'margin-bottom:6.0pt;text-align:justify;''font-family:"Times New Roman";font-weight:normal'>For many Muslims, steeped in the text and ethos of the Koran, there could be nothing clearer, more self-explanatory or self-evidently true. Indeed the Koran refers to itself several times as “clear” or “manifest” (15.1; 26,2&195; 27,1; 28,2; 36,69; 43,2). For a non-Muslim encountering the Koran for the first time, however, it can be a bewildering book, as indeed is most scripture when encountered for the first time. The various books of the Bible or the Buddhist Sutras must be read many times, ideally with guidance, before the reader is familiar with their concerns and before the themes of those books take on the resonance they have for initiates. So it is with the Koran.
'text-align:justify;'>The Koran is composedof chapters, known as suras, each with its own title, usually chosen on thebasis of a striking image or theme of the chapter. These chapters range from three verses in length (103, 108, 110)to two hundred eighty-six (2). Theywere revealed in response to different events in the career of the ProphetMuhammad between 610 and his death in 632. Unlike Genesis, for example, the Koran contains few extended narratives,a notable exception being the sura “Joseph” (which makes for an interestingcomparison with the story of Joseph in Genesis). The Koran is conscious of itself as scripture in a way that the Bible,for example, is not. It refers to the fact that a religion is expected to havescripture like the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. These scriptures, according to the Koran,have been corrupted by the religious communities associated with them. In fact, Islam builds on Judaism and Christianityin the same way that Christianity built upon Judaism and the Koran reflectsthis. Rather than tell the story of Jesus or Moses at length, the Koran assumesa knowledge of these stories on the part of the reader and invokes pertinentelements of them.
The shorter chapters of the Koran consistof something akin to prayers (eg., 113, 114), admonitions (107), encouragementto believers (108), warnings to the unbelievers (103, 104), and invocations ofstories that would have been known to Muhammad’s audience, some biblical,others not (105). The longer chapters are a mixture of these and other elementsin an order that conveys rhetorical power, but rarely follows a narrativethread. The chapters themselves are notordered chronologically by date of revelation or according to some narrativescheme, but more or less in descending order of size. All of these factors present challenges to a first-time reader ofthe Koran.
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Ways of Approaching the Koran for the First-Time Reader
For a first-time reader, there are threepossible approaches to the Koran: simply to read it as it is; to readrepresentative selections of the Koran, arranged according to theme; or to readthe Koran along with or after a secondary work on the Koran.
Adviceon Reading the Koran with no Secondary Guide. A first-timereader may wish to start with the shorter chapters at the end of the book. These tend to be more focused on a singletheme, and are a good way to become familiar with the themes of the Koranbefore plunging into a longer chapter. These verses are also more poetic and give a better sense of the Koran’sverbal power (to the extent that this is possible in translation). After becoming comfortable with the text,the reader can return to the beginning and read the sura of The Cow, which,like many of the longer (and later revealed) suras contains explicit commandments not found in shorter suras on such matters as prayer,inheritance, fasting, marriage and divorce and so on. We shall deal with the many translations of the Koran below.
Collectionsof Thematically Grouped Excerpts of the Koran. For a readerinterested in seeing what the Koran has to say about individual topics, thereare selective translations of the Koran with like-themed excerpts groupedtogether. An early example of this isEdward Lane’s Selections from the Kur-án,Commonly called, in England, the Koran; with an Interwoven Commentary(1843). Many of the themes Lane choseto cover would still be of interest to readers today. These consist mainly of selections relating to Hebrew prophetsand Jesus Christ, but also Muhammad and the Koran, Believers and Unbelievers,Paradise and Hell, and God and his Works. A drawback is that the collection makes little effort to select passagesof the Koran that reflect the priorities and concerns of Muslims. Furthermore, the English translation of theKoran is that of Sale from 1734, and the language is a bit archaic. A better effort in this vein from 1988 isthat of Kenneth Cragg, whose Readings inthe Qur’ān consists of a useful introductory essay and selections fromthe Koran on the themes of God and His Praise; God in Creation: Man and Nature;Prophets and Messengers from Adam to Jesus; Muhammad: The Prophet-Preacher andthe Meccan Years; Muhammad: The Prophet-Ruler from the Medinan Climax; Faithand Religion; Society and Law; Unfaith, Judgment and the Last Things. The Koran uses repetition as a rhetoricaldevice so Cragg is able to cover many of the Koran’s concerns by excerptingonly a third of the book, making Readingsa good place to start for first-time readers.
Yet another such work is Commandments by God in the Quran,thematically grouped selections of the Koran by Nazar Mohammad. The themes chosen by the compiler are muchmore numerous than those chosen by Lane and Cragg, and include Man’s Birth andDeath, the Purpose of Human Life, Associating False Deities with God, MoralDiseases, Qualities of the Pious, and many others. Having been chosen by a Muslim, they may not address somequestions that non-Muslims would have concerning the Koran, but they are moreinformative of the concerns a Muslim might have when approaching the Koran(which is not to say that Nazar Mohammad speaks for all Muslims).
Guidesto the Koran. For those who would like guidance on theKoran, there are several options. Oneis Michael Sells’ translation of shorter chapters of the Koran, Approaching the Qur’ān: The EarlyRevelations (1999). It comes with aCD of Koranic recitation, and given the frequency with which such recordingsare heard, in Arab countries at least, this is an important way to experiencethe Koran. Sells also gives usefulbackground information on the Koran, the circumstances under which a verse wasrevealed, and common interpretations of a verse.
Another very clear introduction to theKoran is Fazlur Rahman’s Themes in theQur’ān (1994), which presents the worldview (and otherworldly view) ofthe Koran with respect to the themes of God, Man as Individual, Man in Society,Nature, Prophethood and Revelation, Eschatology, Satan and Evil, and theEmergence of the Muslim Community. Fazlur Rahman was a well-respected scholar of Islam, and hisunderstanding of the Koran is certainly representative of that of manyMuslims. Themes in the Qur’ān is an excellent introduction to theKoran, and will give the reader a perspective from which to make sense of thethemes the Koran returns to again and again. Of course, this is Fazlur Rahman’s reading.
A more neutral approach, though one thatoffers correspondingly less guidance, is that of Faruq Sherif’s A Guide to the Contents of the Qur’an. Like the thematically arranged compilationsof Koranic excerpts, Sherif’s work covers seven broad themes: the Creator andHis Creatures, the Prophet and the Qur’an, Previous Bearers of the DivineMessage, Historical Events, Faith and Religion, the Other World, andCommandments. Unlike Fazlur Rahman,Sherif does not try to knit these themes together into a coherentworldview. Rather, he sums up theKoran’s statements on various topics making no attempt to reconcile possiblecontradictions, and gives citations of the passages upon which he bases hisclaims (some of his citations appear to be wrong).
Two final books should be mentioned inthis category, these being W. M. Watt and R. Bell’s Introduction to the Qur’an, and the more recent The Koran: A Very Short Introduction, byMichael Cook. These are more scholarlyintroductions to the Koran, and Watt and Bell’s book in particular goes into detailthat non-scholars may not find interesting or useful, such as the history ofthe collection of the chapters and verses of the Koran into a single volume bythe early Muslims or a chapter on “The Qur’ān and Occidental Scholarship.” Their book does provide a brief overview ofthe life of Muhammad and the context in which the Koran was revealed, which islacking in other books we have discussed. It also contains a chapter on “The Doctrines of the Qur’ān” whichcovers some of the themes dealt with in these other works. Both books offer a non-Muslim’s perspectiveon the work and raise questions about the historicity and authenticity of theKoran that non-Muslim readers might find interesting.
As for the varying readings of the Koranby Muslims throughout the centuries, this shall be treated below in a sectionon tafsir, or Koranic exegesis. It bears noting in this section that someworks of exegesis would also be suitable introductions to the Koran.
Translations of the Koran
Translation of the Koran generally is avexing question for Muslims, just as choosing a translation to read is a vexingquestion given the immense quantity of competing versions. Muslims believe that the Koran co-existseternally with God, preserved on a tablet in Heaven in the Arabiclanguage. Even a copy of the Koran inArabic is thus, strictly speaking, not the Koran itself, and so is oftenreferred to in Arabic as a mushaf: avolume or book. This, in addition to the usual problems of translation, meansthat an English rendering of the original cannot, in the eyes of most Muslims,be considered the Koran. Translationssometimes refer to themselves as an “interpretation” of the Koran, the“message” of the Koran, or the “meaning” of the Koran. However, given that less than a quarter ofthe world’s Muslims are Arabs, a non-Arabic speaking reader of the Koran intranslation is in the same situation as the majority of Muslims.
The George Camp Keiser Library would be a good place to begin a study of the history of translation of the Koran into English, as it has a collection of 20 different English translations, including the first ever, The Alcoran of Mahomet, an English translation of the French translation from 1688. There is a great deal of stylistic variation among translations of the Koran. Some aim for clarity and accuracy, while others try to capture some of the poetic power of the original. Compare the following renditions of the opening chapter of the Koran or al-fatiha. The first translation is that of Abdallah Yousuf Ali, The Glorious Kur’an (1973). The second is the translation of Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1953). The last is a recent and well-regarded bilingual edition by `Ali Quli Qara’i, The Qur’ān, With a Phrase by Phrase English Translation (2004).
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Praise be to God, Most Gracious Most Merciful
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In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful
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In the Name of Allah, the All-beneficent, the All merciful
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Praise be to God, The Cherisher and Sustainer of the Worlds
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Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds
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All praise belongs to Allah
Lord of all the worlds
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Most Gracious, Most Merciful
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The Beneficent, the Merciful
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The All-beneficent, the All-merciful
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Master of the Day of Judgment
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Owner of the Day of Judgment
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Master of the Day of Retribution
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Thee do we worship, and Thine aid we seek
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Thee (alone) we worship; Thee (alone) we ask for help
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You [alone] do we worship, and to You [alone] do we turn for help
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Show us the straight way
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Show us the straight path
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Guide us on the straight path
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The way of those on whom Thou has bestowed thy Grace, Those whose (portion) is not wrath, and who go not astray
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The path of those whom Thou hast favoured
Not (the path) of those who earn Thine anger nor of those who go astray
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The path of those whom You have blessed—such as have not incurred your wrath, nor are astray
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The difference is mainly stylistic andfor the first-time reader, interested in the text for reasons other than pietyor scholarship, most recent translations will do. One point to make about the above translations is that the firsttranslates the Arabic word Allāhas God and the others leave the word untranslated. Some Muslims prefer to refer to God as he names himself in Arabicin the Koran, even when speaking other languages. However Allāh isthe Arabic for “God” and is used also by Arab Christians. The refusal to render the word Allāh in English obscures the factthat Muslims see themselves as worshiping the same God as Christians and Jews
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KoranicExegesis, or Tafsir/Ta’wil
The George Camp Keiser Library alsocontains several volumes in English of Koranic exegesis, that is, attempts byMuslims to interpret or explain the Koran. There are two types of Koranic exegesis. The first is known as tafsir,which is a relatively straight-forward elucidation of the Koran that tries toclarify the text by explaining the context in which a verse was revealed andclarifying difficult language. The factthat there exist many different works of tafsirmakes clear that there is another dimension to this genre, namely promoting aparticular reading of the Koran and thus a different understanding of thereligion as a whole. It must be kept inmind when reading tafsir that manyinterpretations represent the view of the author or of the broader tendencywithin Islam he represents.
A second type of exegesis is ta’wil or symbolic interpretation. Many works of tafsir will contain a certain amount of ta’wil, as there are some passages that cannot be understoodliterally. Symbolic interpretation ismore frequently undertaken by mystics (Sufis) and the Ismailis, an esotericShiite sect, than by practitioners of other religious sciences.
One of the best overviews of Koranicexegesis is The Qur’an and itsInterpreters by Mahmoud M. Ayoub. Rather than a translation of the exegesis of a single classical ormodern exegete, The Qur’an and itsInterpreters draws on 13 different exegeses, spanning over a thousand yearsof Koranic exegesis. Ayoub’s selection represents early works of exegesis thatoffer little more than hadith(basically a short narrative about Muhammad) relating to the topic of a sura or the circumstances under which itwas revealed, as well as juristic, theological, philosophical, mystical, andmodern exegeses. This is a wonderfulresource for those who want a taste of the diversity of the Islamicintellectual heritage.
Another important Koranic exegesisavailable in English is that of Sayyid Abul A`la al-Mawdudi (1903-1979), one ofthe most important exponents of political Islam, founder of the jama`at al-Islami in Pakistan, and aprofound influence on the Egyptian Islamist Sayyid Qutb. Mawdudi wrote Towards Understanding the Qur’ān in part with first-timereaders in mind. His introductionaddresses the difficulties in reading the Koran for those unfamiliar with itsstyle. This tafsir makes an interesting guide to the Koran for first-timereaders, but it must be kept in mind that the exegesis it offers represents avery particular Islamic orientation.
'margin-bottom:6.0pt;'>Hadith andHadith Criticism
Second to the Koran as an authoritative guide tocorrect and godly practice for Muslims is the sunna or tradition of Muhammad (from which comes the designation Sunni, as in Sunni Muslim or SunniIslam; i.e., a Muslim or view of Islam that follows the community’s understandingof the tradition of Muhammad rather than the leadership of his descendents, asdo Shiite Muslims). This sunna comprises thousands of individualreports about the sayings and actions of Muhammad known as hadith. As there are manythousands of hadith recognized as authoritative by Muslim scholars, it would bevery difficult, if not impossible, to write anything that accuratelycharacterizes them all as a body. Whatfollows is first a discussion of types of hadith, their components, collectionsof hadith and the importance of hadith for Muslims, and second a discussion ofhadith criticism. The second topic ismuch more difficult than the first. That many fraudulent stories and sayings of Muhammad ended up incirculation is recognized by both Muslim and Western scholars. However, Muslim and Western scholars differradically over how they account for this fact, and how they try to identify ahadith as authentic or inauthentic. Many works on the topic of hadith, both Muslim and Western, address thisdebate in some way, and so a brief overview of the debate will be given herefor the sake of background.
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Hadith
Muslims look to hadith forinformation about the life of the beloved figure of Muhammad, seen as God’sfinal and most perfect prophet, and a guide to be emulated even in mundaneaffairs such as clothing (men should not wear silk), beard length (at least afist in length), and how to sleep (on one’s right side). The extremely devout try to bring all oftheir life’s actions into accordance with the example of the Prophet toincrease their piety. The hadith arealso looked to for information to supplement legal or ritual commandments foundin the Koran. The Koran clearly statesin numerous passages that prayer is obligatory, but it does not provide thedetails of how exactly prayer is to be performed. This information is found in the hadith. When attempting to come to a ruling onreligious or legal matters, a Muslim will first look in the Koran for a verdictand turn to hadith only if a verdict is not found there.
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It should be noted that thehadith do not contain only the words and deeds of Muhammad. There is also a category of hadith known as hadith qudsi or “holy hadith” in whichGod speaks. These are not considered apart of the Koran because, according to Muhammad Azami, it is possible thatMuhammad’s own interpretation played a role in the wording of the text. A famous example of a hadith qudsi, often pointed to by Sufis as support for theirpractices and attempts to achieve unity with God, is as follows:
Godthe Almighty has said: Whosoever shows enmity to a friend of Mine, I shall beat war with him. My servant does notdraw near to me with anything more loved by Me than the religious duties I haveimposed upon him, and My servant continues to draw near to Me withsupererogatory works so that I shall love him. When I love him I am the hearing with which he hears, his seeing withwhich he sees, his hand with which he strikes, and his foot with which hewalks. Were he to ask [something] ofMe, I would surely give it to him; and were he to ask Me for refuge, I wouldgrant him it. (from the collection ofBukhari)
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Transmissionof Hadith and the isnad
There is agreement thathadith first circulated orally, being passed from one Muslim to another. The names of those who participated in thetransmission of a hadith were noted in what was called an isnad, or chain of transmission, for the sake of keeping track ofthe people on whose authority the body of the hadith, or matn, was related. ForMuslim scholars, the isnad is the keyto determining the authenticity of a hadith, as we shall see below. Western scholars, too, have analyzed isnads in their own approach todetermining the authenticity of hadith. An example of a full hadith with isnadis as follows:
Bukharisaid that Sulayman Abu al-Rabi` informed him saying that Isma`il ibn Ja`farsaid that Nafi` ibn Malik informed him on the authority of his father that AbuHurayra related that the Prophet said, “The signs of a hypocrite are three:whenever he speaks he tells a lie; whenever he makes a promise he breaks it/whenever trusted with something he proves to be dishonest.” (Bukhari)
Even when hadith began to bewritten down in books, Muslims continued for a long time to copy their hadithnot directly from other books, but rather on the basis of hearing a book readaloud. They kept track of who hadcopied a book of hadith from whom. Beyond the use of the isnad,this practice also served an important social and religious function. By transmitting hadith and inserting one’sself into the chain of transmission for later generations, a Muslim insertedhim or herself into the tradition of the Prophet. In fact, as Richard Bulliet points out in writing of theetiquette of hadith teachers in medieval Iran, they were to emulate Muhammad inpreparing for class, walking to class and conducting class, because in animportant sense they were representing Muhammad himself to their students inpassing on his words and deeds to them (Richard Bulliet, Islam: A View from the Edge, 1994).
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In the eighth century C. E.,hadith began to be collected into compendiums. The first such effort was that of Malik ibn Anas (d. 179/795). His Muwatta’(“the smoothed path”) was not intended primarily as a collection of hadith fortheir own sake, but rather as a work of law. Unlike later, more sophisticated treatises on legal theory, Malik’s Muwatta’ is a collection of hadith,thematically arranged, allowing jurists to find authoritative statementsapplicable to cases at hand. Though theMuwatta’ is recognized as laying thefoundation for hadith studies, it is not entirely accurate to say that it is acollection of hadith only. Malikincludes statements of other early Muslims as authorities to be consulted. Such reports, since they are not aboutMuhammad, are correctly referred to as atharand not hadith. This is a point that isseized upon by Western scholars in their hadith criticism, as we shall seebelow. The Muwatta’ has been translated and can be paged through for a senseof hadith material.
A second early collector ofhadith was also a jurist, Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 241/855), whose Musnad (lit. “foundation,” but atechnical term for a type of collection of hadith) collected between thirty andforty thousand hadith. True to the Musnad genre of hadith collections, IbnHanbal’s Musnad arranges its hadithby the person who first related them. Thus, all hadith in the collection reported originally by Ali, thenephew of the Prophet, would be under a single heading. Ibn Hanbal’s Musnad is still a highly respected collection, despite the factthat it conveys hadith later determined to be false, and despite the fact that,like all Musnad collections, it isdifficult to use when one is searching for a hadith on a particular topic. The hadith contained in the Musnad represent only a small portion ofthe one million hadith that Ibn Hanbal is said to have memorized. Many of these were certainly identical incontent but had different isnads. Nonetheless, this illustrates the differencebetween the thousands of hadith that were eventually deemed canonical and thevast number that were in circulation.
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Later in the ninth century,the two hadith collections considered most authoritative today, those ofBukhari (d. 256/870) and Muslim (d. 261/875) were collected. These collections have been revered byMuslims ever since, and as books are second in authority only to the Koran. Bukhari’s criteria for selection were morestrict that Muslim’s. Bukhari’s Sahih (“sound” or “authentic”) contains2,602 distinct hadith, repeated several times such that each hadith iscontained under every topic heading it pertains to, for a total of 9,082items. Muslim’s Sahih contains 3,033 distinct hadith. Both works transmit many of the same hadith, though Bukharirecognizes 434 persons whom Muslim does not cite, and Muslim cites 625 personswhom Bukhari does not mention. Thesetwo books are referred to together as the Sahihayn,the two Sahihs, and a reader curiousabout the scope of material covered by hadith can page through translations ofeither collection. Together with fourother books, those of Abu Dawud (d. 261/875), al-Tirmidhi (d. 279/892),al-Nasa`i (d. 303/915) and Ibn Maja (d. 273/886), they form a body of canonicalhadith known as “the six books.”
These later four books fallinto the category of Sunan (plural ofsunna), that is, collections ofhadith that cover mainly legal or ritual questions. One of the concerns of these authors was reproducing enoughhadith to permit jurists to derivelegal rulings from either the Koran, or the precedent of Muhammad, rather thanrelying on their own fallible judgement. The strict methodology of Bukhari and Muslim did not preserve enoughhadith for this to be possible, so some of these compilers, especially AbuDawud and Ibn Maja, included hadith of lesser reliability, including some thatwere considered “weak.” It should benoted that Bukhari and Muslim set out to collect only those hadith that were,according to their criteria, indisputably sound. Muslim did not claim to be collecting all sound hadith (Bukharidid not preface his Sahih with amethodological introduction, so it is not possible clearly to determine hisobjectives). Thus, the hadith of the collections of Malik Ibn Anas and AhmadIbn Hanbal and others continued to be consulted.
Shiites refer to hadith bythe word khabar (pl. akhbar), or “report,” “tiding.” They do not pay as much attention to the isnad beginning with the Companions ofMuhammad, but rather to reports transmitted by Shiite imams—12 descendents ofMuhammad designated by God, having a near prophetic status. The “four books” of the Shiites were compiledlater in the tenth and eleventh centuries. They differ from the Sunni collections mainly in containing numerousreferences to the Shiite imams, references they believe were suppressed by theSunnis.
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Al-Nawawi, athirteenth-century religious scholar who wrote a commentary on the Sahih of Muslim, also collected a shortcollection of forty hadith, which has been translated simply as Al-Nawawi’s Forty Hadith. It can be read through in a couple of hoursfor an experience of hadith that al-Nawawi and many of his readers foundinspiring, instructive, and a sort of bare minimum of hadith that should beknown by all Muslims. Forty Hadith is meant to be read coverto cover rather than searched as a reference work for hadith relating tospecific legal or ethical questions, and is a good place to start for afirst-time reader of the hadith.
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The difference between theapproach of Muslim hadith scholars and Western scholars of hadith rests on afundamental difference of approach to the Islamic tradition as a whole. A traditional Muslim attitude toward hadithis summed up in the following quote:
“…thesunna, or we may say hadith, of the Prophet…is the secondmain source of Islamic law, valid forever, and the life of the Prophet is amodel which ought to be followed by Muslims irrespective of time andplace. For this reason, the Companions,even in the life of the Prophet, began to diffuse the knowledge of the sunna and they were ordered by theProphet to do so.” —M. M. Azami, Studiesin Hadith Methodology and Literature, American Trust Publications: Indianapolis, 1977, p. 46.
In other words, hadith have acentral role in Islam, this has been the case from the start, and because ofthis, Muhammad and his companions set out from the very beginning to preservethem accurately for posterity. Thetraditional view of the means by which hadith were preserved by the earlycommunity is described in this quote by Anas ibn Malik, Muhammad’s servant:
Wesat with the Prophet, maybe sixty persons in number and the Prophet taught themhadith. Later on when he went out for any necessity, we used to memorizeit amongst us, when we departed it was cultivated in our hearts.
ToMuslim scholars, who believe that Islam was established by an omniscient Godthrough an infallible prophet, it is entirely plausible that Muhammad wouldhave foreseen the form his religion would take when more fully elaboratedcenturies later. He could have foreseenthe centrality of hadith to this religion, and therefore taken steps from thevery beginning to establish an authoritative body of hadith. This view of hadith finds support in thehadith themselves, such as the following: “Pass on knowledge from me even if it is only one verse.” (Bukhari) and“God illumines the man who hears hadith from me, preserves it carefully, andpasses it on to others.” (Ibn Hanbal).
To Western scholars, it isnot plausible that hadith, stories and sayings of Muhammad, would have beenrecognized and collected as hadith ina technical sense already in Muhammad’s lifetime. A more believable scenario for them is that Muhammad spoke andacted rather more un-self-consciously than the above accounts would suggest,realizing maybe that he was a model for his community, but not someone whoseevery action and word would be emulated to the smallest detail by Muslims forcenturies. After the death of Muhammad,members of the early community looked for guidance in the face of radically newsituations, such as the conquest of a good portion of the known world.Additionally, converts to Islam from other religions looked for instruction intheir new faith, sometimes asking questions emerging from their own cultural traditionthat had never before occurred to the community. To answer such questions, examples from the life of Muhammad wererecalled, and not always accurately. This body of recollections was eventually formalized as the sunna ofMuhammad, made up of thousands upon thousands of hadith, some genuinelydescribing his words and deeds and others not.
Consider the hadith quotedabove from the perspective of Western scholars: “God illumines the man whohears hadith from me, preserves it carefully, and passes it on to others.” While this story is proof to Muslims thatMuhammad endorsed the practice of scrupulously verifying, collecting, andreciting hadith, it is taken the opposite way by Western scholars. In thishadith, Muhammad speaks self-consciously of hadith in a technical sense,something Western scholars assume it would not have occurred to Muhammad todo. For them, it is an example of ahadith circulated after Muhammad’s time for the sake of endorsing a particular,late evolving practice—the collection and authentication of hadith—as were manyhadith, and is only further proof that a good number of hadith accepted asauthentic by Muslims are later accretions to the tradition.
It is not only Westernscholars who question the authenticity of some hadith. That there were many forged hadith is a factrecognized by both Muslim and Western scholars. Their approaches to this problem and to the question of whatportion of hadith can confidently be declared authentic differ ratherdrastically. What follows is a briefoverview of their respective methods of hadith criticism. For a more detailed account, the readershould consult some of the books cited below.
The Muslim Approach to Hadith Criticism. Ibn Qutayba (d. 889), writing in the ninth century, shows the realizationof hadith scholars of the widespread problem of the circulation of inauthentichadith. He points to hadith spread bypopular preachers claiming that lizards were disobedient Jews transformed byGod, that a wolf was admitted to paradise for eating a tax-collector, and thatin answer to the paradox of who created God, it was claimed on the authority ofMuhammad that when God decided to create Himself, he first created fast horses,set them off at a gallop and then made Himself our of their sweat. He wrote:
Such idiocies bring Islam intodisrepute, reduce non-Muslims to guffaws, and make the religion unattractive toapostate and potential convert alike. (Ta’wīlmukhtalif al-hadīth, pp. 7-8)
Ofcourse, the collectors of hadith aimed at more than respect fromnon-Muslims. At stake in the questionof authentic vs. forged hadith is nothing less than the ability to live life inaccordance with God’s final and most perfect revelation to humanity. In response to these and other concerns, itwas decided that the authentic hadith had to be authoritatively separated fromthe inauthentic. Given the hundreds ofthousands of hadith in circulation by this time, the undertaking was a mammothone. It involved learning the relevantbiographical details of the lives of thousands of men who appear in isnads and knowing from memory tens, ifnot hundreds of thousands of hadith along with their isnads. Muslims today holdthe remarkable men who undertook this task—Malik Ibn Anas, Ibn Hanbal, Bukhari,Muslim and the others—in great esteem, and it is not surprising that Muslimscholars today bristle at the suggestion on the part of Western scholars thattheir methodology was flawed, allowed in many inauthentic hadith, and that, assome more extreme scholars claim, it is impossible ever to know whether a givenhadith is authentic.
The"Science of Hadith" was remarkably sophisticated. According to Egyptian religious scholar Ibnal-Mullaqin (d. 1400), this science was, at one time, divided into as many as200 sub-fields. The fundamentalcriteria for determining the authenticity of a hadith, however, was assessmentof its isnad. An isnadwas assessed on two main criteria. Onewas whether all of its various links connected. There could be no anonymous transmitters, and all of the varioustransmitters’ lives had to overlap in time and, at some point, in space withboth the transmitters they heard a hadith from and those they passed it onto. The second criterion was the moralstanding of the men in the chain of transmitters, that is, whether they wereall honest, morally upstanding men who could be counted on not to lie andfabricate hadith. The methodology ofassessing these biographical questions about hadith transmitters was known asthe “Science of Men” (`ilm al-rijal).
Knowingwhich men in an isnad could have known their predecessors and successorswas an objective question as long as their birth and death dates wereknown. Of course, this criteria can beapplied more and less strictly. Bukharidemanded evidence that two transmitters had in fact met, while Muslim askedonly that there be evidence that they could have met. The question of the truthfulness of a transmitter is a much moresubjective question. One early hadithscholar, Ibn Mubarak (d. 797), gave four major criteria for ruling atransmitter of righteous conduct (`adl):he must pray in congregation, not drink wine, must not tell lies, and must notsuffer from any mental disqualifications. Different scholars came to different conclusions on this questionregarding the same man. Ibn Qutayba,the one mentioned above who bemoaned the circulation of so many outrageouslyfabricated hadith, was assessed variously by different scholars. Some scholars, including the famousal-Suyuti, declared him trustworthy and a man of eminent learning. Al-Bayhaqi claimed that he had been a memberof a heretical sect (the Karrāmiyya);al-Hakim called him a liar, claiming the consensus of the community on thisjudgment; and al-Dhahabi called him an anthropomorphist (i.e., one who ascribeshuman characteristics to the utterly transcendent God).
There was some attention paid to thecontent of a hadith as well. As we sawabove, Ibn Qutayba rejected the popular hadith circulating in his day on thebasis of the absurdity of their content. Ibn al-Qayyim (d. 1350) wrote of the process of rejecting a hadith basedon content. He gave the example of ahadith circulating in his day according to which, whenever one says, “There isno deity but God,” the first part of the declaration of faith, God creates fromthis sentence a bird with seventy thousand tongues. Ibn Qayyim writes that the claim is absurd, that experimentrejects it, it contradicts the well-known sunna,it contradicts the Koran, it sounds like the saying of mystics, and so on.
Still, the most importantcriteria for determining the authenticity of a hadith was the isnad. One important reason for this was the desire to avoid subjecting God’swill and teachings to human reason. There is no rational reason why people should sleep on their right sidesas opposed to on their backs, and yet God willed his Messenger to do so. Who are we to question this according to ourhuman criteria?
Eventually, a standard was workedout for judging hadith transmitters on a scale of 1-12, ranging from SolidlyReliable (thiqatun thabitun) to Liar(kadhdhab). Primarily on this basis, hadith were divided into two groups:accepted (maqbul) and rejected (mardud), with each category furthersubdivided by degrees. On the basis ofthis sophisticated system of hadith criticism, Muslim hadith critics were ableto distill a body of hadith of undisputed soundness (those contained in the Sahihs of Bukhari and Muslim) as well asmany additional hadith which may not be considered as sound, but whoseauthenticity was accepted enough that they could be used for legal and ritualpurposes, as well as general piety.
The Approach to Hadith Criticism of WesternScholars. While Western scholars cannot but beimpressed with the sophistication of the methods for determining theauthenticity of an isnad, whenturning to the matn or content ofmany hadith, they found reason to suspect that they could not have been fromthe time of the Prophet, as they clearly addressed concerns that arose afterMuhammad’s death. The assumption insuch cases is that later Muslims tried to find support for their faction ordoctrinal position by placing words in Muhammad’s mouth.
An example of a situationthat post-dates the death of Muhammad but is addressed in hadith is thestruggle over the succession to leadership of the Muslims. After Muhammad’s death, the first caliph(successor) was Abu Bakr, followed by Umar, then Uthman, then Ali. There were some who felt that Ali, a nephewof Muhammad and husband of his daughter Fatima, should have been the firstcaliph, not the fourth. From thisfaction emerged the Shiites. Thus, whenWestern scholars find a hadith that says, “When the Prophet was still among us,we compared no man with Abu Bakr and, after him, with Umar, and then Uthman. Wemade no distinction between the remaining Companions.” (Abu Dawud) they conclude that it was putinto circulation after the death of Muhammad for the express purpose ofde-legitimating the claim of Ali to be caliph.
There are also hadith thathave the opposite message: that Muhammad did intend for Ali to succeedhim. Muhammad is said to have said, “Hewhose patron I am, Ali is also his patron.” (Ahmad Ibn Hanbal). Clearly it cannot be the case that both pro-and anti-Ali traditions are correct, and so it must be concluded that themethod of isnad criticism was notfoolproof.
Much as Muslim scholarslooked at matn as well as the isnad in trying to authenticate hadith,so too did Western scholars find evidence for the inauthenticity of some hadithby looking at the isnad as well asthe matn. In particular, some scholars have noticed that isnads sometimes “grow backwards.” That is to say, in early sources, a hadithwill be found with an isnad thatextends back to the early 8th century. In a later source, the same hadith will be found, but with an isnad that goes back to a companion ofthe Prophet. In a later source still,the same hadith is found with an isnadstretching back to the Prophet himself. The assumption of Western scholars is that as the importance of hadithgrew and the science of hadith criticism became more sophisticated, demandingthat hadith have verifiable prophetic origins, hadith were furnished with isnads that eventually stretched back toMuhammad.
These differences in approachto hadith stem from fundamentally different approaches to the religioustradition as a whole. The two schoolsof thought are unlikely to be reconciled. Books in English on the topic of hadith will fall into one or the otherschool.
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John Burton, An Introduction to the Hadith.Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994 (210 pp). This book cannot be considered an introduction for those withlittle or no background in Islam or Islamic religious sciences. It falls into the Western school of focusingon the demonstrable inauthenticity of many hadith. Not only does Burton summarize the arguments of Western hadithscholars such as Goldziher and Schacht, he adds his approach to hadith study,which disqualifies his book as a true introduction to the hadith. Still, it is a valuable resource for thosewith some background in Islamic studies and an interest in a sophisticateddiscussion of hadith and hadith criticism.
M. M. Azami, Studies in Hadith Methodology and Literature. Indianapolis: American Trust Publications, 1977 (122 pp). Azami’s work is a true introduction to hadith and hadith criticism for a beginner from a Muslim perspective. Azami has written a longer book responding to Western hadith studies by scholars like Schacht, and some of his observations and arguments come through also in this shorter work. Through his rebuttals, the reader can gain some sense of the criticisms, lending the work some inadvertent balance. A very readable work that gives a sense of the sophistication of Muslim hadith criticism. A good book for beginners and more advanced scholars alike.
Maulana Muhammad Ali, A Manual of Hadith. Lahore, 1951 (408pp). The author is a member of theAhmadiyya sect, and his work would be suspect to many Muslims. Still, the hadith he selects here are mainlyfrom the “Six Books.” The hadith arearranged thematically, allowing the reader to see what sort of hadith there arepertaining to given topics.
Al Nawawi’s Forty Hadith, Ezzedin Ibrahim and Denys Johnson-Davies. Stuttgart: The Holy Koran Publishing House, 1976 (127 pp). This collection of forty hadith is a good source for someone who wants to read through a short selection of hadith on diverse topics to get a sense for the genre.
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APPENDIX:
LIST OF KORAN AND HADITH TRANSLATIONS ANDCOMMENTARIES
Note:All of these titles are available in the George Camp Keiser Library.
Qur'anTranslations (in chronological order)
The Alcoran of Mahomet / Translated from Arabic to French byAndre Du Ryer, and from French to English by Alexander Ross. London: R. Taylor,1688.
BP109 D8 1688 Rare Book
Selections from the Kur-an, CommonlyCalled, in England, the Koran/ Commentary and Introduction (based on Sale) by Edward William Lane. London:James Madden and Co., 1843. / BP 110 L3 1843
The Koran / Translated into English from theOriginal Arabic by George Sale. London: Frederick Warne and Company, 187-? / BP109 S3
A Comprehensive Commentary on the Quran:Comprising Sale's Translation and Preliminary Discourse, with Additional Notesand Emendations / By theReverend E.H. Wherry. London: Kegal Paul, Trench, Truebner & Co., 1896. / BP130.4 W5 Rare Book
The Speeches and Table-Talk of theProphet Mohammad /Chosen and Translated, with Introduction and Notes, by Stanley Lane-Poole.London: Macmillan and Company, 1882 (1915 reprint). / BP 110 L35
The Qur'an / Translated, with a CriticalRe-Arrangement of the Surahs, by Richard Bell. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark,1937. / BP 109 B4 v.1-2
The Koran / Translated from the Arabic by theReverend J.M. Rodwell. London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1943. / BP 109 R6 1943
The Holy Qur'an / Text, Translation and Commentary by A.Yusuf Ali. Cambridge, MA: Murray Printing Company, 1946. / BP 100 A21 1946
A Book of Quranic Laws / Compiled by Muhammad ValibhaiMerchant. Lahore: Muhammad Ashraf, 1947. / BP 134 L4 M5
Translation of the Holy Quran / With Short Notes and Introduction byMuhammad Ali. Lahore: Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isha'at Islam, 1948. / BP 109 M8 1948
The Message of Islam / By A. Yusuf Ali. London: John Murray, 1949. / BP 130 A35
The Short Koran: Designed for EasyReading / Edited byGeorge M. Lamsa. Chicago: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1949. / BP 110 L29
The Holy Koran / An Introduction with Selections byA.J. Arberry. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1953. / BP 110 A7
The Koran (Qur'an) / Translated by E.H. Palmer. London:Oxford University Press, 1953.
BP109 P3 1953
The Koran: An Edition Prepared forEnglish Readers / Beingan Arrangement in Chronological Order from the Translations of Edward W. Lane,Stanley Lane-Poole, and A.H.G. Sarwar. Mount Vernon, NY: Peter Pauper Press,1953. / BP 110 L32
The Meaning of the Glorious Koran / An Explanatory Translation by MohammedMarmaduke Pickthall. New York: Mentor Books, 1953. / BP 109 P5 1953
The Koran Interpreted / By A.J. Arberry. London: George Allen& Unwin, 1955.
BP109 A7 v.1-2
The Student's Quran: An Introduction / By Hashim Amir Ali. Hyderabad:Shalimar Publishers, 1959. / BP 109 A4
The Teaching of Islam in Verses from theKoran / By YacoubSzynkiewicz. Cairo: Islamic Congress, [no date]. / BP 101 S9
Selections from the Noble Reading: AnAnthology of Passages from the Qur'an/ Translated into Contemporary English by T.B. Irving. Cedar Rapids: UnityPublishing Company, 1968.
BP110 I7
The Glorious Kur'an / Translation and Commentary by A. YusufAli. Libyan Arab Republic: Call of Islam Society, 1973. / BP 109 A37 1973
The Holy Qur'an / Arabic Text, English Translation andCommentary by Maulana Muhammad Ali. Lahore: Ahmadiyyah Anjuman Isha'at Islam,1973. / BP 100 E5 1973
The Message of the Qur'an / Translated and Explained by MuhammadAsad. Gibraltar: Dar al-Andalus, 1980. / BP 109 A8 1980
Man in Qur'an and the Meaning of Furqan:Surat ul-Baqarah /Tafsir by Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri. Blanco, TX: Zahra Publications, 1982. / BP128.17 H34 1982
Heart of Qur'an and Perfect Mizan: SuratYa Sin / Tafsir byShaykh Fadhlalla Haeri. Blanco, TX: Zahra Publications, 1983. / BP 128.78 H341983
Beams of Illumination from the DivineRevelation: Juz' 'Amma, the Last Section of the Qur'an / Tafsir by Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri.Blanco, TX: Zahra Publications, 1985.
BP129.42 H34 1985
The Qur'an: The First American Version / Translation and Commentary by T.B.Irving. Brattleboro, VT: Amana Books, 1985. / BP 109 1985
The Koran / Translated with Notes by N.J. Dawood.London: Penguin Books, 1990.
BP109 D39
Commandments by God in the Quran / Compiled by Ch. Nazar Mohammad. NewYork: The Message Publications, 1991. / BP 109 M64 1991
Al-Qur'an / A Contemporary Translation by Ahmed Ali. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. / BP 109 A54 1994
The Quran: A New Interpretation / Textual Exegesis by Muhammad BaqirBehbudi, English Translation by Colin Turner. Surrey: Curzon Press, 1997. / BP109 1997a
Index of Qur’anic Topics / Compiled by Ashfaque Ullah Syed.Washington, DC: IFTA Office, 1998. / BP 133 S92 1998
Readings in the Qur'an / Selected and Translated by KennethCragg. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1999. / BP 110 C734 1999
Women in Islam: An Anthology from theQuran and Hadiths /Translated and Edited by Nicholas Awde. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000. /BP 134 W6 W6 2000
An Interpretation of the Qur'an: EnglishTranslation of the Meanings/ Translated by Majid Fakhry. New York: New York University Press, 2002. / BP109 F35 2002
The Qur'an: A New Translation / M.A.S. Abdel Haleem. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 2004. / BP 109 H35 2004
The Qur'an: With a Phrase-by-Phrase English Translation / Translated by 'Ali Quli Qara'i. London: Islamic College for Advanced Studies Press, 2004. / BP 109 Q37 2004
Hadith
An Important Manuscript of the Traditionsof Bukhari, with Nine Facsimile Reproductions / By A. Mingana. Cambridge: W. Heffers and Sons, 1936. / BP135 M55
A Manual of Hadith / by Maulana Muhammad Ali. Lahore:Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isha’at Islam, 1951. / BP 135 A124 A5 1951
Sayings of Mohammed / From Stanley Lane-Poole’s Translation.Mount Vernon, NY: Peter Pauper Press, 1958. / BP 135 A3 P4
Khair-ul-Bareeyah / Selections from Sihah-e-Sittah, etal., Translated by Syed Farhat Husain. Bombay: Alamdar P. Press, 1960. / BP 135H8
Mishkat Al-Masabih (4 vols.) / English Translation withExplanatory Notes by James Robson. Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1963. / BP 135A2 K435
An-Nawawi’s Forty Hadith / Translated by Ezzeddin Ibrahim and Denys Johnson-Davies. Damascus: Holy Koran Publishing House, 1977. / BP 135 A2 N313 1977
Submission: Sayings of the ProphetMuhammad / By ShemsFriedlander. New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1977. / BP 135 A3 A47 1977
Mishkat-ul-Masabih (Wali ad-Din Muhammadibn Abdullah al-Khatib at-Tabrizi)/ Translated and Annotated by Abdul Hameed Siddiqui. New Delhi: Kitab Bhavan,1987.
BP135 A2 K43 1980
A Shi'ite Anthology / Edited by Muhammad Husayn Tabataba'i,translated by William Chittick. Albany: SUNY Press, 1981. / BP 193.26 S54
Traditions of the Prophet: Ahadith / Javad Nurbakhsh. New York:Khaniqahi-Nimatullah Publications, 1981. / BP 135 A3 N87 1981
The Translation of the Meanings of Sahihal-Bukhari (Arabic-English)(9 vols.) / By Muhammad Muhsin Khan. Medina: Dar al-Fikr, 1981. / BP 135 A124E54 1981 (Library lacks v.1)
Gardens of the Righteous: Riyadhas-Salihin of Imam Nawawi/ Translated from the Arabic by Muhammad Zafrulla Khan. New York: Olive BranchPress, 1989. / BP 135 A2 N363 1989
The Translation of the Meanings ofSummarized Sahih Muslim (Arabic-English) (2 vols.) / Compiled by Al-Hafiz Zakiuddin Abdul-AzimAl-Mundhiri. Riyadh: Darussalam, 2000.
BP135 A14 M86 2000
Moral Teachings of Islam: PropheticTraditions from al-Adab al-mufrad by Imam a
