability to open one's
mouth on this subject: this my dissertation has shown to *me*.

	In any case....as you can see this is a "pet peeve."
So I'll leave it at this...

	Wassalam.
					Iftikhar


PS.  Oh yes.  A'zami's dissertation.  Just shows how totally in the
dark Schacht, Goldziher, Fazlur Rahman and all these other hacks are:
everyone accepts on faith that hadiths were "oral" for a century or
so...usually Malik's Muwatta is seen as the first written compilation
... or one of the first.  Well, A'zami collects references to the
writing of hadiths (i.e.  people writing down sayings of the
Prophet...not necessarily "compiling them for public consumption"): he
find over 300 references to people who used to write down hadiths
*before* Malik.  OK. Maybe you can say 100 of these are, for some
reason, not acceptable.  What about the other 200?  Ok. Reject
200. What about the 100 remaining people who wrote hadiths?  The
fact is, the presence of the *record* of a group of people this
large who were writing hadiths down at this early period, indicates
the very real possibility that *many* others, whose habit of writing
was not recorded, existed.  And in fact, most of the 300 people
A'zami finds records of, there is only incidental mention that
they wrote--i.e. it is by chance (e.g. "when I asked him about
this hadith he said, let me check...then he returned with his book....")
so it is *by chance* that we have the records we do have.

	Azami's explanation for this situation is quite sensible.
The early scholars did not trust *mere* writing--writing could
be corrupted; it could get erased; arabic script was still evolving;
vowels are missing in Arabic anyway...thus the fact of your having
a written record of something meant nothing.  Yes, if you had *heard*
the text, and then went ahead and wrote a "memo" to yourself, *and*
you were proven to have had a good memory--then perhaps one could
trust you.  Thus, the lack of emphasis on writing was not because
"oral" transmission was "preferred"--but because writing was not
considered any *guarantee* of authenticity....