Our dear samer and his lesson today is: the collection of the hadith

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), May 7, 2008 at 07:17

Our dear samer and the hadith

>(1) Methods of compiling Hadith,

a. The scholars would read the Hadith and who have narrated it, then they trace back to the original source who heard it physically from Mohammad himself. If the chain of narrators was weak or interrupted in time span or one unreliable source in the chain, they would clasifiy the Hadith as such, either strong, weak, or nullified

Really? so this is what they did teach you in your glorious madrassa! Well in the 3rd century of Islam the likes of Bukhari who was no an Arab and was living in distant Mesopotamia and Iran "collected" what he "believed" was uttered by Muhammad and his likes.

Now can you imagine if you sitting in distant Pakiland trying to gather the saying of let us say George Washington with no written sources and far removed from the language and culture of George Washington and depending on people to tell you what he said and did not say. I'm sure you will have nothing but bogus sayings and you will divide such material into sahih and da3eef depending on how far removed a saying from reality.

To the readers: the hadith is composed of two parts:

1. The isnad or the names of those that transmitted such saying and link it to Muhammad

2. The matn which is the substance of the Hadith

And here is an example

A heard from B who heard it from C who heard it from Ibn Abbas that Muhammad said that "drink camle's urine as it can cure your ilness"

And indeed early on Bukhari realized that he was not really dealing with reality and with real history and this is why we have the isnad or the chain of those that can attest to such hadith and can be traced back to Muhammad.

But here is another problem: so who should be trusted? after all those that witnessed such hadith being uttered by Muhammad had already died some 300 years in distant Mecca or Media?

Well the next step was to use the names or "reliable" sources as the source of such hadith and to compile names of who was to be trusted as a source and who was not to be trusted. So more of the bizarre. The end result was using the names of 3A'isha and Ibn 3Abbas some of the most reliable sources of the hadith. But neither Ibn 3Abbas nor 3A'isha really knew Muhammad. And the hadith as was pointed out by Ignaz Goldziher is anachronistic and bogus collection of the saying of Muhammad that can only reflect the political, legel, economic and religious aspirations of the Muslim community in the 3rd century of Islam when the hadith was colletced and no hadith can be traced back to Muhammad with absolute certianty

So much for the QC and the hadith

Now did any one care about what the substance of the hadith (the matn) is all about? Not really. What mattered here was the isand!

So much for Muslim scholarship

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