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Notes
This version was used by al-Rāmarhurmuzī (m. 360/971), the author of the first handbook on the science of hadith, see al-Muḥaddiṯ al-fāṣil, p. 163. The isnād of ʿIyāḍ (m. 544/1149) is from Abū ʿAlī al-Ṣadafī (m. 514/1120). On al-Ṣadafī, whom ʿIyāḍ considered his most important teacher in hadith, see De la Puente, “Vivre et mourir pour Dieu, œuvre et héritage d’Abū ʿAlī al-Ṣadafī (m. 515/1120) ”.
See Brown, Hadith. Muhammad’s Legacy, p. 9‒11 and p. 16‒18.
This is per se not something peculiar; even the Shīʿi tradition would subscribe to such a statement. It corresponds to the “isnad-paradigm” which, according to William H. Graham, constitutes the “traditionalism” characteristic of Islam, see “Traditionalism in Islam: An Essay in Interpretation”. What distinguishes the various Islamic traditions and theologies is how and through what or whom this prophetic authority is mediated and conferred. See Brown, Hadith. Muhammad’s Legacy, p. 123.
For this question from the point of view of hadith studies see Scott, Constructive Critics, p. 221; Brown, Hadith. Muhammad’s Legacy, p. 87‒88. The role of the Companions (ṣaḥāba) as heirs and mediators of the Prophet’s authority is characteristic for Sunni Islam.
In this regard, the hadith is similar to the more known tradition “Indeed, the scholars are the inheritors of the prophetsˮ, see Brown, Hadith. Muhammad’s Legacy, p. 166. But here we have a direct address expressed through the invocation of the Prophet and the designation of a specific activity.
In this tradition the term of ḥadīṯ is probably to be understood in its etymological sense as “discourse”. The later technical definition of ḥadīṯ includes the Prophet’s acts and consent, too.
This hadith is not to be found in the six canonical hadith collections. Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ mentions his own chain of transmission which he received from his teacher Abū ʿAlī al-Ṣadafī (514/1120) but the hadith figures also in the earliest handbook of hadith sciences, the al-Muḥaddiṯ al-fāṣil by al-Rāmahurmuzī (p. 163), which ʿIyāḍ knew.
The most recent edition published by Aḥmad Farīd al-Mazīdī (Beirut, Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2012, 3rd edition) is based on an older edition by Aḥmad Ṣaqr (Cairo, Dār al-Turāṯ, 1978) which used three manuscripts preserved respectively in the libraries of the Hagia Sophia (no. 72), the Escorial (no. 1572/47) and the Ẓāhiriyya (no. 49). The latter was written by the author’s nephew in 595/1199, see al-Turābī, al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ wa-ǧuhūduhu fī ʿilm al-ḥadīṯ, p. 364. Various fragments are preserved in other libraries such as in the Staatsbibliothek of Berlin where a fragment of the 8th/14th century can be consulted (collection “Geschichte/Ethnographie/Geographie”, no. 56). In the recent Dār al-Kutub re-edition there is no critical apparatus though besides the references of the hadiths and of some other treatises on the science of hadith. There is some disagreement about the exact title as the author’s son Muḥammad mentions in his biography (al-Taʿrīf bi-l-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, p. 103) the title al-Ilmāʿ ilā ḍabṭ al-riwāya wa-taqyīd al-samāʿ, see al-Turābī, al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ wa-ǧuhūduhu fī ʿilm al-ḥadīṯ, p. 351.
See for example García-Arenal, Messianism and Puritanical Reform, p. 96‒192, and Bennison, The Almoravid and Almohad Empires, p. 241‒254.
In Arabic, see in particular al-Turābī, al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ wa-ǧuhūduhu fī ʿilm al-ḥadīṯ, p. 351‒386.
See the translation and comment by Juynboll, G.H.A., “Muslim’s Introduction to His Ṣaḥīḥ”. The most famous commentary is by al-Nawawī, who draws heavily on Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ‘s own unfinished commentary on Muslim’s Ṣāḥīḥ, the Ikmāl al-muʿallim fī šarḥ Muslim.
See Asma Hilali, “ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Rāmahurmuzī (m. 360/971) à l’origine de la réflexion sur l’authenticité du ḥadīṭ”.
The “Elucidation” was introduced to the East via Alexandria by the disciples of Qādī ʿIyāḍ, see al-Turābī, al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ wa-ǧuhūduhu fī ʿilm al-ḥadīṯ, p. 353. For the works on the science of hadith which al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ knew see Šawwāṭ, al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, ʿālim al-Maġrib wa-imām ahl al-ḥadīṯ fī waqtihi, p. 128‒136.
See Brown, Rethinking Tradition, p. 81‒107 and Musa, Hadith as Scripture, p. 1‒16, and p. 83‒112.
See in particular Brown, “Did the Prophet Say It or Not?“ and Hilali, “The Notion of Truth in Hadith Sciences”. Asma Hilali remarks that “the authors of hadith-sciences have not the project to reconstruct what happened during the transmission of hadith, but their task is to justify the authority of existing texts. Their aim is not authenticity of hadith but authority of hadith. Authenticity is the argument of the authority” (unpublished, but consultable online).
The question whether a methodology alone is sufficient to establish the truth of a certain assertion, as postulated by the epistemology of modern science since Descartes and his methodological doubt, has been discussed in the contemporary Western context by the founder of philosophical hermeneutics Hans-Georg Gadamer in his now classical Wahrheit und Methode.
Scott, Constructive Critics; Dickinson, The Development of Early Sunnite Hadith Criticism; Hilali, “Abd al-Raḥmān al-Rāmahurmuzī (m. 360/971) à l’origine de la réflexion sur l’authenticité du ḥadīṭ”.
The term interpretation is meant here in view to the compilational structure of hadith literature which uses narrations in order to illustrate and exemplify a non-defined abstract concept which designates the theme of a section. Stefan Sperl explains that “Ḥadīth as a literary form thus lends itself to the exploration of abstract categories by way of concrete and wide-ranging illustration as well as exemplification of the web of relationships that exist between them. It follows that, in the canonical Ḥadīth compendia, narrative is used as an exploratory device, as a signifier the signified of which is not the story-line, but an abstract, non-narrative reality which binds different stories to each other and which is the reader’s task to comprehend”, in “Man’s ‘Hollow Core’”, p. 101‒102. Interpretation thus means to make intelligible the meanings that the author/compiler associated with a concept by exploring the relationships between the concept-theme of a section and the various narrations he mentioned in it.
See Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, p. 284‒285.
This is an aspect of his personality and scholarship which so far has been utterly neglected in western academia compared to his role as a jurist and representative of the Maliki establishment. See Kassis, “Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s Rebellion”; Serrano, “Legal Practice in an Andalusī-Maghribī Source”; Gómez-Rivas, “Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ”; Fierro, “El tratado sobre el Profeta del cadí ʿIyad y el contexto almohade”; Nagel, Allahs Liebling, p. 135‒146; Iruela, Veneración y polémica.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 7.
The reasons for this precedence are not only theological. From the beginning of Islam, the figure of the Prophet Muhammad crystallises the various and changing facets of Islamic identity. As Uri Rubin has shown, this was particularly determining for the development of Sīra writing. See The Eye of the Beholder. In his study of early Islamic religiosity Josef van Ess remarks: “It is interesting that the person of the Prophet seems to have precedence over scripture as symbol of identity”, Theologie und Gesellschaft, vol. I, p. 14.
For al-Šāfiʿī’s (204/820) influential ideas on the relation between revelation and hadith see Lowry, Early Islamic Legal Theory, p. 170‒205, and Musa, Hadith as Scripture, p. 31‒68, who discusses also Ibn Qutayba’s approach.
A famous quote of Ibn Sirīn (33-110/653-729) explains in this way the emergence of the isnāḍ as means to verify the authority of religious knowledge: “They did not use to ask about the isnad [of a ḥadīth]. When the fitna [“strife”] took place, they asked about it. They used to look at the adherents of the sunna (ahl al-sunna) and their ḥadīths were accepted, and at the people of innovators (ahl al-bidʿa) and their ḥadīths were rejected”, translated by Dickinson, The Development of Early Sunnite Hadith Criticism, p. 48.
In al-Ḫaṭīb al-Baġdādī mentions a tradition from the important Kufan hadith transmitter Sufyān Ibn ʿUyayna (198/815) which illustrates this principle: “The Messenger of God is the supreme scale (al-mīzān al-akbar) to the effect that the affairs are confronted to him, to his characters, his conducts and his manners; whatever conforms to it is true (ḥaqq) and whatever contradicts it is naught (bāṭil)”, al-Ǧāmiʿ li-aḫlāq al-rāwī, p. 9.
This is a general principle which underlies the earliest reflections on the theory of hadith transmission, as shows the study of Asma Hilali: “Indeed, al-Rāmahurmuzī repeatedly asserts that the notion of sunna makes it possible to measure the authenticity of the meaning transmitted from ḥadīth”: “Abd al-Raḥmān al-Rāmahurmuzī (m. 360/971) à l’origine de la réflexion sur l’authenticité du ḥadīṭ”, p. 134.
This somehow reminds of Ibn Ḥazm’s rejection of forms of religious authority other than the Prophet by declaring that “[…] the only source of authority was the Prophet Muhammad, who had brought God’s book, and whose behaviour was divinely inspired”: Adang, “A Ẓāhirī Conception of Religious Authority”, p. 19.
For the ashʿarism of al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ and his role in the controversy concerning the interpretation of anthropomorphic motifs in scriptural sources see Serrano, “La diffusion de l’ashʿarisme”, p. 80‒102.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 7.
Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s teacher, the Qāḍī Abū Bakr Ibn al-ʿArabī al-Maʿāfirī (469-546/1076-1148), establishes a similar distinction between the qurʾanic and the prophetic aspects of revelation and their respective treatment in view of their transmission. See Serrano, “La diffusion de l’ashʿarisme”, p. 88-89.
The reference to God’s providence is not something unusual in this context. Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī for example seeks to prove in his Taqdīma “that God has bestowed upon certain individuals the status of ḥadīth critic” by showing the consensus of early scholars of Islam. See Dickinson, The Development of Early Sunnite Hadith Criticism, p. 53.
The iḥyāʾ al-sunna, the “vivification of the prophetic teaching and practiceˮ, to which we will come back later.
In the preliminary oration of Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s biographical dictionary of Maliki scholars, there is a very similar description of a three-structured process of revelation and transmission: firstly, God elects prophets in order to reveal His guidance and to make manifest the distinction between the way of the blessed and the way of the damned; secondly, the prophets make manifest this guidance to mankind through their mission, especially the Prophet Muhammad whose mission has a conclusive and privileged significance; and thirdly, the scholars after him complete and continue his mission of guidance by verifying, preserving and explaining the religious knowledge and practice transmitted from him. These “guides (aʾimma) of the Muslims” are believed to be elected (iḫtiyār) by God which means that they inherit the prophetic authority and charisma. In contrast to the “Elucidation” though, the argument of this work identifies the scholars in question primarily as the scholars of Medina, in accordance with the doctrine of Malikism. See Tartīb al-madārik, vol. I, p. 3‒5.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 7.
With the concept of trustworthiness of the transmitter or ṯiqa, the concept of continuity of transmission or ittiṣāliyya constitutes the pillar on which classical hadith scholarship is founded. For the significance of the ittiṣāliyya see Graham, “Traditionalism in Islam: An Essay in Interpretationˮ, p. 501.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 7. This is a common argument in the discourse of hadith scholars. For Ibn Abī Ḥātim, Eerik Dickinson remarks that “like all the critics, he was horrified by what he perceived as the transformation of the Muslim community from a single unity into a welter of competing sects. The critics of ḥadīṯ ascribed this pernicious absence of uniformity [sic] within the Muslim community to the inconsistent exploitation of the sources of religious doctrine. It was their view that, if Muslims were to confine themselves to drawing their religious doctrines in a systematic fashion from the two indisputable bases of Muslim thought, the Qurʾān and hadith, the community’s internal doctrinal conflicts would disappear”, The Development of Early Sunnite Hadith Criticism, p. 127.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 7.
See Dickinson, The Development of Early Sunnite Hadith Criticism, p. 1‒5. See also van Ess, Josef, “L’autorité de la tradition prophétique dans la théologie muʿtazilite”.
See Dickinson, The Development of Early Sunnite Hadith Criticism, p. 41.
For the ahl al-ḥadīṯ view on the representatives of rationalist approaches to Islamic practice and doctrine see Brown, Jonathan, “How We Know that Early Hadīth Critics Did Matn Criticism”, p. 164‒171.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 7.
See The Development of Early Sunnite Hadith Criticism, p. 3.
We may remind that Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ himself wrote a reference work on precisely this argument, the Tartīb al-madārik. We will come back to this later.
See “Proto-Malikis, Malikis and Reformed Malikis”. The author speaks of a „‘traditionalization‘ of the Andalusi Maliki schoolˮ in which Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr and Maliki scholar with “Shafiʿi tendenciesˮ, played a crucial role (see p. 71‒72).
See Fierro, “The Introduction of ḥadīth in al-Andalusˮ.
See Lagardère, Vincent, “Abū Bakr b. al ʿArabi“. Vimercati Sanseverino, Fès et sainteté, p. 167‒168.
According to Maribel Fierro “one of the major figures in the renovation of ḥadīth literature and asceticism in al-Andalus”: “Spiritual Alienation and Political Activism”, p. 241.
See Fierro, “Proto-Malikis, Malikis and Reformed Malikis”, p. 74‒75.
Christen und Muslime im Andalus, p. 210‒211.
See Fierro, “Why Ibn Ḥazm became a Ẓāhirī”.
See Würtz, “Ibn Ḥazm: Göttliche Rechtleitung und menschliche Verfälschung“, p. 103‒104.
See Kassis, “Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s Rebellion”.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 9. This narration is a version of the famous hadith prohibiting the false attribution to the Prophet. Several versions are also to be found in Buḫārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, “Bāb iṯm man kaḏaba ʿalā al-Nabīˮ, nos. 106‒109, and a very similar version in the Ǧāmiʿ al-bayān, p. 450. Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s own transmission is from al-Qādī Abū ʿAbdallāh b. ʿIsā al-Tamīmī (501/1107), his teacher from Sebta from whom he received most of his hadith compilations. See Šawwāṭ, al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, ʿālim al-Maghrib, p. 96.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 10. Various versions of this famous hadith are to be found in the canonical hadith collections. Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ transmits this hadith from al-Ṣadafī.
See for example, al-Baġdādī, Šaraf aṣḥāb al-ḥadīṯ, p. 13‒20, or Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr , Ǧāmiʿ al-bayān, p. 58‒63.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 8.
This term actually became a technical term in the science of hadith meaning the fact of receiving a hadith transmission or more generally the process of hadith transmission from teacher to student. Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ himself uses it in the title of chapter six concerning the “modalities of transmission” (anwāʿ al-aḫḏ). This part of the “Elucidation” will be discussed below.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 11. There are various versions of this hadith which is regularly cited in order to justify theological agendas or reform movements, see Fierro, “Spiritual Alienation and Political Activism”, p. 233. For the modern times, see Riexinger, “Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhābs Prophetenbiographieˮ.
“Spiritual Alienation and Political Activism”.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr cites the same version, but substitutes islām by ʿilm (science), see Fierro, “Spiritual Alienation and Political Activism”, p. 238, who explains that “Mālikite scholars like him were considered strangers by those other scholars of the same school who practiced taqlīd, contended themselves with following antiquated legal thinking and were not willing to renovate Mālikismˮ (ibid.). Something similar could be said of al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ and of how he probably felt about his situation.
This idea can be found already in the saying attributed to Ibn Sirīn quoted above. In this classical passage it is the fact of asking for the isnād which establishes the distinction between the Sunnis and other Islamic identities.
“Spiritual Alienation and Political Activismˮ, p. 234.
This argument was used as early as Ibn Qutayba (213/828‒276/889) as Dickinson explains: “In the minds of the adherents of ḥadīth, submission to the authority of the Prophet as embodied in the ḥadīth provided the only escape from this variance and contradiction”: The Development of Early Sunnite Hadith Criticism, p. 4.
Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s oriental predecessor al-Ḫaṭīb al-Baġdādī devoted a whole book to the Šaraf aṣḥāb al-ḥadīṯ.
Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ responds to the question how the transmitters themselves are to be evaluated in his commentary of Muslim’s Ṣaḥīḥ (Ikmāl al-muʿallim, vol. I, p. 90‒94) where he discusses various hierarchies of transmitters. He gives preference to the hierarchy of his teacher Abū ʿAlī al-Ġassānī (519/1125) who distinguishes seven categories of transmitters (ṭabaqāt). The first category of the accepted transmitters consists of “the imams of hadith and their guardians (ḥuffāẓihi)” (p. 92) whom are given the status of a ḥuǧǧa or criteria vis-à-vis the other categories. Their authority has prevalence over those who differ with their transmission (man ḫalafahum). This example shows again how the criteria of authority is represented by persons, and consequently based on the guarantee that these persons represent whereas questions of formal accuracy or methodological consistency seem secondary.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 13.
William Graham (“Traditionalism in Islam: An Essay in Interpretation”, p. 505‒507) has discussed the concept of fasād al-zamān or “corruption of time” and its significance for the “isnād-paradigm”. See also the famous hadith “The best of generations is the one in which I was sent, then that which follows, then that which follows” discussed in Brown, Hadith. Muhammad’s Legacy, p. 87. For Rāmahurmuzī see Hilali, “Abd al-Raḥmān al-Rāmahurmuzī (m. 360/971) à l’origine de la réflexion sur l’authenticité du ḥadīṭ”, p. 137.
Brown, “How We Know Early Hadīth Critics Did Matn Criticism”, p. 165. There is a discussion in recent research whether prophetic hadith actually did play a prominent role in the legal practice of the ahl al-ḥadīṯ movement. See Lucas, “A study of the Muṣannaf of Ibn Abī Shayba”. This suggests that it is not the use of hadith as such which characterizes the ahl al-ḥadīṯ stance, but the reliance on transmission and the reference to the isnād which documents it.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 12. For the significance of these two narrations regarding the origin of the genre of 40 hadiths, see Schöller, Das Buch der Vierzig Hadithe, p. 308‒309.
See Vimercati Sanseverino, “Normativität der prophetischen Tradition und Gnadenerfüllungˮ.
In his Šifā al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ stresses the normative character of the veneration (iḥtirām, taʿẓīm, tawqīr) of the Prophet Muhammad after his death “as if he were in front of you” (p. 245, in the transl. p. 477) and devotes a whole chapter to the role of hadith transmission in this regard (see “fī taʿẓīm riwāyat al-ḥadīṯ”, p. 246‒248, in the transl. p. 480‒483).
The first manual of hadith sciences, al-Rāmahurmuzī’s al-Muḥaddiṯ al-fāṣil, develops even more explicitly the role of the hadith scholars as representatives of the Prophet Muhammad: “Regarding the nobility of the hadith scholar it shall suffice to you to consider the fact that his name is associated to the name of the Prophet, and his remembrance connected to the remembrance of the Prophet, his family and his Companions” (p. 131‒132).
We will see what this implies for the behaviour and attitude of the scholar of hadith according to al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ in the chapter about adab and the notion of taḫalluq the meaning of which comes very near to the term of “embodiment”.
John Burton writes in this sense that “the significance of the [Hadith-]Tradition is thus the sense that it preserves the Prophet alive in the midst of the believers, available still to be consulted on any and every question. ln this light, Muhammad’s death became irrelevant”: An Introduction to the Hadith, p. 21. About conceptions of the spiritual presence of the Prophet Muhammad after his death see Meier, “Eine auferstehung Mohammeds bei Suyūṭi”.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 84‒85. On this issue see also Dickinson, “Ibn Salāḥ al-Shahrazūrī and the Isnād”.
Hilali, “Abd al-Raḥmān al-Rāmahurmuzī (m. 360/971) à l’origine de la réflexion sur l’authenticité du ḥadīṭ”, p. 143.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 85. The original textual source of this poem remains unknown.
The author explains that a student of his asked him to write the book (see p. 5). It is true that this is a common topos of introducing a book in Islamic writing, but in the case of the “Elucidation” it may very well correspond to a concrete reality.
See the chapters 8‒9, p. 57‒61, about the question of the conditions under which a transmission of hadith from books is accepted. For the significance of the oral and the written for the transmission of hadith and the acquisition of religious knowledge see Schoeler, “Oral Torah and Ḥadīth”, especially p. 123‒135 about the reasons for the preference of oral transmission, and Leder, “Spoken Word and Written Text”, where riwāya is defined as “the transmission of a written text through oral expression” and “this functioning of riwāya, based on the great value testimony” is explained a being “at the core of a number of recognized methods of transmission” (p. 1).
See for example the chapters 11‒13, p. 69‒76, and the chapters 15‒16, p. 79‒83.
See Fierro, “Proto-Malikis, Malikis and Reformed Malikis”.
“With a flexible ‘oral teaching’, the danger of providing a rallying point for schismatic movements was significantly smaller”, Schoeler, “Oral Torah and Ḥadīth”, p. 132.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 76‒79.
See for example Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ (Muqaddima, p. 161; in the translation p. 98 and p. 115), who mentions al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ always in a very honorific manner, for instance as “one of the illustrious figures of his age in the Maghreb” (p. 161).
For a general overview of these see Siddiqi, Ḥadīth Literature, p. 84‒89, where a passage from the “Elucidation” is translated, and also Leder, “Spoken Word and Written Text” and Brown, Hadith. Muhammad’s Legacy, p. 43‒46.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 30‒31. For the significance of oral transmission from the perspective of the science of hadith, see Hilali, “Abd al-Raḥmān al-Rāmahurmuzī (m. 360/971) à l’origine de la réflexion sur l’authenticité du ḥadīṭ”, p. 138‒139. She remarked very perceptively that ”if the hadith is safeguarded through writing, the life (ḥayāt) of the hadith depends precisely on its oral transmission. The preservation of knowledge, the vivification of the hadith through its oral transmission are more important than the mere scriptural conservation, for the two techniques are included in the theoretical scheme of the safeguard of the authentic ḥadīth. […] Oral transmission is realized in the frame of the master’s teaching to his student. The process of transmission […] depends in its entirety on the quality of the relationship between teacher and student” (p. 138). A similar conception can be found in the transmission of Rabbinic texts where “reading and hearing was the ancient way to propose and accept the authoritative actualisation of the effective tradition”, Veltri, “On Editing Rabbinic Texts”, p. 71.
Al‒Ilmāʿ, p. 38‒48. For the practice of this modality of transmission, see Leder, “Spoken Word and Written Text”, p. 8, where iǧaza is translated as “certificates of audition”. For its significance as authoritative reconnection to the Prophet, see Graham, “Traditionalism in Islam: An Essay in Interpretation”, p. 511‒514.
This passage is actually quoted by Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ in his Muqaddima, p. 161 (translation, p. 115).
The known hadith scholar Šams al-Dīn al-Ḏahabī (673-748/1247-1348) seems to be the first to explicitly thematise this issue. He identifies the period of transition at the beginning of the 4th/10th century. See Mīzān al-iʿtidāl, vol. I, p. 115.
Tartīb al-madārik, vol. I, p. 73. See Dutton, The Origins of Islamic Law, p. 41‒52, and Gómez-Rivas, “Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ”, p. 332‒338, where the relevant passage is translated.
“These models […] were put into juxtaposition in the famous epistolary exchange between Mālik and al-Layth b. Saʿd. Mālik advocated the Medinese model, asserting that the knowledge of the Prophet was embodied in the ḥadīth and practice of the people of Madina. […] Al-Layth b. Saʿd maintained that the doctrines of the Prophet were dispersed throughout the Islamic world by the migrations of his Companions during the conquests”, Dickinson, The Development of Early Sunnite Hadith Criticism, p. 46.
He distinguishes between the ʿamal ahl al-Madīna as “consensus based on transmission” (iǧmāʿ naqlī) and the “consensus based on reasoning” (iǧmāʿ iǧtihādī) of later scholars. See Dutton, The Origins of Islamic Law, p. 35; Gómez-Rivas, “Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ”, p. 333‒335.
Tartīb al-madārik, vol. I, p. 47, in the translation Gómez-Rivas, “Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ”, p. 334.
Tartīb al-madārik, vol. I, p. 48‒49, in the translation Gómez-Rivas, “Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ”, p. 335.
Mālik was harshly criticised by Ibn Ḥazm for neglecting hadith in favour of his own legal reasoning (raʾy). See Adang, “A Ẓāhirī Conception of Religious Authority”, p. 38‒40.
For this issue see Hallaq, “The Authenticity of Prophetic Hadith”, p. 83.
On this procedure, see Leder, “Spoken Word and Written Text”, p. 8‒10.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 62‒68. See also al-Turābī, al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ wa ǧuhūduhu fī ʿilm al-ḥadīṯ, p. 372‒374.
P. 67. On the notion of certitude in hadith scholarship see Brown, “The Literal, Historical, and Effective Truth of Ḥadīths”, p. 266‒267. The author remarks that “it was generally concluded by Sunni analysts from the fifth/eleventh century onward that the certainty referred to by the Partisans of Hadith was discursive or acquired certainty” (p. 266, footnote 36).
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 64‒65. The author gives several examples and shows how normative differences between the juridical traditions can have their origin in this.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 57.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 57. For the meaning of ẓann in early hadith scholarship see Brown, Jonathan, “The Literal, Historical, and Effective Truth of Ḥadīths”, p. 265‒267.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 58.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 76‒78. Al-Ḫaṭīb al-Baġdādī discussed this issue in great detail by mentioning the divergent opinions and practices and presented an argumentation in favour of the permissibility of the riwāya bi-l-maʿnā, see al-Kifāya, vol. I, p. 433‒439. See also al-Sayāǧī, Manāhiǧ al-muḥaddiṯīn.
He specifies the required qualities as follows: “[…] being acquainted with religious science, being able to distinguish the various aspects of the variations of wordings, possessing science of its meanings and purposes”, al-Ilmāʿ, p. 77.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 77‒78. Mālik’s opinion is mentioned in the Ǧāmiʿ al-bayān, p. 111. Its author Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr is more permissive than al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ with regard to the paraphrastic transmission and the rectification of laḥn, see the chapter “The Instruction to Rectify Language Mistakes and Errors in the Hadith, and to Follow its Wording and its Meaning”, al-Ilmāʿ, p. 108‒112.
The way hadith scholars understood the relation between the wording and the meaning of hadith is well explained by Asma Hilali: “The ‘sunna’ is the reference which allows the search for the meaning of ḥadīth; it is not the support of this search, this support is, let me underline it, the literality of the text: the literality of the transmission conditions the search for the meaning of ḥadīth” (“ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Rāmahurmuzī (m. 360/971) à l’origine de la reflexion sur l’authenticité du ḥadīṯ”, p. 134).
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 78.
Even if al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ here forwards rational reasons for the Companion’s unique status, the theological perspective from which our author considers hadith transmission is again particularly visible in this case. For “The Collective Accreditation of the Earliest Muslims” see Dickinson, The Development of Early Sunnite Hadith Criticism, p. 120‒123; Scott, Constructive Critics, p. 221-283; Brown, Hadith. Muhammad’s Legacy, p. 87‒88.
See Rāmahurmuzī, al‒Muḥaddiṯ al-fāsil, p. 565‒569.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 78.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 88‒112.
For this author and his critique of the most important hadith collection of Sunni Islam, see Tokatly, “The Aʿlam al-ḥadīth of al-Khaṭṭābī”.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 80‒81. In the al-Muḥaddiṯ al-fāṣil there is a much longer chapter with a very similar title (p. 540‒546), but unlike al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ its author does not give any practical instructions. According to Asma Hilali’s interpretation, al-Rāmahurmuzī took a more permissive stance towards grammatical rectification, as “the rules of grammar participate in the quest for the meaning [of the hadith]”: “Abd al-Raḥmān al-Rāmahurmuzī (m. 360/971) à l’origine de la réflexion sur l’authenticité du ḥadīṭ”, p. 134.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 81.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 81.
See Schoeler, The Oral and the Written, p. 65‒66.
The term of laḥn refers to the phenomenon of barbarism or solecism meaning a corrupted form of language through the influence of dialect. The quote of Nasāʾī goes on and explains that linguistic inconsistencies in certain hadith are due to the fact that the Prophet used to speak to the Bedouins in their own language.
P. 79.
In this respect he follows rather Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr than al-Ḫaṭīb al-Baġdādī who mentions the Quran and human reason as criteria for the evaluation of the texts of hadith, even if he does not himself apply this method, as Jonathan Brown has shown: “How We Know Early Hadīth Critics Did Matn Criticism”, p. 150‒153.
On this topic see Shahab, Before Orthodoxy: The Satanic Verses in Early Islam.
Kitāb al-šifāʾ, p. 294‒299 (in the transl. p. 593‒609). Jonathan Brown tries to explain why this was common practice amongst the ahl al-ḥadīṯ, see “How We Know Early Hadīth Critics Did Matn Criticism”, p. 172‒184.
Graham, “Traditionalism in Islam: An Essay in Interpretation”, p. 507.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p . 83. Concerning “precision”, Asma Hilali has shown in her study of the al-Muḥaddiṯ al-fāṣil how it corresponds to a procedure aiming at reestablishing the integral text of the hadith: “Abd al-Raḥmān al-Rāmahurmuzī (m. 360/971) à l’origine de la réflexion sur l’authenticité du ḥadīṭ”, p. 137‒138.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p.19.
See al-Ǧāmiʿ li-aḫlāq al-rāwī wa ādāb al-sāmiʿ, and later al-Samʿānī’s (m. 562/1166), Adab al-imlāʾ wa-l-istimlāʾ. See also Melchert, where the author focuses on exterior manners like how to sit and to dress when teaching or hearing hadith. Regarding the progressive codification of these rules for proper teaching, the author remarks: “[...] once the sound hadith had been sorted out and the law justified on their basis, the main point of studying hadith was to reproduce the experience of virtuous Muslims in the past, or at least to establish oneself at the end of a chain of virtuous Muslims reaching back to the Prophet. It was religiously satisfying to hear prophetic hadith in just the manner the Companions' hearing it”: “The Etiquette of Learning”, p. 42.
The work has been rendered into English by Adil Salahi: al-Adab al-mufrad with Full Commentary. As Stefan Sperl has remarked, “five of the six canonical Ḥadīth collections contain chapter headings including the term adab or its plural ādāb […]”, where it serves “to illustrate the beneficial role in interpersonal relations of commendable speech and action”: “Man’s ‘Hollow Core’”, p. 97‒98.
Ibn Qutayba’s (m. 276/889) Adab al-kātib and his ʿUyūn al-aḫbār are the most known works of this genre. The first was well known in al-Andalus as has been shown by Soravia, “Ibn Qutayba en al-Andalus”, p. 539‒565. Christopher Melchert stresses the contrast of this courtly adab with the ideal of piety of hadith scholars, see “The Piety of the Hadith Folk”, p. 432‒434. Stefan Sperl, on the other hand, analyses the shared features of the hadith compilations and the adab anthologies (“Man’s ‘Hollow Core’”, p. 90‒118). He concludes that “if literary adab, as aptly stated by Kilpatrick ‘bears essentially upon behaviour within a given social group, which it both reflects and defines’, adab in Ḥadīth, by reflecting the words and deeds of the Prophet, aims at nothing less than defining the basic behavioural standards of the Muslim community as a whole”: ibid., p. 102.
For this notion and its meaning for the relation between ethics and knowledge, see Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, p. 15‒24. Tarif Khalidi explains that “adab presupposes that there can be no true erudition without the polished character that goes with it” and proposes as the “happiest synonym so far suggested [the] Greek Paideia”, Kennedy, “Preface”, p. xiii.
See Smith, “Ethos Dwells Pervasively”, p. 2–5. The very complex notion of ethos suggests amongst other things the “constitution of the self with a political community or a social group”, see Woerther, Lʼèthos aristotélicien, p. 21. In this way the ethos founds a discursive authority. The notion of adab has a similar meaning for the student aspiring to become the member of the community of hadith scholars.
Merriam-Webster, 2018.
Woerther, Lʼèthos aristotélicien, p. 13‒14.
In the case of Ibn Abī Ḥātim al-Rāzī’s Taqdīma, Dickinson mentions the pair zuhd and waraʿ and remarks: “[…] the reasons why Ibn Abī Ḥātim and his colleagues were preoccupied with zuhd and waraʿ remains uncertain”: The Development of Early Sunnite Hadith Criticism, p. 59. We will see that it is altogether possible to ascertain a meaningful relation between these spiritual virtues and hadith transmission.
See also Dickinson, The Development of Early Sunnite Hadith Criticism, p. 68‒71, and Melchert, “The Piety of the Hadith Folk”, p. 425‒439. For the ascetic movement in Andalus, see Marin, “Zuhhād of al-Andalus (300/912‒420/1029)”, and for the ascetic milieu in Sevilla see Casewit, The Mystics of al-Andalus, p. 30‒33.
See for example in Marin, “Abū Saʿīd Ibn al-Aʿrābī et le développement du soufisme en al-Andalus”, where ʿIyāḍ’s work constitutes one of the principal sources. His son states that “promoted the remembrance of reports about virtuous people (ṣāliḥīn) and their conduct as well as the Sufis and their schoolsˮ, ʿIyāḍ (m. 575/1179), al-Taʿrīf bi-l-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, p. 6.
See for example ʿIyāḍ (m. 575/1179), al-Taʿrīf bi-l-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, p. 6.
“Abd al-Raḥmān al-Rāmahurmuzī (m. 360/971) à l’origine de la réflexion sur l’authenticité du ḥadīṭ”, p. 135.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 23‒26.
Goldziher, Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law, p. 43, cited in Powers, “Interiors, Intentions, and the ‘Spirituality’ of Islamic Ritual Practice”, p. 430.
One has to remind that the intention has a normative meaning in Maliki fiqh in that it is a condition for the validity of certain rites. For this aspect of intention see Powers, “Interiors, Intentions, and the ‘Spirituality’ of Islamic Ritual Practice”.
Asma Hilali remarks that “piety and the observance of religious practices are indispensable qualities of the transmitter for in theory they imply the absence of passion or innovative thinking, which are two attributes that are banned from the moral axe of transmission“: “Abd al-Raḥmān al-Rāmahurmuzī (m. 360/971) à l’origine de la réflexion sur l’authenticité du ḥadīṭ”, p. 144.
See al-Ilmāʿ, p. 91‒109.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 91.
For the understanding of ʿilm in early hadith scholarship see Brown, “Did the Prophet Say It or Not?”, p. 265‒266.
See Dickinson, The Development of Early Sunnite Hadith Criticism, p. 73, and for the issue of “The Critics and Political Authorities” in general, p. 71‒78. He concludes that “clearly Ibn Abī Ḥātim regards the defiance or avoidance of the political authorities as a characteristic of the critics of ḥadīth, but why this is so is difficult to determine. The reports are vague about what it is the critics were supposed to dislike about the political authorities. In the writings of the scholars of ḥadīth we find little interest in contemporary political affairs and certainly nothing resembling a political manifesto” (p. 76).
One should not forget that al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ was very directly involved in politics as leader of the rebellion of Sebta against the Almohads.
Al-Ilmāʿ, p. 93.
See in particular al-Ilmāʿ, p. 92‒93.
“The Piety of the Hadith Folk”, p. 428‒431, and p. 434.
Hilali, “Abd al-Raḥmān al-Rāmahurmuzī (m. 360/971) à l’origine de la réflexion sur l’authenticité du ḥadīṭ”, p. 147.
Ibid., p. 141.
Eerik Dickinson distinguishes in this way two approaches: “The ḥadīth commentator, like the Qurʾān commentator, treated the canon as if it were closed and attempted to work in its bounds. The critic of ḥadīth manipulated the boundaries of the canon to avoid contradiction, removing any objectionable material”, The Development of Early Sunnite Hadith Criticism, p. 5‒8. One could argue though against this scheme that both consider the boundaries of the canon as flexible and dynamic the only difference being that the commentator defines the boundaries through the canon’s meaning whereas the critic defines it through its wording. For the question of ambiguity in hadith science see Bauer, Die Kultur der Ambiguität, p. 143-156.
Gadamer’s indications about the relation between the authority of knowledge and the ethical dimension of the problem of methodology in scientific activity could prove a useful approach to further our understanding of the importance of the personality of the transmitter and of his moral and religious integrity. See Wahrheit und Methode, p. 317‒320.
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