ISLAMIC HISTORYAND CIVILIZATION

STUDIES AND TEXTS

EDITED BY

WADADKADI

t

VOLUME 38

THE DEVELOPMENT OFEARLY SUNNITE

HADITH CRITICISM•

The Taqdima of Ibn Abf Satim at-Razz(240/854-327/938)

BY

EERlK DICKINSON

BRILLLEIDEN . BOSTON· KOLN

2001

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging~in~PublicationData

Dickinson} Eerik.The development of early Sunnite hadith criticism: the Taqdima of Ibn AbI

I:!atim al-RazI (240/854-327/938) / by Eerik Dickinson.p. em. - (Islamic history and civilization. Studies and texts,

ISSN 0929-2403 ; v. 38)ISBN 9004118055 (alk. paper)

1. Ibn Ahi I;Hitim} 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Mubannnad, 854 or 5-938. Taqdimatal-ma'rifa li-Kitab al:Jarb wa-'I-ta'dIl. 2. Hadith-Authorities. 3. Hadith­-Criticism, interpretation, etc..-History. I. Title. II. Islamic history and civi­lization. Studies and texts; v. 38.BP136.48.Il5 D53 2001297.1 '2406---dc21 2001018493

eIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahm.e

Dickinson, Eerik ;The development of early sunnitel:Iadith criticism: the Taqdima of Ibn AbIHatim Al-Razl (240854 - 327 938) / by Eerik Dickinson. - Leiden ; Boston; Kaln : Brill, 200 I

(Islamic history and civilization; Vol. 38)ISBN 90-04-11805-5

ISSN 0929-2403ISBN 9004 11805 5

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PRThTTED IN THE I\r:ETHERLA.l\ffiS

CONTENTS

Introduction 'II -to of" , .. + .. 011 " + .

I. I:Iadfth in the Time of Ibn Abr !:Iatim .

II. Ibn Abr I:!itim al-Razl: Life and "Vorks ..

..Vll

1

11

III. The Taqdirna 41

IV. The Testimonial Evidence .. 53

V. The Biographical Evidence 57

VI. The Documentary Evidence -....... 80

Conclusion 127

Bibliography 131

Index _+_ .+ "' "' "'... 141

INTRODUCTION

In the most basic terms, lfadIth are the texts recording the wordsand actions of the Prophet Mul;ammad. Although these texts wereavidly studied by Muslims for centuries, it is generally acknowledgedthat Ignaz Goldziher inaugurated the modern era of l;adIth scholar­ship in the VVest vvith the second volume of his MuhammedanischeStudien (Halle, 1890). Despite the fact that this widely-ranging workremains the best general introduction to the study of l).adlth, it isprimarily remembered for publicizing the view that most 1).adIth werefabricated many years after the death of the Prophet. He believedthat most J).adnh do not accurately portray the words and deeds ofthe Prophet. Goldziher argued that partisans in the early doctrinalstruggles forged 1).adlth in order to provide Prophetic confinnationfor their OW'll vievv-s and therefore for the modern scholar the chiefvalue of l;adlth lies in the light they shed on the later developmentof Islam rather than the life and views of the Prophet.

Since the time of Goldziher, scholars have examined differentsource material and dravvn different conclusions about the authen­ticity of l]adith as Prophetic documents. Joseph Schacht built on thework of Goldziher in the article "A Revaluation of Islamic Traditions"]and the book The Origins rf Muhammadan Jurisprudence. 2 For the mostpart, he set aside the numerous reports in the classical sources describ­ing the history of ~adIth transmission. Instead, he examined theactual usage of 1).adnh in the earliest sunriving vlorks on law. Hediscovered that the l).adIth ascribed to the Prophet were not accordedany special status in the early texts and in fact were in some worksoutnulllbered by references to later figures. This led him to ques­tion "vhether there ever was "an authentic core of information goingback to the time of the Prophet. "3 i\lthough his name is commonlyassociated vvith the radical rejection of the authenticity of all ~adlth,

Schacht's actual position was less controversial. He cautioned thatwe must consider every legal tradition as a product of a later date

I Journal if the Royal AsiatU: Society 1949, 143-54.2 Oxford, 1950.3 "Revaluation}" 147.

VIll INTRODUCTION

"until the contrary is proved."4- Researchers working \Vith other mate­rial have reached conclusions broadly similar to those of Schacht.s

While other scholars challenged Schacht's conclusions, they didnot for the most part attempt to re-interpret the evidence of theearly legal texts he used.6 Instead, they drew attention to the reportsin the classical sources describing the early use of writing to recordl).adlth, which they regarded as the guarantor of the authenticity ofthe l).adlth. 7 This view is well presented by Nabia Abbott in the sec­ond volume of her Studies in Arabic Literary PapyriB and Fuat Sezginin the first volume of his Geschichte des arabischen Schrifltums. 9 Sezginconcluded that }:taclith were transmitted in written form from thetime of the Prophet while Abbott placed the beginning of writing1).adi"th about a century later. 10 More recently, another scholar hasexamined the same material and concluded that the writing of 1).adHhdid not begin until considerably laterY

G.H.A. Juynboll took a different approach to the problem of theorigin of the 1).adlth. In his Muslim Tradition, he included a studyentitled "A tentative Chronology of the Origins of Muslim Tradition(pp. 9~76)." Here he turned to the genre of historical reports known

4 "Revaluation," 149. Noel Coulson argues "that an alleged ruling of the Prophetshould be tentatively accepted" until its falsity is demonstrated; A History qf IslamicLaw (Edinburgh~ 1964), 65. He also presents his views on l).adith in "EuropeanCriticism of 1jadfth Literature" in The Cambridge History rif Arabic literature: AmbitLiterature w the UmUjyad Period, ed. A.F.L. Beeston et al. (Cambridge~ 1983), 317-21.

5 See, for example, Robert Brunsch\~g, "Ibn 'Abda!4akam et Ia conquete deFMrique du Nord par les Arabes/' Annates de tInstitut d'Etudes Orientales de I)Universitid:41ger 6 (1942-47):108-55 and Rafael Tahnon, "Schacht's Theory in the Light ofrecent Discoveries concerning the Origin of Arabic Grammar," Studia Islamica 65(1987):31-50.

6 An exception is M.M. Azami, On Schacht's Origins if Muhammadan Jurispnulence(Riyadh~ n.d).

7 C£ Gregor Schoeler, "Mundliche Thora ill1d J:Iadfl: Oberlieferung, Schreibverbot,Redaktion~" Der Islam 66 (1989):226-27.

8 Studies in Arabic Liurary Papyri fLo Quilinu Commentary and Tradition (Chicago,1967). She succinctly restates her views in "lfadith Literature-II: Collection andTransmission of Ijadfth" in The Cambridge History' if Arabic Literature: Arabic Literatureto the Umqyyad Period, 289-98.

9 10 vols. (Leiden, 1967-95)~ 1:53-84.10 For criticism of this approach, see John Wansbrough's review of Abbotes book

in Bulletin if the School if Oriental and Afman Studies 31(1968):613-16 and G.H.A.Juynboll, Muslim Tradition: Studies in Chronology, Provenance and Authorship qf earf:y I:Iadlth(Cambridge, 1983), +--6.

11 Ivfichael Cook~ "The Opponents of the vVriting of Tradition in early Islam,"Arabua 44 (1997):489-91.

INTRODUCTION 1X

as "firsts" (awii:Jil), which purports to document who initiated certainpractices. These reports were first organized into collections in thefourth! tenth century and cover a wide variety of firsts from bothIslamic and pre-Islamic times. Juynboll's systematic analysis of thereports pertaining to the study of 4adrth led him to conclude that"the earliest origins of standardized l).adlth cannot be traced backearlier than, at most, to the seventies or eighties of the first cen­tury'~12 and that the systematic authentication of l;i.adith did not beginany earlier than 130/747}3

Although very few scholars have, like Schacht, gone so far as toquestion whether any authentic l).adlth exist, little has been done torecover them. 14 Juynboll candidly doubts whether a method can befound to separate the authentic l).adlth from the unauthentic: "Surelyit is unlikely that we will ever find even a moderately successfulmethod of proving vvith incontrovertible certainty the historicity ofthe ascription of such to the prophet but in a few isolated instances."15Else\vhere, he suggests the best tool is " a keen sense for what seemstrue and what false."lfi Largely lacking from the discussion over thegenuineness of the 1:).adlth has been an examination of the methodsthe early collectors used to authenticate them. 17 After all, no one hasever claimed that all l)adith are genuine and early Muslim scholarsaccepted that J.:tadlth were altered and forged outright for both laud­able and evil motives. The traditional Sunnite view holds that thelfadlth contained in certain' collections gathered by individuals livingtwo centuries after the death of the Prophet are more or less gen­uine. Although there are many reports praising the intelligence,

12 Muslim Tradition, 23. See also pp. 10, 73 and 75.13 Muslim Tradition, 20, 75.14 For a recent study which attempts to date certain l).adnh to the 1st/7th cen­

tury, if not exactly to the time of the Prophet, see Harald Motzki, "The MUJannqfof cAbd al-Razzaq al-$an'anf as a source of authentic a/:llidfth of the first CenturyA.H.," Journal qf Near Eastern Studies 50(1991):1-2l.

15 Muslim Tradition, 71.16 "On the Origins of Arabic Prose," in Studies on the First Century of Islamic Society,

ed. G.H.A. ]uynboll (Carbondale, 1982), 168. Schacht, on the other hand, warnedagainst letting historical intuition "take the place of sound historical criticism;""Revaluation,'; 143.

17 One notable exception is Juynboll's exanlination of two mutawatir (widespread)l:Ladrth in Muslim Tradition (pp. 96-133). However, it should be kept in mind thatfor the most part the critics of J:1adrth who v.;ill be discussed in this work did notemploy this term or acknowledge the significance of vvidespreadness; see Ibn al-$alal:t,Muqaddimat Ibn al-$aliib wa-MaI;asin al-i#iliib, ed. CA)isha cAbd al-Raljmau; 2d ed.(Cairo, 1989), 453-54.

x INTRODUCTION

scrupulousness and energy of these early collectors, for the medievalMuslim the authenticity of the J::1adith in these books rested ulti­mately on the consensus of the Muslim Community that they wereauthentic. 1B (It has been pointed out that the notion that consensuscan confirm the authenticity of these collections itself rests on al).adith from these collections.)19

The present study examines the early Sunnite collectors of ~adfthand the techniques they employed to determine the genuineness ofl;1adfth. In the second volume of his aforementioned MuhammedanischeStudien (p. 144), Goldziher stated that the criticism of 1).adith trans­mitters reached maturity with Ibn Abr !:latim al-Razl (240/854-327/938). Although a comprehensive examination of all of Ibn Abl I:Iatim'sworks would be very valuable, this study concentrates on the Taqdirnatal-macriJa li-Kitiib al--]arb wa-'l-ta'dil. The Taqdima is Ibn Abl J:Iatim'sintroduction to his famous biographical dictionary Kitiib at-Jarb wa­'[-taCdIi and is aimed at providing a defence of the techniques of thecollectors of l,Iadlth against the polemical attacks of their detractors.In it he purports to trace the history of l;1adlth criticism from its ear­liest practitioners up to the time of his own father, Abu I:!atim al-Razf(195/811-277/890). The present work emphasizes those aspects ofthe Taqdima which link it most closely to the milieu in which it waswritten and the general principles of the collectors of l:IadIth. It ishoped that this approach -will illuminate not only Ibn Abi Ijatimand his work, but also the movement of the critics in general.

If! Sec, for example, Ibn al-$aHilJ., Muqaddima, 170-71.19 Wael Hallaq drew attention to the circularity of the classical argument in his

paper 'The Authenticity of Prophetic Hadith: A Pseudo-Problem," delivered 19March 1998 at the conference Hadith: Text and History at the Centre for IslamicStudies of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

CHAPTER ONE

J:lADITH IN THE TIME OF IBN ABI I:IATIM

The earliest centuries of Islam 'Witnessed the emergence of a num­ber of competing sects, a sight which distressed Muslims of widelyvarying backgrounds who feared that Islam would disintegrate intoinnumerable feuding factions. Thinkers in some circles came to regardthis breakdovvn of the perceived cohesion of the original Muslimcommunity as the product of the differing approaches to the for­mulation of doctrine prevailing among the various sects. They feltthat if consistency could be imposed in the way doctrines were arrivedat} uniformity in the doctrines themselves would follow naturally.'Vith this purpose in mind, some scholars advocated the primacy ofthe Qur)an and l;tadith in doctrinal matters. The chief obstacle tothe application of this program was the presence of contradictionswithin the Q.adfth corpus. Some scholars tried to resolve these con­tradictions through the use of reason. Others, and Ibn Abr Ijatimwas among their number, authenticated 'Q.adtth on the basis of whatthey considered to be the objective criteria of l).adlth criticism.

I. The Adherents qf Ifadfth and their Rivals

For most of first MO centuries follovving the death of the Prophet,Muslim intellectual life ,,,,as divided up among a number of majorcities. Although these intellectual centers were never completely iso­lated from one another, the general orientation of their inhabitantsappears to have been inward. The work of the scholars in these cen­ters, although often of a high intellectual caliber, was characterizedby an approach to the formulation of doctrine which seemed incon­sistant and haphazard in the light of the rigorous attitudes of latertimes. These early scholars drew their doctrines from a number ofsources, including the Quean, local custom, their own notions offairness and what they knew of the teachings of the Prophet, hisCompanions, the Followers and other early scholars. Among thesepioneers} we find little of the consuming interest in identifying the

2 CHAPTER Or-.TE

main sources of doctrine (UJul) and detennining their relative prior­ity that is so pronounced in succeeding generations. I

Working in relative isolation and employing different methods, itis not surprising that the early religious scholars arrived at conflictinganswers to the questions facing the IVfuslim community. Early on,certain thinkers began to recognize this as a problem, especially inthe field of law where practical considerations made uniformity par­ticularly desirable. vVe find that a call for legal uniformity is alreadysounded in the treatise al-Risiila fi Jl-;al;iiba of Ibn al-Muqaffac (ca.102/720-139/756)2 and a century later it was al-Jal).i~ (ca. 160/776­255/868) who made the same point in the tract entitled Kitiib al-Furyii. 3

The reports concerning various caliphs asking scholars to draw upa single legal code for promulgation in the Muslim empire, what­ever their ultimate historicity, also bear witness to the persistenceand prevalence of the ideal of legal uniformity.1

With the passage of time, some scholars came to call for the place­ment of greater emphasis on the lfadith ascribed to the Prophet.I:Iadnh were connected with the concept of sunna, a practice ren­dered normative by the prestige an earlier personage. In the natureof things, this practice was usually known only by means of reportsand the 1}.adIth were the reports which served as the documentationof the practice of past authorities. There were many figures, includ­ing the Prophet Mul]ammad, his Companions and the Follawers,whose views the earliest Muslim scholars considered authoritative tosome degree. The demand which sprung up in some quarters thatspecial emphasis be given to the 1}.adnh of the Prophet is best under­stood as a product of the impulse towards uniformity. VVhereas theconsultation of a number of different authorities on a given ques­tion was bound to yield a number of different answers, one mightreasonably expect that the reference to a single authority would pro-

1 J. Schacht, Origins, 6-10.2 Ed. Mul;mmmad Kurd <Ali, Rasa:>il al-bulaghif, 4th ed. (Cairo, 1954), 125-27.

This aspect of the text is discussed in J. Schacht, Origins, 95-96 and J.D. Latham,"Ibn al-:Muqaffa< and early <Abbasid Prose/' The Cambridge History ifArabic Literature:~bbasid Belles-Lettres, ed. Julia Ashtiany et aJ. (Cambridge, 1990), 68-69.

3 The work itself has not survived, but the letter al:Jal).i~ vvrote to the chief qa¢fAlpnad b. Abi Du'ad (d. 240/854) announcing its publication has been edited inCharles Pellat, "A Propos du Kitiib al-Furya de JaJ.ll?," Arabic and Islamic Studies inHonor qf Hamilwn A.R. Gibb, ed. George Makdisi (!.eiden, 1965), 538-46.

4 For an example of this kind of report, see Ibn AbI I:!atim, Taqdimat al-ma<riftli-Kitilb al-Jarb wa-'l-facdil, ed. <Abd al-Ral:tman b. Yal).ya aJ-Mu'allimI al-Yarnanf(Hyderabad, 1371/1952), 29.

I;IADITH IN THE TIME OF IBN ABI I;IATIM 3

duce a single answer. The Prophet represented the one figure whoseauthority all Muslims respected. Echoing a verse of the Qur)an (4:59)~

the great scholar of lJ-adlth Ibn Ijibban al-Bustf (270/884-354/965)5says of him, "In the case of a disagreement, it is necessary to referto his sunna, since he is the undisputed resort of all."6

Ibn Abl I:!atim was one of those who called for increased relianceon the :Q.adnh from the Prophet. For him, the Muslim intellectualworld was divided into two camps on the basis of their approach tothe sources of religious doctrine. On the one side were the "adher­ents of 1).adlth" (ahl al-IJadith or ~l;iib al-l;adith), the scholars like him­self who demanded that l;adith be given priority in the derivationof doctrine. Opposed to this view were the "ahl al-ra)" and "ahlal-kalam. n These were the scholars who maintained the old approachto the sources. (Collectively he calls the alll al-ray and the ahl al-kaliimthe "Kufans" or "cIraqians" in reference to the supposed birthplaceof their doctrines. For the same reason, he sometimes calls his owncolleagues the "J:Iijazians.") In particular, it was the prominence thesescholars gave to the use of human reason in the formulation of doc­trine that attracted the scorn of Ibn Abr J:Iatim and his fellows. Thedesignations ahl ai-ray and ahl al-kallim imply that the members ofthese movements preferred using their own intellect in the formula­tion of doctrines to relying on divine guidance in the fonn of theQur)an and l).adith. The tenn "ra)" originally meant a "consideredopinion" and was wholly neutral in connotation.7 When employedby Ibn Abr Ijatim, it means the formulation of an opinion in thefield of law in a capricious and arbitrary fashion. He uses the termmost often in reference to the members of what we now recognizeas the I:Ianafite law school. "Kaliim" is the concept corresponding toray in the field of theology and means "speculative theology." Againthe implication is that rather than consult the Prophet's dictates ontheological matters, these scholars favored exercising their own intel­lects. Most often the name "ahl al-kaliim" was applied to the melTI­bers of the Muctazilite theological movement.

:> Sezgin, GAS, 1: 189-9l.5 Ibn I:Iibban, al-Sfra al-nabawfya, ed. al-Sayyid CAzfz Bak (Beirut, 1407/1987),

25. See also, id. Kitiib al-Mo:irfl~rn min al~mu~addithfn wa-'l-¢ul:qfif' wa-'l-matrflkin, ed.Ma1;tmud IbrahIm Zayid, 3 vals. (Mecca, n.d.), 1:5.

7 Ignaz Go1dziher, Die <jihiriten: Ihr Lehrsystem und ihre Geschichte (Leipzig, 1884);10-11; trans. VVolfgang Behn, The Ziihirfs: Their Doctrine and their History (Leiden,1971),10-11.

4 CHAPTER ONE

The main objection of the adherents of 1}adith to the approachof the ahl al-ray and ahl al-kaliim was that the exercise of reason wasnecessarily arbitrary, and it was precisely this arbitrariness which pre­cluded any possibility of unifonnity. Ibn Qutayba (213/828-276/889),a sympathizer with the adherents of 1).adlth, contrasts the ahl al-kaliim

with the arithmeticians, geometricians and engineers, whose proce­dures always Yield a single answer to a given problem, and withphysicians, who, inculcated with the knowledge of the ancients, alwaysmake the same diagnosis on the basis of a particular pulse rate orurine sample. The ahl al-kaliim, he asserts, are divided into innu­merable groups, each of which disagrees with all of the others. Thisproblem is innate

because to differ is inherent in the minds, wills, and preferences ofhuman beings. You almost never sec tvvo people in agreement so thateach of them chooses what the other chooses and rejects what theother rejects, except in the case of the reliance of the one upon theother (taqlfd).8

In the minds of the adherents of l)adrth, submission to the author­ity of the Prophet as embodied in the l)adrth provided the onlyescape from this variance and contradiction.

The ahl al-ra) and ahl al-kalCim found themselves extremely vul­nerable to the attacks of the adherents of 1).adith. They could notreject the authority of the qadrth of the Prophet outright, if for noother reason than that these reports had long held a place in theirown doctrines. The problem for them was to keep their own l:mdnhwhile rejecting those that contradicted their doctrines. The stancethey did adopt was one of skepticism in the authentication of l;.adnh.In other words, they represented themselves as not rejecting thewords of the Prophet, but rather doubting whether most l;.adlth infact accurately represented his words. On the one hand, they refusedto accept any l:J-adHh that was not mutawiitir, that is transmitted in

8 Ibn Qutayba, Ta)wfl mukhtalif al-{zadith, ed. Mul).arnmad ZuhrI aJ-Najjar (Cairo,1386/1966), 15; trans. Gerard Lecomte, Le Traitf des divergences du lwdith d'IbnQy.tqyba (Damascus, 1962), 16-17. A.l:Jal~i~ takes on the objection of the arithmeti­cians and engineers that kaliim is not "Science" in his treatise ~'Fl finii(at al-kaliim"in Rasii'il al-Jii!lii:" ed. (Abd al-Salam Mubammad Harlin, 4 vols. (Cairo, 1384/1964-1399/1979), 4~238-39. Al-Qa<;li 'Abd al-Jabbar reports that the opponents ofkalam ask, "How can it be true that [the practitioners of kaliim] regard it as aScience?" Far/I al-{ti::,al wa-tabaqiit al-Mu(tazila wa-muhiiyanatuhum li-sli)ir al-mukhiilifin~

in Fu'ad Sayyid, Fa41 al-{tiziil wa-tahaqiit al-Mu(tazila (Tunis, 1393/l974)~ 181.

IMDITH IN THE TIME OF IBN ABI I;IATIM 5

each era after the Prophet by a number of transmitters so large asto exclude the possibility of a conspiracy. On the other hand, theKilfans also rejected those l),adfth which did not meet various inter­nal criteria they stipulated. Throughout the third/ninth and fourth/tenth centuries, we find the Klifans fighting a rearguard action againstthe thesis of the adherents of l).adHh while simultaneously trying toaccommodate it into their own teachings.9

II. Ifadfth Commentary and Criticism

The personality most closely associated with the doctrine of theKiifans was Abu I:Iani"fa (ca. 80/699-ca. 150/767) and he becamethe main target of I:Iijazian attacks. The thesis of the adherents ofl;ladfth is succinctly articulated in a report from I:Iaf~ b. Ghiyath (d.194/809): "I used to study with Abu J:Ianlfa. One day I heard himgive five different answers to a single question. So I got up and lefthim and studied lJ,adi"th."w Their assertion that the reliance on l).adIthalways led to a single answer was largely wishful thinking, for at anearly date they found themselves victims of their own success. Asexclusive reference to the l).adfth of the Prophet grew more common,the number of opinions ascribed to him increased until, in manycases, several points of view on a given question found expressionin 1)adfth. The growth in the number of 1).adlth posed both theo­retical and practical problelfls for them. On the theoretical side, thegreat promise of 1)adi"th was uniformity. This benefit was contingenton the ability of scholars to extract a single answer for each ques­tion from the corpus of 1].adfth. Their failure to do so would pro­vide ammunition for those who argued against using them. Fromthe practical standpoint, the scholar already convinced of the author­ity of l).adlth faced the problem of detennining which of those address­ing a given issue was authentic.

The adherents of l)adlth took two different approaches to thisdilemma. Some ventured to thread their way through the contra­dictory :Qadi"th by rational means. The first major exponent of this

9 See Josef van Ess, "L'Autorite de la tradition prophetique dans la theologiemu{tazilite," La Notion d'autoriti au Mllj!en Age: Islam, Byzance, Occident, ed. G. Makdisiet al. (Paris, 1982), 211-26 and Schacht, Origins, 50-52.

10 Fasawr, Kitiib al-Ma'rifa wa-'!-/a'rfkh, ed. Akram piya: alMcUman, 2d ed., 3 vals.(Beirut, 140ll1981), 2:789.

6 CHAPTER 01\"'E

approach was the famous jurist Shafi'I (150/767-204/820)11 and inlater centuries this approach continued to be most frequently asso­ciated with the adherents to his legal doctrines. 12 It is is found inShafi'I's own Ikhtiliif al-~adIth and Risiila, Kitiib al-Amr wa-'l-nahy ofhis disciple Muzanl (175/792-264/877), Ta:JwZl mukhtalif al-J:wdith ofIbn Qutayba, Tahdkib al-iithar of Tabarl (224/839-310/923), andNiisikh al-~adfth wa-mansukhuhu of Ibn Shahin (297/909-385/995).13Those who chose this route were often handcuffed by an overrid­ing desire to defend the authenticity of the greatest number of l;Lad1th.Therefore, their energies were largely expended in harmonization. 14

Shafi'l put forth the guiding principle of this movement in his Ikhtiliifal-~adlth: "If it is possible that two [apparently contradictory] l).adIthbe used together, they should be used together."lS To resolve apparentcontradictions, Shafi'l generally postulates one of three basic conditions:

1. There exists a certain amount of latitude on the issue and thevarious l).adrth define its permissible boundaries.

2. One of the l).adlth applies in one particular circumstance and theother(s) elsewhere.

3. One of the l).adrth abrogated the other(s)}6

II Sezgin, GAS, 1:484-90.12 Shafi'l's interest in legal uniformity is discussed by Schacht in Origins~ 13 and

John VVansbrough in 1he Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition qf lslamu SaloationHistolJI (Oxford~ 1978)~ 86.

13 Shafi'l, Ikhtiliif al-J;.adith, ed. 'Amir Al;1mad I:Jaydar (Beirut, 1405/1985); id.~

al-Risiila, ed. AJ:1mad Shakir (Cairo, 1358/1940); trans. Majid Khadduri, IslamicJurisprudence: Shtifj<f's "Risala" (Baltimore, 1961); Robert Brunschvig~ "'Le Livre del'ordre et 1a defense' d'al-Muzanr," Bulletin d'itudes orientales 11 (1945-46): 145-96;Tabarr~ Tahdhfb al-lithar, ed. Mal;tmud l\1uJ:1ammad Shakir, 5 vols. (Cairo, 1982);id. Tahdhzb al-iithfir: a[.-juz' al-mafqiid, ed. 'Alf Ri<;la b. 'Abd Allah b. 'Alf Riga(Damascus, 1416/1995); Ibn Shahln~ Niisikh al-lzadith wa-mansftkhuhu, ed. SamIr b.AmIn al-Zuhri (al-Zarqa" 1408/1988). For a study on Muzanf's work, see NonnanCalder, Studies in earfy Muslim Jurisprudence (Oxford, 1993), 86-104.

11 For Shafi'r and Ibn Qutayba as hannoruzers, see Ignaz Goldziher, Muha:rnmedo:tlischeStudien, 2:83-85; trans. C.R. Barber and S.M. Stem, Muslim Studies~ 2 vols. (London,1968-69), 2:85-87.

IS Shaficr~ lkhtiliif a!-badzth, 64. I:Ianafite I~adith commentary was informed by anentirely different spirit, see Bayhaqi, MacriJat a!-sunan wa-)l-iithiir~ ed. al-Sayyid A1:lmad~aqr (Cairo, 1969), 1:147-48; Schacht, On'gins, 30. Cf. CAlr al-QarI, Manaqib ai-imama!-a(t,am in 'Abd aI-Qadir al-Qurashf, al-Jawa.hir a!-mu(ifya.fi tabaqat al-ljanqfiya,2 vals. (Hyderabad~ 1332)~ 2:431-33.

16 C[ J. Schacht, Origins, 13-14; Gerard LeCOffi!e, "Un Example d'evolution dela controverse en Islam: de PItljiliif al-J;.adft d'al-Safi'i au Mu!Jtalif a!-~adfl d'IbnQutayba," Studia Islamica 27 (1967):5-40.

HADITII IN THE TIME OF IBN ABI I;IATlM 7

It will be noticed that in each of the three cases the authenticity ofall of the 1).adith is maintained. Even when abrogation is postulated)the authenticity of the J;adIth is not challenged, although the rulingit contains is no longer held to be valid.

Other members of the movement of the ahl al-J;,adrth acknowledgedthat the contradiction between various l;adlth was real and attemptedto distinguish which of the l;adIth on a given issue were right andwhich were wrong by examining their authenticity. They scrutinizedthe history of the transmission of the l.tadith from one scholar toanother down through time. By the beginning of the third/ninthcentury it had already become customary to attach to each l).adlththe record of its transmission, known as the "isnad," and it was tothis that these scholars directed their attention. Their procedures forexamining isnads will be described in detail in Chapter VI. 17

The difference between the two approaches was the differencebetween commentary and criticism. The l).adlth commentator, likethe Quean commentator, treated the canon as if it were closed andattempted to work within its bounds. The critic of l;adith manipu­lated the boundaries of the canon to avoid contradiction, removingany objectionable material. It is likely that the differences betweenthese methods stem from their emergence in different environments.The commentator was bent on establishing the authority of l;adnhat all costs, something that the critic took for granted. VVhile tryingto resolve the vexatious contradictions, the commentator was simul­taneously forced to avoid offering an opening to his Kiifan rivalswho were eager for any pretext to reject a 1).adfth in conflict 'Withtheir own dogmas. As might be expected, 1:J-adith commentary, tornbetween its two virtually exclusive objectives, was usually laboredand often utterly unconvincing. 18 These separate approaches may nothave been wholly inimical, but there were few scholars who madesignificant contributions in both domains before the fourth/tenthcentury. 19

Ii It should be understood that only Sunnite badlth criticism is being discussedhere. For Shritel:ladith criticism, see Etan Kohlberg, "An unusual Shf't isniid,"Israel Oriental Studies 5 (1975):142-49; id., "Sher J:Iadlth/' Cambridge History of ArabicLiterature: Arabic Literature w the End qf the Umayyad Period, 299-307; id., "AI-Ufillal-Arba<umi'a," Jerusalem Studies in Arabu and Islam 10 (1987), 128-66; Heinz Hahn l

Slziism (Edinburgh, 1991), 40-46.If] See the comments of Goldziher and Schacht on Ibn Qutayba's Ta'wil muf-Jltalff

al-badftA' Muhammedanische Studien) 2:136-37; trans. Muslim Studies, 2:130-31; OrigiJIS, 257,19 For a discussion of the rather perfunctory manner the early critics treated

8 CHAPTER Ol\"'E

Ibn AbI J::Iatim was a critic of l)adfth. As a group, the critics, likeall of the other contemporary schools of thought, were informallyand loosely constituted. They were characterized in the first placeby their insistence on the exclusive reliance on the Qur'an and l;1adfthas sources for religious doctrine and they also shared a more or lessunifonn body of legal and theological teachings. The critics corre­spond, to a large extent, to those early scholars whom the Arabichistorians would later identifY as "I::Ianbalites." Although Ibn AblI:!atim does not appear to have been familiar with the use of theword "I:Ianbalite" in this sense (or with any of the other names laterapplied to the schools of law), he certainly recognized A1).mad b.I:Ianbal (164/780-241/855?O as a forebear who had shared most ofhis own aims, methods and beliefs.

The critics of lJ-adlth held an extreme position in the debate overreason. Their ardor for expelling human reason from the formationof doctrine is epitomized in two phrases which acquired somethingnear the status of slogans among them, "Iii adri"-'J' (1 do not know)and "hi-Iii kqyf" (Without [asking] how). The phrase "Iii adn" was tobe the response to any legal question not expressly covered by theQur'an and l:tadith. The critic was not to compromise his principlesby resorting to ray even if his failure to give an answer to thequestion brought disappointment. 21 "Bi-lii kayf" represented the desiredstance to be taken on theological dogmas. If the Qur>an or l).adfthsaid that something was so, it was so. It had to be accepted withoutquestion and it was felt that speculation on the subject beyond thetextual indications would only lead to divisiveness.22

l,adfth conunentary~ see Nur aI-Din cItr, at-Imam al-Tirmidhf wa-Jl-muwiizana bqynJami'iM wa-b(9m al-$alfiJ:wyn ([Cairo], 1390/1970), 223-29.

20 Sezgin, GAS, 1:502-9.21 For a number of reports praising '"{jj adrf" in this context~ see Ibn Abr YacHi~

Tabaqat al-l:Janabiflt, ed. Mu.9_ammad J:lamfd al-Fiqr, 2 vo1s. (Cairo, 1371/1952),1:71. Cf Gustave E. von Grunebaum~ ~'On the Development of the Type of Scholarin Early Islam," Corona: Studies in Celebration qf the Eightieth Birthday if Samuel Singer,ed. Arno Schirokauer and vVolfgang Paulson (Durham, 1941), 142-147; FranzRosenthal, The Technique and Approach qf Muslim Scholarship (Rome~ 1947), 62-63; id.,Knowledge Triumphant: The Concept qfKnowledge in Medieval Islam (Leiden, 1970)~ 308-14.

22 For "bi-lii ka)f," see 1. Goldziher~ Introduction to Islamu: Theology and Law, trans.Andras and Ruth Hamori (Princeton, 1981), 92; J. Schacht "Theology and Law inIslam," Theology and Law in Islam, ed. G.E. von Grunebaum (Wiesbaden, 1971),11-12. Schacht notes that the phrase does not occur in the works of A1).mad b.I:Ianbal. However, it is already ascribed to the "Nabita" by al:Ja1)i~ in his Risalafi 'l-.Nabiw (composed around 225/839); Rasa'il al-Jiibi;:., 2: 18.