Encyclopedia of Islam

hadith

  

279  J

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Generations of the Sufis (Al-Tabaqat al-sufiyya), 

al-Sulami (d. 1091) links the sayings of prominent 

mystics to the hadith of Muhammad.

Muslim scholars recognized very early on, 

certainly by the middle of the eighth century, that 

some of the hadith had been forged or transmit-

ted carelessly. Hadith transmitters and collectors 

even attacked each other for doing so. Moreover, 

because so much of law and doctrine was founded 

on hadith, they needed to be assessed according to 

their  degree of authenticity or lack thereof. Such 

concerns led to the development of a science of 

hadith criticism (ilm al-hadith). The focus of this 

science was on the names of transmitters listed in 

the  isnad. Hadiths were basically judged accord-

ing to how continuous the line of transmitters 

was. Hadith with the most continuous lines were 

called sahih (correct, sound), as long as the con-

tent did not contradict the Quran. If an isnad was 

discontinuous or had unreliable transmitters, then 

the hadith was called hasan (good). If a hadith 

had transmitters known to be unreliable or if the 

content was not in conformity with the Quran 

and had unacceptable content, then it was called 

daif (weak). The need to know who the transmit-

ters were, where they lived, when they converted 

to Islam, and so forth helped spark the writing 

of biographical encyclopedias, which became a 

major genre of Islamic and Arabic literature.

Since the late 19th century, Western scholars 

of Islamic studies, especially those known as Ori-

entalists, have treated the hadith with even more 

skepticism than medieval Muslim scholars. They 

have argued that the hadith were either verbal-

ized survivals of pre-Islamic custom, legitimated 

during the Islamic period by attributing them to 

Muhammad and his companions, or they were 

fabricated a century or more after Muhammad’s 

death to legitimate practices and beliefs that 

emerged after the seventh century. Scholarly con-

sensus in recent decades has moved closer to the 

position accepted by most Muslims—that many, if 

not most, of the hadith are authentic, but they still 

demand critical assessment. Beyond the question 

of authenticity, however, the most critical ques-

tion facing Muslims today is whether and how 

the hadith can still inform Muslim life in the age 

of globalization and profound social and cultural 

change.

See also  a

khbari

  s

chool

; 

aUthority

; 

biogra

-

phy

; 

fiqh

; o

rientalism

; 

sharia

.