Herbert Berg: Hadith Criticism.
imran...@xtra.co.nz
by Herbert Berg which looks at hadith criticism and scholarship, including
the latest research on the subject by H. Motzki. Berg summarizes the
viewpoints nicely, I think. It seems the key lies in pattern analysis of
the isnads and crafting the best theoretical explanations on the origins
of the hadith literature to get to the 'historical core'. Another very
important point he makes is that different assumptions lead to different
conclusions. The conclusions cannot be the same as the premises if a
petitio principii is to be avoided. Anyway, check it out for yourselves:
http://www.uncwil.edu/people/bergh/par246/L21RHadithCriticism.htm
If anyone has any other good links on the subject, please let me know.
--
Wasalaam,
Imran Aijaz
imran...@xtra.co.nz
asimm...@yahoo.com
1. It is true that the hadeeth specialists examine the authenticity
of the narration from the isnad. But he takes a simplified approach
to the nature of the compilation of various ahadeeth. Take for
example the question of one narrator alleged to have narrated from
another person. When compiling the isnad, the hadeeth specialist
would not merely go by the names found within the chain, but would
examine whether the narrator lived in the same place as whom he
attributed the narration to before him. There are other features to
the hadeeth sciences. Take for example Hisham ibn Urwah's father. He
is not accepted by some narrators after he moved to Iraq, because his
memory faded during that time. Narrations that are attributed to him
through Iraqis are rejected by some.
2. The article does not given much place to analysis of matn. the
hadeeth specialists have rejected ahadeeth despite the isnad. ibn
Jauzi has rejected ahadeeth which reject reason, without even going
into the isand. Baghdadi has also said that thos ahadeeth which
reject well-established facts are rejected and could not have been
said by the Prophet. Narrations that are reported through a single
chain, but the event is such that numerous people would ahve reported
it are rejected. ibn al-Arabi, the famous Hanafi jurist has rejected
the narrations which allege the Prophet was affected by magic, and he
does not give any credence to its being narrated by Bukhari.
The point being, ahadeeth are not accpted by isnad alone, and to
impose this view on Muslims is absurd. The rijaal is a starting point
to determine the credibility of ahadeeth.
M.S.M. Saifullah
Assalamu-alaykum wa rahamatullahi wa barakatuhu:
> Asalaamu'alaikum. A friend e-mailed me the link to this interesting page
> by Herbert Berg which looks at hadith criticism and scholarship, including
> the latest research on the subject by H. Motzki. Berg summarizes the
> viewpoints nicely, I think. It seems the key lies in pattern analysis of
> the isnads and crafting the best theoretical explanations on the origins
> of the hadith literature to get to the 'historical core'. Another very
> important point he makes is that different assumptions lead to different
> conclusions. The conclusions cannot be the same as the premises if a
> petitio principii is to be avoided. Anyway, check it out for yourselves:
Different assumptions lead to different conclusions. Well, that is fair
enough. But then why is that the Western scholars themselves can't agree
on anything particular? Are the isnads alright or fabricated? Can the matn
be trusted or not? For us Muslims, I do not think we need to be concerned
with their fight. When they have reached a conclusion they can then come
to us and discuss the issues.
As for Motzki, I think his approach is more balanced among the Western
scholars. He may be skeptical when it comes to dealing with the issue of
authenticity of final level of transmission as there is no way to
ascertain its certainity especially in the absence of parallel isnads. The
issue of certainity of an event as described in a report has long being
dealt by the Islamic jurists [Wael Hallaq's "On Inductive Corroboration,
Probability and Certainty in Sunni Legal Thought," in Nicholas L. Heer,
ed., Islamic Law and Jurisprudence: Studies in Honor of Farhat J. Ziadeh
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990), pp. 3-31]. Sha'afi' also
deals with the issue of certainity in his Risalah. In other words, a
hadith may be "Sahih" but if it is an ahad narration then it may give
certainity less than 100%.
As far as Motzki's analysis is concerned, he deals with the variants in
matn as well as existence of parallel isnads. He just does not dwell on
isnads to show something is right. He also discusses matn and its variants
at the same time. So, Motzki does not solely relies on "pattern analysis
of isnad". I think one of the most devastating refutation of Calder's
thesis on the issue of making wudu' with the water from which a cat also
drank, that appeared in JSAI a few years ago truly demonstrates how he
uses both the analysis of matn and isnad.
This issue has been discussed by al-Azami at:
http://www.islaam.com/ilm/oncalder.htm
If you can't find this link use Google's cached page.
Wassalam
Saifullah
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/
ghali
..
in >pattern analysis of the isnads and crafting the best theoretical
explanations >on the origins of the hadith literature to get to the
'historical core'. >Another very important point he makes is that
different assumptions lead to >different conclusions. The conclusions
cannot be the same as the premises if a
> petitio principii is to be avoided.
I have read the Post Imran. Just because Berg mentions Motzki and
Azami, it does not lead to the conclusion that they have been refuted.
The problem, I think is that there arguments do not suffer from
petitio principii. That was the whole point of our previous
discussion. Azami and Motzki more eloquently argue, quite reasonably,
that despite the fact that there where fabrications, there still
remains a CORE of knowledge that is spread around the Muslim world
i.e. MUTTAWATIR Yawn! So in prinicple it is on the person who is
skeptical to provide a proof for the fabrication. As for Calders work
, I think it is getting old hat now. Off my head I know of a book
review by Yassin Dutton of early Maliki in the latest Journal Of
Islamic Studies that digs holes in Calders work, (There are many
others). Of course their is the brilliant! article "The prophet and
the Cat" by Motzki which refutes ALL of Bergs points. It is good to go
onto the Internet. Sometimes it is useful. But at least ensure that
the above authors have at least not refuted his statements. In other
words be exhaustive. It helps.
Ghali
ghali
> by Herbert Berg which looks at hadith criticism and scholarship, including
> the latest research on the subject by H. Motzki. Berg summarizes the
I have gone back to his site. What about his let us say pathy with
regards to Wansbourghs work on the Quran, and I quote
"Newly discovered papyri with short fragments of the Qur'an from the
late Umayyad period (which ended in 750 C.E.) and administrative
letters and treatises from the same period are replete with qur'anic
illusions and/or quotations. They may suggest that 800 C.E. as the
date for the canonization of the Qur'an is somewhat late (Crone 1994:
18; Qadi 1992). Cook rightly points out that the sources we have,
though they are relatively late, do not preclude that other texts were
written which simply did not survive (1980: 181). However, these
letters, treatises, and (hypothetical) texts need not be at odds with
Wansbrough’s theory. These early Qur'anic references might only
suggest that some of the logia were in circulation and that they may
even have had a measure of authority: it need not suggest the
existence of a recognized canon. The logia would have had a long life
prior to their final canonization. Thus, this evidence is not
conclusive. And, other scholars have sought and discovered
archeological, numismatic, and epigraphical evidence in support of
Wansbrough (Koren—Nevo 1991: 100–106)."
Despite the fact that the Hussain Manuscript which is A VERY LARGE
SECTION OF THE QURAN, to say the least,IS CARBON DATED AT MOST IN THE
LATE UMMAYAD PERIOD, i.e. say 90 years after codifcation. What is
going on? Selective selection of primary sources. Would you trust a
man like this!
Ghali
M.S.M. Saifullah
Assalamu-alaykum wa rahamatullahi wa barakatuhu:
> existence of a recognized canon. The logia would have had a long life
> prior to their final canonization. Thus, this evidence is not
> conclusive. And, other scholars have sought and discovered
> archeological, numismatic, and epigraphical evidence in support of
> Wansbrough (Koren—Nevo 1991: 100–106)."
As for Koren and Nevo, their argument is circular as the Western scholars
themselves have pointed out. More at:
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/nevo.html
Hoyland studied the early Islamic inscriptions from various parts of
the Middle East unlike Koren and Nevo whose work was confined to Negev
region in Occupied Palestine. His conclusions are just the opposite of
what was claimed by Nevo and Koren. See Hoyland's article at:
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Inscriptions/hoyland.html
> Despite the fact that the Hussain Manuscript which is A VERY LARGE
> SECTION OF THE QURAN, to say the least,IS CARBON DATED AT MOST IN THE
> LATE UMMAYAD PERIOD, i.e. say 90 years after codifcation. What is
> going on? Selective selection of primary sources. Would you trust a
> man like this!
Whether he has got all the facts in his hands or not, we do not know. But
>from what I have seen he is just one of those who indulge in conjecture
and Wansbrough hypotheses are nothing but conjectures. He simply
throws out the Islamic History in favour of literary criticism. This is
illustrated perfectly in Wansbrough's own confession about the
"conjectural nature" of his work and calls his analysis "strictly
experimental" and the "emphatically tentative" nature of his conclusions
(QS xi, SM, x). Analysing history through one's own criteria cannot cause
a problem when all one is interested in is expressing one's opinions. But
to express the conjectures as valid facts is something quite obnoxious.
Wassalam
Saifullah
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/
imran...@xtra.co.nz
> I have read the Post Imran. Just because Berg mentions Motzki and
> Azami, it does not lead to the conclusion that they have been refuted.
Now when did I say that? I found the page interesting because of its survey
of the common arguments for/against Muslim tradition. I had no intention of
having Berg argue or defend a position of mine. Oh, and may I add that just
because Motzki and Azami have been mentioned, it does not lead to the
conclusion that they have been unrefuted ;)
> The problem, I think is that there arguments do not suffer from
> petitio principii. That was the whole point of our previous
> discussion. Azami and Motzki more eloquently argue, quite reasonably,
> that despite the fact that there where fabrications, there still
> remains a CORE of knowledge that is spread around the Muslim world
> i.e. MUTTAWATIR Yawn! So in prinicple it is on the person who is
> skeptical to provide a proof for the fabrication. As for Calders work
No, the arguments do not *necessarily* suffer from petitio principii, but
the problem is that different approaches come from different presuppositions
and when this happens, you get differing conclusions. The implication being
that isnad analysis is a tricky business.
I don't think any scholar denies the frivolous fact that in the mass of the
hadith literature, there is a historical nucleus wrapped in mythological
encrustations and theological embellishments. The key issue is the separation
of truth from untruth.
As I argued with you before, there is no need to deny the conceptual
application of tawatur. The question is, how do we really know whether some
putative report is really instantiated by tawatur methodology? Of course, we
would need to analyze the isnads and see where the different chains of trans-
mitters terminates, e.g. at some common linkage. But once again, the whole
methodology *assumes* the veracity of the isnads (unless you can give some
solid arguments for them)
If you take the methodology of Schacht, for example, mutawatir hadiths have
no more credibility than other hadiths. It all depends on how you view the
isnads. For Azami, the "conspirational action" he speaks of is viewed as
simply implausible. Michael Cook, on the other hand, argues that, yes, we
can say that Azami's argument is strong, but only on a contingency. And
that is on the assumption that isnad proliferation happened on a relatively
low scale.
What are the premises?
* The isnad system is authentic.
* The use of the isnad system was very early.
Berg opines,
"Azami confidently concludes, 'So even if mistakes in isnads and ahadith exist,
Schacht has produced no evidence that would cause us to impugn the good
faith of the majority of the transmitters or abandon the hadith literature.'
While this may be overstating the case somewhat, Azami has indeed significantly
undermined many of Schacht’s conclusions. Certainly many of the examples adduced
by Schacht were done so incorrectly or inappropriately ...
Yet, the dismissal of a few examples does not necessarily weaken the
overarching patterns suggested by Schacht, especially since many of Azami's
conclusions, like those of Abbott and Sezgin, rest on complete faith in the
historicity of the source material."
Another major assumption regarding the authenticity of the source material!
"The arguments of Abbott, Sezgin, and Azami rely on biographical materials that
were produced symbiotically with the isnads they seek to defend. These sources
are not independent. And so their arguments seem no less contrived, circular,
and contrary to reason as those of the sceptics seem to their opponents. As a
result, we are left with two seemingly diametrically opposed theories for the
origin and development of hadiths and, hence, of early Islam itself."
This is where the problem of petitio principii kicks in.
*IF* Azami's assumptions on the isnads are correct, *THEN* his arguments gain
serious momentum.
I'm not so much interested in Calder's material, but on Motzki, we have the
claim made: "the mere fact that ahadith and asanid were forged must not lead
us to conclude that all of them are fictitious or that the genuine and the
spurious cannot be distinguished with some degree of certainty."
Of course not. But this would be to dismiss *some* proponents of gross hadith
skepticism. Motzki's analysis is on the isnad like Azami, but as Berg notes:
"It is precisely the isnads that sceptics would say have been fabricated and
so should not be the basis of any comparison. Moreover, Motzki’s observed
"consistent individual character" could be a product of separate fabrications:
systemic fabrication is need not be systematic fabrication."
The isnads definitely play a pivotal role in the determination of whether a
hadith is authentic or not. And that's what I was interested in. Where are the
arguments? What evidence can you proffer to trust the veracity of the isnads?
Imran.
imran...@xtra.co.nz
> Despite the fact that the Hussain Manuscript which is A VERY LARGE
> SECTION OF THE QURAN, to say the least,IS CARBON DATED AT MOST IN THE
> LATE UMMAYAD PERIOD, i.e. say 90 years after codifcation. What is
Where did you get this information? Any references in particular as to
the veracity of the dating?
> going on? Selective selection of primary sources. Would you trust a
> man like this!
Depends on how you answer the aforementioned question!
Imran.
M.S.M. Saifullah
Assalamu-alaykum wa rahamatullahi wa barakatuhu:
> As I argued with you before, there is no need to deny the conceptual
> application of tawatur. The question is, how do we really know whether some
> putative report is really instantiated by tawatur methodology? Of course, we
> would need to analyze the isnads and see where the different chains of trans-
> mitters terminates, e.g. at some common linkage. But once again, the whole
> methodology *assumes* the veracity of the isnads (unless you can give some
> solid arguments for them)
The whole methodology, at least from the point of view of hadith
specialists, *does not* assume the veracity of isnads. In fact, a hadith
can be rejected on the basis of both isnad and matn when analysed
individually. This is a well-known fact!
Apart from this, the isnad is correct only if the people in the chain are
considered trustworthy. There are biographically dictionaries available
for those who are interested on this issue; some of them are detailed and
some of them very terse. The detailed ones provide when the person was
born and when he died, who were his teachers and who were his students,
who did be narrate from and what were his beliefs. The well-known books
that deal with biography of narrators are:
-------------
Ibn Hibban's Kitab al-Majruhin min al-Muhaddithin wa al-Du`afa' wa
al-Matrukin, 1975 [1395], Dar al-Wa`y: Halab.
Ibn Hajar's Kitab Lisan al-Mizan, 1911-13 [1329-31], Matba`at Majlis
Da'irat al-Ma`arif: Hyderabad al-Dakkan.
Also Ibn Hajar's
Tahdhib al-Tahdhib
Taqrib al-Tahdhib
Ibn Abi Haatim's Kitab al-Jarh wa al-Ta`dil, 1941-53, Matba`at Majlis
Da'irat 'al-Ma`arif al-`Uthmaniyah: Hyderabad al-Dakkan.
Al-Dhahabi's Mizaan al-I'tidal.
Al-Bukhari's Tarikh al-Kabeer and Du`afa al-Sagheer.
----------------
I refer to them now and then to verify certain narrators.
> What are the premises?
>
> * The isnad system is authentic.
>
> * The use of the isnad system was very early.
We have already discussed hwo the isnaad system works using biographies of
the narrators. Let us now discuss the origins of isnaad system itself.
The very origin of isnad system was to detect the forgery and hence the
statement of Ibn Sirin that: "They did not ask about the isnad but when
the fitna (civil war) occurred they said: 'Name to us your men' Those
who belonged to the People of the Sunnah, their traditions were accepted
and those who were innovators, their traditions were neglected."
Ibn Sirin died in 110 H.
James Robson says:
"There is therefore reason to believe that Ibn Sirin is to be credited
with the words attributed to him. If that is granted, it would support
Horovitz's theory that the isnad entered the literature of tradition in
the last third of the first century, as its use so early would be bound to
be represented soon in writing." ["The Isnad in Muslim Tradition,"
Transactions of the Glasgow University Oriental Society, XV (1965), pp.
21-22]
Robson actually refutes Schact's hypothesis of isnaad (al-Azaami's
refutation using the date of death of Ibn Sirin is very good!) and
endorses the view of Horovitz who credited that Ibn Sirin was
"responsible" for the use of isnaad. In fact, if we read what Ibn Sirin
actually said the statement implies that isnad were used even before the
Fitna. After the Civil War they became more cautious and began to inquire
about the sources of information and scrutinise them.
So, it is not a premise that isnad system was used from early times.
> Yet, the dismissal of a few examples does not necessarily weaken the
> overarching patterns suggested by Schacht, especially since many of Azami's
> conclusions, like those of Abbott and Sezgin, rest on complete faith in the
> historicity of the source material."
>
> Another major assumption regarding the authenticity of the source material!
I do not think al-Azami proceeded on an assumption that the source
material itself is authentic unlike Schacht who proceeded with an
assumption that the source material is false unless proven otherwise. It
has been acknowledge by al-Azami that the hadith literature contains
forgeries and the reason why there is a "Science of Hadith" is to detect
these forgeries.
> "The arguments of Abbott, Sezgin, and Azami rely on biographical materials that
> were produced symbiotically with the isnads they seek to defend. These sources
> are not independent. And so their arguments seem no less contrived, circular,
> and contrary to reason as those of the sceptics seem to their opponents. As a
> result, we are left with two seemingly diametrically opposed theories for the
> origin and development of hadiths and, hence, of early Islam itself."
>
> This is where the problem of petitio principii kicks in.
The argument here is that Abbott, Sezgin, and Azami rely on biographical
materials that were produced along with isnad and hence the arguments
concerning isnad are circular. But then if anybody has opened biographical
dictionaries to study various narrators they authors do not always agree
on the virtue or weakness of a narrator. This would mean that each of
the authors analyzed the material before making a judgement on the
narrator. It was not like one copied from the other... See also Sayf Ibn
`Umar's issue discussed by Robson at:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~beh/hb/askarir.html
The point here is that Abbott, Sezgin, and Azami reliance on biographical
material is not based on blind faith. It come through the reading and
understanding of the source material.
> "It is precisely the isnads that sceptics would say have been fabricated and
> so should not be the basis of any comparison. Moreover, Motzki’s observed
> "consistent individual character" could be a product of separate fabrications:
> systemic fabrication is need not be systematic fabrication."
When a person was considered truthworthy and truthful by his
contemporaries who are we to judge him! It is like Schacht dismissing
family isnads in toto. If a statement of a father about his son or vice
versa, or a wife about her husband, or a friend about a friend, or a
colleague about a colleague is always unacceptable, then on what basis
could biography possibly written? Schacht would want us to believe that
all the biographies written till now are forgeries.
Wassalam
Saifullah
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/
M.S.M. Saifullah
Assalamu-alaykum wa rahamatullahi wa barakatuhu:
> > Despite the fact that the Hussain Manuscript which is A VERY LARGE
> > SECTION OF THE QURAN, to say the least,IS CARBON DATED AT MOST IN THE
> > LATE UMMAYAD PERIOD, i.e. say 90 years after codifcation. What is
>
> Where did you get this information? Any references in particular as to
> the veracity of the dating?
There is one reference to the carbon dating at:
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Mss/hussein.html
As the people who know what carbon dating is very well understand that
there is a peak dominating a range and then a range of probability. It is
very hard to precisely date any object using carbon dating. Since the
al-Hussein Mss has been carbon dated I would not be surprised if people
argue that it dates from the time of the Prophet, SAW, or the Umayyad
times because of the range.
> > going on? Selective selection of primary sources. Would you trust a
> > man like this!
>
> Depends on how you answer the aforementioned question!
Well, Imran, you do not have to get rough with people on this newsgroup.
Berg uses selective sources and there is nothing wrong if Ghali had
pointed out. You may not like it but then you have bno argument against it
anyway! So, Ghali's argument still stands.
Wassalam
Saifullah
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/
ghali
> the veracity of the dating?
Well thank you Saifullah for that, and by the way it is even easy to
get direct access to the detail of this information from AL-FURQAN in
Wimbledon. This place has been set up by a certain Zaki Yamani (the
oil baron), and holds quite alot of the Bosnian Manuscripts. The issue
is not that, but really a simple call where you can get direct
information about the dating from the rector of the manuscript.
With regards to the Samarqand Manuscript, that has been dated
unfortunately! from a stolen copy sold to Samm fogg's art collectors.
The dating before selling the folio was at most early eighth century,
late Ummayad. Where is Wansbourgh with this? Yes I know it is an art
colelctor. So let us go on onto the folios that have been carbon
dated.
Well quite a few from the Sanaa collection. Yes! And guess what!
Ummayad. In fact ALOT of folios around that have been dated to this
time.
This is another of my arguments. We get a random statistical sample of
the early periods and we find no problem. So the owness is on YOU to
show otherwise. Of course then you might say the sample is not
representitive. Then Goodmans paradox comes in and that is another
story. Just to say how can we in our contingent state know that any
sample is really representative. The best we can do is argue from what
we have got, You have nothing! We have postive evidence. So
Wansborough is in a problem despite Bergs statement that these
engravings papyri etc could not lead conclusively to what we want i.e.
they are not representative.
> Depends on how you answer the aforementioned question!
We have answered! What do you say?
Ghali
ghali
> of the common arguments for/against Muslim tradition. I had no intention of
> having Berg argue or defend a position of mine. Oh, and may I add that just
> because Motzki and Azami have been mentioned, it does not lead to the
> conclusion that they have been unrefuted ;)
Fair enough! With regards to Motski and Azmai though it was not just
their names! I think I had been exhaustive with that before! Plenty
and I mean plenty! of more references if you want though. Though I
will show them once you give me an adequate response to a paste of
Motzki's work against Juynboll (not bothered in spelling his name
correctly, sorry!) so I can see at least that I am not wasting my
time.
> No, the arguments do not *necessarily* suffer from petitio principii, but
> the problem is that different approaches come from different presuppositions
> and when this happens, you get differing conclusions. The implication being
> that isnad analysis is a tricky business.
True! Bit of a platitude though! Sort of like " I exist" and "Crone is
a crank"!
> I don't think any scholar denies the frivolous fact that in the mass of the
> hadith literature, there is a historical nucleus wrapped in mythological
> encrustations and theological embellishments. The key issue is the separation
> of truth from untruth.
Nice red herring. That is right their is an authentic source but we
can't seperate it from fiction. In other words we can't even have this
core. A paradox already within a few lines! Keeping to your old
standards eh! LOL! So how in the world can YOU know of this core?
> As I argued with you before, there is no need to deny the conceptual
> application of tawatur. The question is, how do we really know whether some
> putative report is really instantiated by tawatur methodology? Of course, we
> would need to analyze the isnads and see where the different chains of trans-
> mitters terminates, e.g. at some common linkage. But once again, the whole
> methodology *assumes* the veracity of the isnads (unless you can give some
> solid arguments for them)
The point is not that! What we are also talking about is that these
isnads did not originate in a PLC "Isnads are for us" in Baghdad,
during Haroon al Rashids time next to the Arabian nights. They have a
history to. They were collected in different parts of the world by
different collectors. It is only now! in this century of ours that we
can look at this system globally. Maybe this insight gives this false
illusion? So what you are implying is then mass conspiracy on a global
scale. I have refuted this by showing that if this is your premise
leading to a somewhat weakened "I know not what" we would be forced to
abandon Language as well. So it is again and again not just
"Conceptual" where real is rational and rational is real but out there
to touch!
> If you take the methodology of Schacht, for example, mutawatir hadiths have
> no more credibility than other hadiths. It all depends on how you view the
> isnads. For Azami, the "conspirational action" he speaks of is viewed as
> simply implausible. Michael Cook, on the other hand, argues that, yes, we
> can say that Azami's argument is strong, but only on a contingency. And
> that is on the assumption that isnad proliferation happened on a relatively
> low scale.
But it didn't proliferate on a low scale! And that is not an
assumption! Do you actually have any details of the manuscripts we
have!? Let us just say of Muwatta alone! Where is Cook's proof?
> What are the premises?
>
> * The isnad system is authentic.
>
> * The use of the isnad system was very early.
No wrong again! The isnad system is authentic becuase of this
historical reality of a global scale!
As for the second, well Abbots papyri alone from the 50's! here, show
we have an Isnad system from the time of Malik. So on the assumption
things don't pop up in vacuums we redact this system and we find that
at least it is very close to what Azami says. I am resting my
conclusions on safe grounds here!
> Berg opines,
>
> "Azami confidently concludes, 'So even if mistakes in isnads and ahadith exist,
> Schacht has produced no evidence that would cause us to impugn the good
> faith of the majority of the transmitters or abandon the hadith literature.'
> While this may be overstating the case somewhat, Azami has indeed significantly
> undermined many of Schacht’s conclusions. Certainly many of the examples adduced
> by Schacht were done so incorrectly or inappropriately ...
>
> Yet, the dismissal of a few examples does not necessarily weaken the
> overarching patterns suggested by Schacht, especially since many of Azami's
> conclusions, like those of Abbott and Sezgin, rest on complete faith in the
> historicity of the source material."
Quite apt eh! Refute the empirical data of Schact and call it
examples! Gives it a false sense of security that their are plenty of
other examples out there that undermine the Isnad system. Where are
they? Examples should obviously avoid an Azmai dissection.
> Another major assumption regarding the authenticity of the source material!
The assumption is in your denial!
> "The arguments of Abbott, Sezgin, and Azami rely on biographical materials that
> were produced symbiotically with the isnads they seek to defend. These sources
> are not independent. And so their arguments seem no less contrived, circular,
> and contrary to reason as those of the sceptics seem to their opponents. As a
> result, we are left with two seemingly diametrically opposed theories for the
> origin and development of hadiths and, hence, of early Islam itself."
That is right another conspiracy with the biographies. It is just
getting more and more complicated. I would love to see you put this on
paper. Iftikhar Zaman would have a field day with you. Know of his
stuff? Just say he likes to go for simple explainations.
> *IF* Azami's assumptions on the isnads are correct, *THEN* his arguments gain
> serious momentum.
No *IF* here just you having simplistic fun with a keyboard!
> I'm not so much interested in Calder's material, but on Motzki, we have the
> claim made: "the mere fact that ahadith and asanid were forged must not lead
> us to conclude that all of them are fictitious or that the genuine and the
> spurious cannot be distinguished with some degree of certainty."
Well you should be! His arguments go along a similar line except with
the later collections. Quite funny this. Not interested when you know
your going in with a sinking ship. You've drowned a long time ago.
> Of course not. But this would be to dismiss *some* proponents of gross hadith
> skepticism. Motzki's analysis is on the isnad like Azami, but as Berg notes:
>
> "It is precisely the isnads that sceptics would say have been fabricated and
> so should not be the basis of any comparison. Moreover, Motzki’s observed
> "consistent individual character" could be a product of separate fabrications:
> systemic fabrication is need not be systematic fabrication."
Yes statistic is part of his argument. But a major part is his "Isnad
cum matn" analysis which has not been touched. That is what WE are
using so you are constucting a straw man here. Is that how the cliche
goes?
> The isnads definitely play a pivotal role in the determination of whether a
> hadith is authentic or not. And that's what I was interested in. Where are the
> arguments? What evidence can you proffer to trust the veracity of the isnads?
The argument are their! The proof is their! You are ignoring them and
just pasting without thought. What am I to do with that!
Ghali
imran...@xtra.co.nz
DR. SAIFULLAH
> As the people who know what carbon dating is very well understand that
> there is a peak dominating a range and then a range of probability. It is
> very hard to precisely date any object using carbon dating. Since the
> al-Hussein Mss has been carbon dated I would not be surprised if people
> argue that it dates from the time of the Prophet, SAW, or the Umayyad
> times because of the range.
IMRAN
Well, I didn't make the claim. Ghali was confident, and therefore has to
provide the evidence. And I mean evidence, not some speculative hypothesis
on what the date could have been, etc, etc.
DR. SAIFULLAH
> Well, Imran, you do not have to get rough with people on this newsgroup.
IMRAN
Relax, what did I say that made you think I was getting rough with Ghali?
And I'm sure he could have answered the question himself. I think you're in
a habit of jumping the gun, most likely because of your involvement with the
"Christian missionaries" ;) If I may add this little side-comment ... *you*
have obviously relied on Berg to summarize Wansbrough's position in your
article:
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/burton.html
Now, it just so happens that we find the same text here:
http://www.uncwil.edu/people/bergh/par246/L22RWansbrough.htm
An entire paragraph, in fact!
Why no referencing? You obviously feel Berg can be relied upon for some
good information, but when I do the same, you disapprove. I know this is
a silly point, but I'm merely reciprocating the silliness of Ghali's
question about trusting Berg. Sheesh!
DR. SAIFULLAH
> Berg uses selective sources and there is nothing wrong if Ghali had
> pointed out. You may not like it but then you have bno argument against it
> anyway! So, Ghali's argument still stands.
IMRAN
Ghali *claimed*, he has not proven it. Unless, of course, we see some good
evidence to support the date he ascribes to the Husseini manuscipt.
imran...@xtra.co.nz
DR. SAIFULLAH
> The whole methodology, at least from the point of view of hadith
> specialists, *does not* assume the veracity of isnads. In fact, a hadith
> can be rejected on the basis of both isnad and matn when analysed
> individually. This is a well-known fact!
IMRAN
Well, of course. The specialists in hadith realize that the heart of the
debate concerns the authenticity of the isnads. If the isnads are authentic,
then there's nothing to debate about. Ghali was arguing that the concept of
tawatur is a valid concept one can use. I agree. Memory, and testimony, are
to be trusted in the absence of contrary evidence, and in proportion to the
nature of the claim(s) being made.
Now let's take a look at a hypothetical mutawatir transmission. Suppose we
have some event, E, occur. And we have three people who have witnessed this
event: A, B, C. Furthermore, suppose that we have the following multiple
chains of transmission occur:
(1) E: --> A --> X --> Y --> Z
(2) E: --> B --> P --> Q --> R
(3) E: --> C --> J --> K --> L
I realize this is a very naive example, but bear with me for a moment. We
have three isnads (1)-(3) which attest to event E. Naturally, the coherence
of the isnads and the reports needs to be checked, cross-examined and veri-
fied, as in any court case, but suppose that all is well and good. We can
detect no inconsistency in the isnads or the report in the transmission.
Let us call this internal evidence. This is the first step. The next step
would be to look for external evidence. And here, I would want to examine
the evidence for the truth of the isnads (1)-(3). Remember, any argument is
as strong as its weakest premise. If all the people in the chain of some
transmission are dead, I can only find out about the mutawatir report from
historical data, presumably from a written, historical source. I may come
across the information in some historical source, but what assurance do I
have that it is authentic? And on what basis? This is my question regarding
the mutawatir hadith. It needs to be proven that some hadith which is
apparently instantiated by tawatur, is, *in fact*, instantiated by tawatur!
Where do we go? Back to the isnads!
Another point I wish to bring up is that, constantly in defence of the
authenticity of the hadith (by and large), Ghali brought up the fact that
we have tawatur methodology to give us assurance. I still contest this
argument, for some of the reasons I have sketched out now and before. But
the actual reports which are allegedly mutawatir are very few:
"The Mutawatir are the traditions which have been transmitted throughout the
first three generations of the Muslims by such a large number of transmitters
as cannot be reasonably expected to agree on a falsehood. There is a difference
of opinion about the number of the transmitters necessary for it during each of
the first three generations of the Muslims. Some authorities fix it at seven,
some at forty, some at seventy, and some at a much higher number. Very few of
the traditions received by us belong to the category of the Mutawatir."
-- Muhammad Zubayr Siddiqi, 'Ulum al-Hadith, Hadith and Sunnah - Ideals and
Realities, pp. 89-90).
Also, as Juynboll put it, they are "very few in number and hardly ever touch
on legal matters". So even if mutawatir reports manage to ascertain themselves
as being authentic, what about the rest?
On the "Muslim Answers" website, there is an article on ahad hadith doctrines.
Admittedly, I didn't know how much rested on ahad hadith. For example, "All the
miracles of the Messenger other than the Qur'aan" are ahad reports. I know some
of the sectarian groups like Hizb-ut-Tahrir deny ahad reports as a basis for
their aqeedah. I wonder if they would deny the miracles of the Prophet, then?
And how does one prove the authenticity of ahad hadith?
http://www.muslim-answers.org/aahaad.htm
Anyway, back to the main issue ...
DR. SAIFULLAH
> Apart from this, the isnad is correct only if the people in the chain are
> considered trustworthy. There are biographically dictionaries available
> for those who are interested on this issue; some of them are detailed and
> some of them very terse. The detailed ones provide when the person was
> born and when he died, who were his teachers and who were his students,
> who did be narrate from and what were his beliefs. The well-known books
> that deal with biography of narrators are:
IMRAN
Yes, it is a trivial truth that if the transmitters were telling the truth,
then the isnad is correct. But how on earth is this to be determined? We are
of course going to start talking about 'ilm al-rijal. But surely, is this
not another assumption? Are you not saying: the rijal material is to be
trusted? How do we know? What are the arguments?
<...>
DR. SAIFULLAH
> The very origin of isnad system was to detect the forgery and hence the
> statement of Ibn Sirin that: "They did not ask about the isnad but when
> the fitna (civil war) occurred they said: 'Name to us your men' Those
> who belonged to the People of the Sunnah, their traditions were accepted
> and those who were innovators, their traditions were neglected."
IMRAN
Sure, we may accept this as many of the scholars do. The science of the
isnad was a response to a situation.
DR. SAIFULLAH
> Robson actually refutes Schact's hypothesis of isnaad (al-Azaami's
> refutation using the date of death of Ibn Sirin is very good!) and
> endorses the view of Horovitz who credited that Ibn Sirin was
> "responsible" for the use of isnaad. In fact, if we read what Ibn Sirin
> actually said the statement implies that isnad were used even before the
> Fitna. After the Civil War they became more cautious and began to inquire
> about the sources of information and scrutinise them.
IMRAN
Let us suppose that the alleged date of utilizing the isnads was 35/656.
Even if we grant this, the argument still requires more evidence. The fact
of the matter is this. How does one know whether an isnad is true? We have
already seen that fabrications and defective isnads did exist. Goldziher
was quite correct in the claim that fabrications did have plenty of reasons
behind them, the primary one being political causes. When a political cause
needed promotion, one could easily give it 'prophetic authentication' by
extending an isnad back to the Prophet. The hadith mawqufa transformed into
hadith marfu'a, for example.
The sectarian problems still exist to this day. For example, the Sunni and
Shi'ite hadith are both official and closed, according to their own respective
traditions. Very important to note is that the proliferation of isnads was
*post-facto* vis-a-vis the fabrications of hadith. The isnads were a *response*
to the fabrications of hadith. And they progressed as a trial and error method-
ology.
So the basic question is this: is the isnad analysis a sufficient condition
for deeming some putative hadith as authentic? Clearly, the answer is no. Now
according to Azami, the following criteria suffices for accepting some hadith
as being authentic:
1. Continuity of the chain of transmitters (ittisal assanad).
2. The integrity ('adalah) of the transmitters.
3. Soundness of memory of the transmitters.
4. Conformity of the Hadith.
5. The absence of defects ('illah) in the Hadith.
http://www.uh.edu/campus/msa/qurhad/azmihad.html
But how does one ascertain (2) and (3)? Integrity and good memory are surely
subjective preferences which become even more implausible when looked at in
light of the social, political context of early Islamic Arabia. For the Sunni
scholars, the Shi'a are considered the worst liars and fabricators of hadith.
Thus, we find the statements of Shafi'i: "I have not seen among the heretics
a people more famous for falsehood than the Raafidi Shia"; "Narrate knowledge
>from everyone you meet except for the raafidi Shia, because they invent ahadith
and adopt them as part of their religion." Malik also cautioned that "Do not
speak to them or narrate from them, for surely they are liars." Conversely, we
find the following accusation made by Shi'a scholar as-Subayti on Sahih Al-
Bukhari: "He has transmitted strange and even abominable tales unsuitable even
for the minds of superstitious Berbers and old Sudani women."
http://www.islamzine.com/ideologies/sects/shias/shia.html
So you see, biographical contingencies were extremely subjective. Someone was
seen as a good/bad person of good/bad integrity/memory depending on their sect-
arian preferences.
DR. SAIFULLAH
> I do not think al-Azami proceeded on an assumption that the source
> material itself is authentic unlike Schacht who proceeded with an
> assumption that the source material is false unless proven otherwise. It
> has been acknowledge by al-Azami that the hadith literature contains
> forgeries and the reason why there is a "Science of Hadith" is to detect
> these forgeries.
IMRAN
You've missed what I was referring to here. When Azami had a look at the
isnads, he was assuming, for example (see the aforementioned criteria) that
the rijal works can, and should be, trusted.
DR. SAIFULLAH
> The argument here is that Abbott, Sezgin, and Azami rely on biographical
> materials that were produced along with isnad and hence the arguments
> concerning isnad are circular. But then if anybody has opened biographical
> dictionaries to study various narrators they authors do not always agree
> on the virtue or weakness of a narrator. This would mean that each of
> the authors analyzed the material before making a judgement on the
> narrator. It was not like one copied from the other... See also Sayf Ibn
IMRAN
This is correct, but a straw man. The argument is not concerned about the
conformity of the biographical works to some unified account of good or bad
narrators. Rather, the argument is that the assumption is being made that
one could trust the biographical works. But on what basis? Sure, there may
be discrepancies across the various rijal materials, but the inference from
that observation to the fact that they can be trusted is a non-sequitur. I
realize this is not your argument, but I'm just pointing it out. Whatever
the basis may have been for the authors deeming someone a good or bad
narrator (and I have been arguing that it seems to be primarily political
conformity) it does not mean that differences in judgement make the rijal
works true.
DR. SAIFULLAH
> The point here is that Abbott, Sezgin, and Azami reliance on biographical
> material is not based on blind faith. It come through the reading and
> understanding of the source material.
IMRAN
Is reading and understanding biographical material sufficient to deem it as
being true?
DR. SAIFULLAH
> When a person was considered truthworthy and truthful by his
> contemporaries who are we to judge him! It is like Schacht dismissing
> family isnads in toto. If a statement of a father about his son or vice
> versa, or a wife about her husband, or a friend about a friend, or a
> colleague about a colleague is always unacceptable, then on what basis
> could biography possibly written? Schacht would want us to believe that
> all the biographies written till now are forgeries.
IMRAN
But the question is this. Which contemporaries? Which persons? The Sunni
scholars like Shafi'i and Malik hated the Shi'ites, and told anyone who was
hearing information from them not to believe in them because they were seen
as liars. Conversely, Shi'ite scholars were doubtful of the transmission of
Sunni reports.
As for your question regarding biographical materials, one example will be
sufficient to show the problematic nature of ancient biographical works. Go
look at the number of alleged biographical works on Jesus. They range from
Jesus never existing, to claims about him being God, not God, dying on the
cross, escaping the crucifixion, rising from the dead, being single, getting
married, and even travelling to Kashmir. The latest suggestions are that he
got married, had a family and died in Japan.
I have every right to be skeptical when analyzing historical information
about Jesus. Similarly, with the Prophet being in a similar line to Jesus,
we have to be as cautious as the historical Jesus scholars are. The problem
with Muslims is that they ignore the important works on the historical Jesus
by the likes of John Dominic Crossan, E.P. Sanders, N.T. Wright, etc. Their
works show how historical investigations work and the level of true scholar-
ship. For example, I am currently reading Crossan's work "The Birth of
Christianity", and putting aside the question of whether I agree with him or
not, his methodological analysis is excellent. As he puts it:
"How, then, is reconstruction possible? ... It is a question of new method
and new material. My new method is an interdisciplinary combination of
anthropological, historical, archeological, and literary disciplines." --
John Dominic Crossan, "The Birth of Christianity", (HarperSanFrancisco,
1998), p. x.
Similarly, Muslims need to dispassionately subject the hadith corpora to
rigorous historical analysis using these disciplines. A corpus of hadith
like Sahih Al-Bukhari is seen as closed and official, ascertained by the
archaic principles of isnad analysis. Some of the hadith I find in there
are very weird, and very objectionable from an ethical and scientific
point of view. I also find the usual theological and mythical embellish-
ments, as well as the peculiar cases of topoi and schemata in hadiths.
And therefore, I am interested in getting to the historical core.
Anyway, that's it for now.
MahmudTaha
>With regards to the Samarqand Manuscript, that has been dated
>unfortunately! from a stolen copy sold to Samm fogg's art collectors.
>The dating before selling the folio was at most early eighth century,
>late Ummayad. Where is Wansbourgh with this? Yes I know it is an art
>colelctor. So let us go on onto the folios that have been carbon
>dated.
Would you mind to be a bit more explicit on this story of a stolen copy from
the Samarqand manuscript and the dating of it or the Samarqand manuscript
itself?
>Well quite a few from the Sanaa collection. Yes! And guess what!
>Ummayad. In fact ALOT of folios around that have been dated to this
>time.
If you wanted to inform us that a lot of specimens from the Sanaa manuscripts
have been dated, you would be wrong. As you may learn from Dr. Puin and his
colleagues at Saarbruecken University: There is only one manuscript the
parchment substrate of which has been carbon dated (around 790 AD), namely the
palimpsest. Another manuscript has been dated (around 715 AD) by arguments
related to the history of arts. That's all.
Peace,
Mahmud K. Taha
ghali
> Well, of course. The specialists in hadith realize that the heart of the
> debate concerns the authenticity of the isnads. If the isnads are authentic,
> then there's nothing to debate about. Ghali was arguing that the concept of
> tawatur is a valid concept one can use. I agree. Memory, and testimony, are
> to be trusted in the absence of contrary evidence, and in proportion to the
> nature of the claim(s) being made.
Well good start. Now from concept to reality!
> Now let's take a look at a hypothetical mutawatir transmission. Suppose we
> have some event, E, occur. And we have three people who have witnessed this
> event: A, B, C. Furthermore, suppose that we have the following multiple
> chains of transmission occur:
>
> (1) E: --> A --> X --> Y --> Z
>
> (2) E: --> B --> P --> Q --> R
>
> (3) E: --> C --> J --> K --> L
>
> I realize this is a very naive example, but bear with me for a moment. We
> have three isnads (1)-(3) which attest to event E. Naturally, the coherence
> of the isnads and the reports needs to be checked, cross-examined and veri-
> fied, as in any court case, but suppose that all is well and good. We can
> detect no inconsistency in the isnads or the report in the transmission.
> Let us call this internal evidence. This is the first step. The next step
> would be to look for external evidence. And here, I would want to examine
> the evidence for the truth of the isnads (1)-(3). Remember, any argument is
> as strong as its weakest premise. If all the people in the chain of some
> transmission are dead, I can only find out about the mutawatir report from
> historical data, presumably from a written, historical source. I may come
> across the information in some historical source, but what assurance do I
> have that it is authentic? And on what basis? This is my question regarding
> the mutawatir hadith. It needs to be proven that some hadith which is
> apparently instantiated by tawatur, is, *in fact*, instantiated by tawatur!
> Where do we go? Back to the isnads!
But you have missed the point AGAIN! For we do know of certain hadith
collections compiled in different parts of the world. The Muwatta of
Imam Malik, Zuhri's work, Abdullah bin Lahia's work, Abdullah bin
wahbs work, the risla of Shafi , the works of numerous other hadith
scholars from the students of the successors etc ,etc ,etc, Motzki and
Abbots has listed quite a few (alot of these are from very early dated
manuscripts). They though have similar narrations with there own
isnads. Each Isnad in these collections also have there own peculiar
regular irregularites in the matn. So how do you account for this, tha
same story in different collections around the Muslim world. Shadowy
conspirators hoping from one collector to the next just to give us
this false sense of security? Come on! SO the Hadith ARE insantiated
by tawatur. Now Iftikhar Zaman shows you can show this phenomenon with
ALOT of the Ahadith. There is no way to explain this. You try to. Go
on. The best you have got is Juynoboll.
> Another point I wish to bring up is that, constantly in defence of the
> authenticity of the hadith (by and large), Ghali brought up the fact that
> we have tawatur methodology to give us assurance. I still contest this
> argument, for some of the reasons I have sketched out now and before. But
> the actual reports which are allegedly mutawatir are very few:
Well what is muttawatir to you? But wouldn't you think something is
going on when even three to four people around the Muslim world say
the same thing? Especially since that is how you start to learn
language. You start with the fwe people you meet!
> "The Mutawatir are the traditions which have been transmitted throughout the
> first three generations of the Muslims by such a large number of transmitters
> as cannot be reasonably expected to agree on a falsehood. There is a difference
> of opinion about the number of the transmitters necessary for it during each of
> the first three generations of the Muslims. Some authorities fix it at seven,
> some at forty, some at seventy, and some at a much higher number. Very few of
> the traditions received by us belong to the category of the Mutawatir."
>
> -- Muhammad Zubayr Siddiqi, 'Ulum al-Hadith, Hadith and Sunnah - Ideals and
> Realities, pp. 89-90).
Well in fact he is right in one sense. If we are comparing them to
ahad hadith there are a few. But much more than you think. In fact I
know of a couple of books off hand which collect the hadiths with five
or more in each chain down to the prophet. Quite a few I can
guarrantee.
> Also, as Juynboll put it, they are "very few in number and hardly ever touch
> on legal matters". So even if mutawatir reports manage to ascertain themselves
> as being authentic, what about the rest?
Juynboll is in fact not very accurate when he comes to this stuff as
Motzki has shown. So instead of giving
M.S.M. Saifullah
Assalamu-alaykum wa rahamatullahi wa barakatuhu:
> > As the people who know what carbon dating is very well understand that
> > there is a peak dominating a range and then a range of probability. It is
> > very hard to precisely date any object using carbon dating. Since the
> > al-Hussein Mss has been carbon dated I would not be surprised if people
> > argue that it dates from the time of the Prophet, SAW, or the Umayyad
> > times because of the range.
>
> IMRAN
> Well, I didn't make the claim. Ghali was confident, and therefore has to
> provide the evidence. And I mean evidence, not some speculative hypothesis
> on what the date could have been, etc, etc.
Well, to be honest, I do not think you understood what I said before. The
radio-carbon dating only gives an approximate range of dates which could
be well over 60 years. So, asking Ghali for a "date" is something you
should not have done if you really understood how radio-carbon dating is
carried out and how the data come out of the analysis.
> > Well, Imran, you do not have to get rough with people on this newsgroup.
>
> IMRAN
> Relax, what did I say that made you think I was getting rough with Ghali?
> And I'm sure he could have answered the question himself. I think you're in
> a habit of jumping the gun, most likely because of your involvement with the
> "Christian missionaries" ;) If I may add this little side-comment ... *you*
> have obviously relied on Berg to summarize Wansbrough's position in your
> article:
> An entire paragraph, in fact!
I do not have the "habit of jumping the gun" because of my "involvement
with "Christian missionaries"". To be honest, I do not even see the
missionaries unless I am at Hyde Park Speakers' corner once every couple
of months or so. They are not my obsession. At the outset, I should say
that I do not like their deceptive metholodogies used against the
Muslims (See for example the latest issue of the magazine Mother Jones the
excerpts of which are circulating around the internet) and their
attitudes. As for Muslims, it is better they do not rub against each
other. I do not like to do it and I prefer my brothers to stay away from
it too.
> Why no referencing? You obviously feel Berg can be relied upon for some
> good information, but when I do the same, you disapprove. I know this is
> a silly point, but I'm merely reciprocating the silliness of Ghali's
> question about trusting Berg. Sheesh!
As for your other complaint that I quoted Berg's material without
referencing. What exactly is your problem? You seem to suggest that each
and everything that I quote from either the internet or any other
electronic source has to be referenced. This is internet and the material
here gets quoted and re-quoted from various sources. People quote my
material without referencing me and I do not complain about it as do lots
of other people. When one is quoting the material from a book then there
are some issues about
referencing it depending upon how much is used.
If I quote Berg does it mean I rely on his material sometimes and in other
times I ditch it? Well, we only take what makes sense in Berg's material.
Just because I quoted his material does not mean that I had to accept the
rest of it. This is akin to a coinsmith who finds a forgery amidst his
pile and promptly proceeds to dispose of the rest of the coins without
giving to them the individual scrutiny that they deserve. This would be
ludicrous!
Curiously, you did not complain when Berg uses the Koren and Nevo who
have nothing but circular arguments. Wansbrough never claimed that he
has the evidence to show what he is claiming. Koren and Nevo said that
their research validates part of Wansbrough's thesis. Given these facts
can Berg be trusted? This was one of Ghali's points.
As for Berg, there are more problems to it. He uses, like Rippin, the
studies of Schacht and Goldziher. But Schacht and Goldziher used
historical criticism to discuss hadiths and isnad. They did not throw out
the Islamic history; rather they worked in the realm of history and
historical criticism. But for Wansbrough and Rippin and to some extent
Berg, they represented the champions of the past who dared to "criticise".
Actually Wansbrough and his followers deal with literary criticism by
throwing overboard the entire history and then come up and say "we do not
know what happened, rather the sources say what thought had happened or
wanted to believe had happened or wanted others to believe had happened."
And then proceed to re-write the history which does not even make basic
sense! This is simply the way just opposite of what Schacht and Goldziher
pursued! What do you think about Berg then? Did he use the material
selectively? Also check Fazlur Rahman's essay in "Approaches to Islam in
Religious Studies" (Ed. Richard Martin), Tucson: University of Arizona
Press, 1985, on the issue of confusion between literary criticism and
historical criticism. Fazlur Rahman makes an interesting point that if
Rippin think he had unearth the genius of Wansbrough, he should start
making sense of the history. But so far, we have not come across anything
that has made sense of the history.
Wassalam
Saifullah
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/
M.S.M. Saifullah
Assalamu-alaykum wa rahamatullahi wa barakatuhu:
> Well, of course. The specialists in hadith realize that the heart of the
> debate concerns the authenticity of the isnads. If the isnads are authentic,
> then there's nothing to debate about. Ghali was arguing that the concept of
> tawatur is a valid concept one can use. I agree. Memory, and testimony, are
> to be trusted in the absence of contrary evidence, and in proportion to the
> nature of the claim(s) being made.
On the contrary the authenticity of the hadith is determined both by isnad
and matn. It is just not isnad which comes into play. Matn plays an
important role too for determing the authneticity of a hadith.
> would be to look for external evidence. And here, I would want to examine
> the evidence for the truth of the isnads (1)-(3). Remember, any argument is
> as strong as its weakest premise. If all the people in the chain of some
> transmission are dead, I can only find out about the mutawatir report from
> historical data, presumably from a written, historical source. I may come
> across the information in some historical source, but what assurance do I
> have that it is authentic? And on what basis? This is my question regarding
> the mutawatir hadith. It needs to be proven that some hadith which is
> apparently instantiated by tawatur, is, *in fact*, instantiated by tawatur!
> Where do we go? Back to the isnads!
I wonder why you have used internal and external evidences here. Isnad
involves men. The men have history and it is recorded by those who met
them in one way or another. If the people who met them said that the
person A is reliable and trustworthy, who are we do judge that person A?
Now your argument is that how do we know that a biographical dictionary is
authentic. The problem here is that you do not how the hadith and
hadith related material is transmitted in Islamic tradition. Almost all
this stuff is discussed by al-Azami in his book "Hadith Methodology". The
general way of transmission is that of ijaazah or a certificate and
preservation of the book of an individual. This is nothing but disclosure
of the sources of information to facilitate a proper transmission. The
preservation of the book of an individual involves that it is transmitted
only through legitimate method such as student reading it to his teacher
or vice versa. Al-Azami has discussed some of the issues at:
http://www.islaam.com/Article.asp?id=47
See section 1.2-1.4.
I have an ijaazah mailed to me by a brother from Makkah about a year ago.
This ijaazah is in hadith which says that this person had read a
particular book in hadith and is signed by two authorties. The ijaazah
would be different if the brother had memorized it. This ijaazah is
interesting in the sense that it quotes this person's full name with
nothing whatsoever missing. I have also seen an ijaazah of Qur'an which
has a long isnad going back to the Prophet, SAW. That ijaazah had 34
people from the brother to the Prophet, SAW. Again different ijaazah are
given to people who read it correctly a particular Qiraa'aat and those who
memorized it. So, the student can teach to another student only the
Qiraa'aat or the book of hadith he has recited/read or memorized. He is
not *allowed* to do anything apart from that unless he obtains the
necessary qualification + ijaazah. The students of Madinah University
have also told me that the library in Prophet's mosque has very old Mss
of hadith which also contain an ijaazah either on the frontpage or the
last page. The point here being that the way of transmission of material
in Islamic tradition is different from that of rest of the world. There
are certain regulations which forbids the forgeries!
> Another point I wish to bring up is that, constantly in defence of the
> authenticity of the hadith (by and large), Ghali brought up the fact that
> we have tawatur methodology to give us assurance. I still contest this
> argument, for some of the reasons I have sketched out now and before. But
> the actual reports which are allegedly mutawatir are very few:
There are two issues here. Mutawatir transmission of hadith and of the
Qur'an. The latter is well-known for its mutawatir transmission primarily
because almost every Muslim had to know the Qur'an. As for the former,
study of hadith is a very specialized field and hence there are not many
people who actually end up studying like what people do with the Qur'an.
Hence it is not surprising that all hadiths do not have a mutawatir type
transmission, save a few.
> Also, as Juynboll put it, they are "very few in number and hardly ever touch
> on legal matters". So even if mutawatir reports manage to ascertain themselves
> as being authentic, what about the rest?
As for the issue involving jurists and their opinion on certainity of the
events, Wael Hallaq has already discussed it in "On Inductive
Corroboration, Probability and Certainty in Sunni Legal Thought," in
Nicholas L. Heer, ed., Islamic Law and Jurisprudence: Studies in Honor of
Farhat J. Ziadeh (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990), pp.
3-31. Sha'afi also discusses the issue of "Yakeen" in his Risalah.
As for Juynboll claim that "very few in number and hardly ever touch on
legal matters", it is be reminded that the hadith scholars themselves have
not agreed on what constitutes a "large number of reporters" in a
mutawatir transmission though the minimum is agreed to be 4 and over. For
more info, please see:
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Hadith/Ulum/asb3.html
As for question "what about the rest?" not being mutawatir does not mean
that they are forged or inauthentic!
> And how does one prove the authenticity of ahad hadith?
If the Ahad hadith is transmitted by a well-known authority then is there
anything wrong in accepting it? An Ahad hadith can be Sahih too!
> Yes, it is a trivial truth that if the transmitters were telling the truth,
> then the isnad is correct. But how on earth is this to be determined? We are
> of course going to start talking about 'ilm al-rijal. But surely, is this
> not another assumption? Are you not saying: the rijal material is to be
> trusted? How do we know? What are the arguments?
The issue of transmission of hadith and related material is already
discussed above. There are certain known ways in which the material is
transmitted. Not everybody is allowed to transmit whatever they feel like.
Since you have a nagging problem of authenticity of the sources, can you
prove anything in history that is authentic by whatever criteria to come
up with? It is easier to voice skepticism about each and everything but
then hey! we can ask you to tell us precisely what happened in Afghanistan
when Americans bombed?
> Let us suppose that the alleged date of utilizing the isnads was 35/656.
> Even if we grant this, the argument still requires more evidence. The fact
> of the matter is this. How does one know whether an isnad is true? We have
> already seen that fabrications and defective isnads did exist. Goldziher
> was quite correct in the claim that fabrications did have plenty of reasons
> behind them, the primary one being political causes. When a political cause
> needed promotion, one could easily give it 'prophetic authentication' by
> extending an isnad back to the Prophet. The hadith mawqufa transformed into
> hadith marfu'a, for example.
By the way, it was not Goldziher who came up with the political reasons
for fabrication. This actually shows you have not come in grips with what
the Islamic scholars have said in the past. Long before Goldziher, the
scholars of the hadith have listed the reasons for fabrication of the
hadith and isnad. Try reading Suhaib Hasan's "Criticism Of Hadith Among
Muslims With Reference To Sunan Ibn Majah". Further, we should also stress
that the statement of Ibn Sirin was precisely to disclose the sources of
information whether they were sectarians or the followers of Sunnah. Even
a basic book on biography such as Ibn Hajar's Taqrib al-Tahdhib would say
what a person's political leanings were! See also al-Bukhari's Dua`fa
al-Sagheer for such biographical sketches.
As for the extending the hadith back to Prophet, SAW, al-Azami has dealt
with it in great detail in his book "On Schacht's Origins Of Muhammadan
Jurisprudence", 1996, The Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies & Islamic Text
Society. I can smell Schact here. The second and third generation
transmitters of the hadiths were considered by Schacht to have involved in
this conspiracy of "Projecting Back". If the hadith is projected back by
these authorities it would mean that the person who invented the hadith
has to ask his teachers and students as well as other Muslim scholars in
various parts of the Muslim world to graft the isnad which would take the
hadith back to the Prophet, SAW, or his companions. As anyone can see,
this would also require that the same hadith present in the books of
earlier scholars be impugned and new isnad grafted. This means a
conspiracy of monumental proportions that would involve people from
different parts of the Muslim world to come together and hatch such a
plot.
Another related issue here is that of creation of supporting traditions.
In this hypothesis, a hadith was fabricated, the isnad constructed and
projected forward in time. Let us assume that some person from second or
third generation of transmitters fabricated a hadith and perhaps made an
arrangement for the duplication of isnad, entrusting his students with
the secret and instructing them to ask the scholars of a hundred years
later or even more to fabricate new isnads to support his false hadith,
and that the request was accepted by Ibn Hanbal and Bukhari and others.
This would mean that the originator of the fabricated hadith was able to
contact scholars scattering from Khurasan to Egypt and from Syria to Yemen
informing them of the need to project the doctrine back to early scholars?
Collusion and forgery on so wide a scale is hard to credit.
> The sectarian problems still exist to this day. For example, the Sunni and
> Shi'ite hadith are both official and closed, according to their own respective
> traditions. Very important to note is that the proliferation of isnads was
> *post-facto* vis-a-vis the fabrications of hadith. The isnads were a *response*
> to the fabrications of hadith. And they progressed as a trial and error method-
> ology.
We already mentioned to you that the people in the isnad are checked for
their sectarian leanings. You do not seem to get certain things. Further,
the famous statement of Ibn Sirin (d.110H): "They did not ask about the
isnad until when the Fitna (Civil War) arose they said: 'Name to us your
men.' Those who belonged to the People of the Sunnah, their traditions
were accepted and those who were innovators, their traditions were
neglected." implies that isnad were used even before the Fitna. After the
Civil War they became more cautious and began to inquire about the sources
of information and scrutinise them. So, isnads were not a "response" to
fabrication of hadith. The isnad existed at the time of Ibn Sirin and were
used even before the Fitna. After the Fitnah the scrutiny of isnad
started. This can be evidenced by critical statements of Malik ibn Anas,
al-Zuhri, Sufyan ibn Uyainah etc. about certain narrators in the
biographical works.
And then we have to believe you that the whole science progress by trial
and error?!
> But how does one ascertain (2) and (3)? Integrity and good memory are surely
> subjective preferences which become even more implausible when looked at in
> light of the social, political context of early Islamic Arabia. For the Sunni
> scholars, the Shi'a are considered the worst liars and fabricators of hadith.
Imran, if the contemporary sources narrate about a person that he was not
a liar or a heretic or whether he was sound in narrating the material
or not who are we to judge who he is and who he is not?
As for your statement that for "the Sunni scholars, the Shi'a are
considered the worst liars and fabricators of hadith", you ignorance is
clarly showing when we considered what al-Bukhari says about `Abd al-Malik
Ibn A`yan in his Du`afa al-Sagheer [p. 73]:
"Abd al-Malik Ibn A`yan: He was a Shi`ah. Narrated from him Ibn `Uyaynah
and Ibn Sumay`. He is acceptable/fair in hadith."
Ibn Hajar in his Taqrib al-Tahdhib says about him [Volume I, p. 517]:
"Abd al-Malik Ibn A`yan al-Kufi: the freed slave of Banu Shayban,
truthful, Shi`ah, one hadith of his is narrated in the two Sahihs..."
Now what about your statement that for "the Sunni scholars, the Shi'a are
considered the worst liars and fabricators of hadith"? Please do not try
certain tricks on us which can be detected easily.
> Thus, we find the statements of Shafi'i: "I have not seen among the heretics
> a people more famous for falsehood than the Raafidi Shia"; "Narrate knowledge
> >from everyone you meet except for the raafidi Shia, because they invent ahadith
> and adopt them as part of their religion." Malik also cautioned that "Do not
> speak to them or narrate from them, for surely they are liars." Conversely, we
> find the following accusation made by Shi'a scholar as-Subayti on Sahih Al-
> Bukhari: "He has transmitted strange and even abominable tales unsuitable even
> for the minds of superstitious Berbers and old Sudani women."
>
> http://www.islamzine.com/ideologies/sects/shias/shia.html
Why did Shafi`i say about Raafidah? Ibn Kathir says:
"Al-Shafi`i said: "I accept the testimony of the people of desires except
al-Khattabiyyah among the Rafidah since they deem it lawful to make false
testimony in favour of their folks.""
[Isma`il Ibn `Umar Ibn Kathir, Al-Ba`ith al-Hathith Sharh Ikhtisar `Ulum
al-Hadith, 1951, Maktabat wa-Mataba`at Muhammad `Ali Subayh wa Awladuh:
Al-Qahirah, p. 110.]
Shafi`i rejected the testimony of Rafidah Shi'ah (these are extreme
Shi'ites) because they *consider it lawful* to make false testimony in
favour of their folks. He did not reject them because they were Shi`ah.
When are you going to elevate your standard from cutting and pasting
material off the internet without bothered to authenticate them? We know
people make mistakes but this is getting too much...
Since you need some education more than cutting and pasting off the
internet, let us provide you some on the issue of what is considered as a
general consensus when it comes to accepting hadith from a person.
"Question: The one who commits a bid`ah [i.e., innovation in religion], if
it makes him kafir, then there is no doubt that his narration is
rejected. If it does not, then if he deems it lawful to lie, his narration
is also rejected. If he does not make lying lawful, is his narration
accepted or not? Does it make any difference if he preaches [his bid`ah]
or not? There has always been a disagreement about that. The majority is
for distinguishing preachers [da`iyah] from non-preachers [of bid`ah].
This was narrated from al-Shafi`i. Ibn Hibban narrated with agreement
that: He cannot be used as an proof according to all our Imams, I don't
know of any disagreement between them about that.
Ibn al-Salah said: This is the most fair and best opinion. A complete
prohibition is remote, far of the known opinion of the Imams of the hadith
as their books are filled with narrations from people with bidcahs who did
not involve in preaching. The two Sahihs contain many such hadiths
regarding Shawahid [??] and Usul [fundamentals]. And Allah knows best."
[Isma`il Ibn `Umar Ibn Kathir, Al-Ba`ith al-Hathith Sharh Ikhtisar `Ulum
al-Hadith, 1951, Maktabat wa-Mataba`at Muhammad `Ali Subayh wa Awladuh:
Al-Qahirah, p. 109-110]
As it is clear from reading the above material, hadith scholars hold
different views about accepting hadith from innovators. The best and fair
opinion is that as long as innovators did not openly make da'wah to their
sect and the hadith is acceptable.
> So you see, biographical contingencies were extremely subjective. Someone was
> seen as a good/bad person of good/bad integrity/memory depending on their sect-
> arian preferences.
We only see you abilities to cut and paste material from the internet
rather than producing evidence. Another thing that we see is your claim
that a good/bad person of good/bad integrity/memory depending on their
sectarian perference. We do not have to go further to refute it. In the
contemporary work "Criticism Of Hadith Amongst Muslims With Reference To
Sunan Ibn Majah", Suhaib Hasan writes concerning Khawarij:
"... due to their strict principle regarding lies, which was held a great
sin to them, they would hardly fabricate." [p. 37]
Sulayman bin al-Ash'ath said:
"None among the people of Ahwa (dubious wishes) is better in hadith than
Khawarij..." [Ibid.]
And guess what Khawarij are used as narrators of hadith!
This is about Khawarij. We have already seen the Shi`ah being used as
narrators of hadith. What about those who lost their memory and were not
associated with any sects? Imran claimed that a good/bad person of
good/bad integrity/memory depending on their sectarian perference. Let us
take one example who is weakened beacuse of his memory but not because of
his sectarian preferences. Al-Bukhari says about `Ata' Ibn al-Saib:
"Ata' Ibn al-Saib Ibn Zayd al-Thaqafi, also called Ibn al-Saib al-Kufi.
`Abd Allah Ibn Abi Awfa told us and he narrated the hadith. `Abd Allah Ibn
Abi Aswad said from Abu `Abd Allah al-Bajali: He died in 136 AH. Yahya
al-Qattan said: I never heard anyone criticize Ata' Ibn al-Saib's old
hadith. Yahya was told: Is what Sufyan and Shu`bah narrated Sahih? He
said: Yes, except two hadiths that Shu`bah heard in his later days
[Arabic: bi'akharah]."
[Du`afa al-Sagheer, p. 88]
In the footnotes concerning this person we read:
"He changed in his late days and his memory became bad. Ahmad said:
Whoever hear of him early in his life, it is sahih, and whoever heard from
him of late, it does not count.... Ahmad Ibn Hanbal said: `Ata' Ibn
al-Saib is thiqah, a pious man, and whoever heard from him early is sahih,
he used to read through the Qur'an every night. Abu Hatim said: His rank
is that of truthfulness before he got confused. Al-Nasai said: thiqah in
his old hadith but he changed [in his later days] and his narrations
through Shu`bah, al-Thawri and Hammad Ibn Zayd is fine." [Ibid. My notes:
thiqah = trustworthy]
Ibn Hajar said:
"`Ata' Ibn al-Saib, Abu Muhammad, also called Abu al-Sa'ib, al-Thaqafi
al-Kufi, truthful but got confused...." [Taqrib al-Tahdhib, Volume II, p.
22]
So, there is no sectarian preference here to reject a person's hadith
because of his weak memory. `Ata's memory got weakened in his old age but
his early hadiths are perfectly acceptable.
> You've missed what I was referring to here. When Azami had a look at the
> isnads, he was assuming, for example (see the aforementioned criteria) that
> the rijal works can, and should be, trusted.
Nobody has shown why they can't be trusted. Neither have you! So, what is
your point in repating it again and again!
> Is reading and understanding biographical material sufficient to deem it as
> being true?
Is quoting from the internet sufficient to deem the biographical material
untrue? Get a life!
<rest deleted because of red-herrings>
Wassalam
Saifullah
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/
M.S.M. Saifullah
> Would you mind to be a bit more explicit on this story of a stolen copy from
> the Samarqand manuscript and the dating of it or the Samarqand manuscript
> itself?
It is at Sam Fogg's website:
http://www.samfogg.demon.co.uk/22/2201.html
> If you wanted to inform us that a lot of specimens from the Sanaa manuscripts
> have been dated, you would be wrong. As you may learn from Dr. Puin and his
> colleagues at Saarbruecken University: There is only one manuscript the
> parchment substrate of which has been carbon dated (around 790 AD), namely the
> palimpsest. Another manuscript has been dated (around 715 AD) by arguments
> related to the history of arts. That's all.
Perhaps you meant 690 CE? In the journal Pantheon [article by von
Bothmer] as well as Yasin Dutton in his private communication with von
Bothmer have said that a Mss dating from Umayyad period has been
discovered in Sana'a. von Bothmer arrived at the conclusion by partly
studying the ornamentation.
As for the dating of other Sana'a Mss and articles by Puin, M. Jenkins, U.
Dreibholz, Hussa Sabah please see "Masahif San'a'" [1985, Dar al-Athar
al-Islamiyyah]. Many of the Mss are dated to first century of hijra.
Wassalam
Saifullah
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/
imran...@xtra.co.nz
I'm still waiting for some references regarding the dating of the manuscript
you spoke of in your last posting. When you have them, let me know. But I'm not
too worried about Wansbrough's hypothesis, since I think it's flawed anyway. As
for the phone call to the person who knows about the manuscript and its dating,
I'll leave that to you, since you made the assertion in the first place. When
you engage in academic discourse, you do not publish a paper and add in some
footnote: "manuscript X has just been discovered, and to know whether the date
of XXXX is true, you need to call Mr. so-and-so at such-and-such a place at
such-and-such a time, and ask him."
>From the picture of the document, it looks like kufic script and not hijazi,
which would make it unlikely to be Uthman's actual Qur'an. The binding tech-
niques and the writing materials also seem to date from a later period. With
many such manuscripts, after Muslims moved to naskh script and abandoned
kufic, old kufic manuscripts of the Qur'an were thought to be much older than
they actually were and even colophons were added to them making those claims.
There is another manuscript in Turkey which also claims to to Uthman's and even
has his blood on it. Such evidence is not particularly convincing.
Also, I may add for interested readers, a new anthology called "Method and
Theory in the Study of Islamic Origins" is being published by Brill hopefully
by the end of the year by Berg. He has collected scholarly material from both
skeptics and non-skeptics to discuss these issues. I look forward to that
publication.
> We have answered! What do you say?
I say you are quite imaginative. And your allegations on Berg fail to connect.
Imran.
imran...@xtra.co.nz
GHALI
> Fair enough! With regards to Motski and Azmai though it was not just
> their names! I think I had been exhaustive with that before! Plenty
> and I mean plenty! of more references if you want though. Though I
> will show them once you give me an adequate response to a paste of
> Motzki's work against Juynboll (not bothered in spelling his name
> correctly, sorry!) so I can see at least that I am not wasting my
> time.
IMRAN
Your arguments, as I have read them, can be narrowed down to a basic polemic,
viz., that the concept of mass fabrication is implausible because of tawatur
methodology. In response, I have argued that this is a very weak argument as
it rests on highly contestable assumptions. I do not mind reading Motzki's
work against Juynboll, so forward to me if you have it available. But I would
be interested in hearing your arguments, if you have any that is, instead of
having you fall back on someone who can argue for you.
GHALI
> True! Bit of a platitude though! Sort of like " I exist" and "Crone is
> a crank"!
IMRAN
Nope, perfectly reasonable position. The isnads are the key to determining
and ascribing authenticity status to the hadith corpora.
GHALI
> Nice red herring. That is right their is an authentic source but we
> can't seperate it from fiction. In other words we can't even have this
> core. A paradox already within a few lines! Keeping to your old
> standards eh! LOL! So how in the world can YOU know of this core?
IMRAN
There is a unanimous agreement among scholars, medieval and contemporary that
the hadith literature contains historical truth, and also fabrications. There
is nothing paradoxical about this. The differences between scholars is on the
isnad system. Orthodoxy has declared that isnad analysis suffices to show the
classical corpus of hadith to be authentic. Western scholars generally have
been skeptical, and said that it is difficult to distinguish the historical
core from the non-factual encrustations. Your flawed assumption is this. If
one claims that an alleged corpus contains both truth and fiction, then one
*knows* what the truth and fiction is. Not necessarily. When you tell me about
some event that occurs, you tell me what you *thought* happened. Not what had
really happened. Thus, Thomas Kuhn argues that there can be no such thing as
a bare, uninterpreted fact. So your report contains *opiniated* truth. Now,
this is not necessarily a bad thing. But such opinions may accumulate to
give rise to something which eventually is totally non-factual. Clearly, in
the hadith literature, there are some reports which are questionable, and fit
into certain patterns. For example, miraculous events, political statements,
topoi, schemata, etc. Other reports are perfectly 'normal', and there is no
need to seriously question them. And further, I never claimed I knew what the
truth was in the hadith corpus, and what the fabrications were. I am simply
arguing against your position that the isnad + tawatur suffices as proof for
accepting the hadith. So that's one straw man out of the window.
GHALI
> The point is not that! What we are also talking about is that these
> isnads did not originate in a PLC "Isnads are for us" in Baghdad,
> during Haroon al Rashids time next to the Arabian nights. They have a
> history to. They were collected in different parts of the world by
> different collectors. It is only now! in this century of ours that we
> can look at this system globally. Maybe this insight gives this false
> illusion? So what you are implying is then mass conspiracy on a global
> scale. I have refuted this by showing that if this is your premise
> leading to a somewhat weakened "I know not what" we would be forced to
> abandon Language as well. So it is again and again not just
> "Conceptual" where real is rational and rational is real but out there
> to touch!
IMRAN
I have already answered some of your points which will pertain to the rijal
works in my response to Saifullah, so I refer you to there. The sort of thing
I have in mind is what the New Testament scholar John Meier uses to assess
facts revolving around the historical Jesus. He lists the following four
criteria (which I have added to some of my own comments):
1. Multiple, independent sources: Events which are reported by independent,
and especially early, sources are likely to be historical.
2. Dissimilarity: If an event or saying attributed to Muhammad is different
from pre-Islamic Arabian thought, then it probably doesn't derive from it,
and belongs to the historical Muhammad.
3. Embarrassment: Sayings or events that would have been embarrassing or
difficult for the early Muslims are unlikely to have been invented and so
are likely historical.
4. Rejection/execution: It is accepted by scholars that the Prophet was
initially rejected, and so was his message. Why did he provoke people in
this manner? Information which is supposedly historical must explain this
particular fact. There is also confirmation from non-Islamic sources that
the Prophet had a radical self-understanding of himself, i.e. as a man of
God who is preaching to pagan Arabia (e.g. in the Armenian Chronicler).
5. Coherence: Once we have established a body of historical facts, then
other events can be assessed by how well they fit in with the established
picture. These are the standard critieria which scholars use in
investigating the historical Jesus, and can be applied to Muhammad as well.
Note that mutawatir reports are a part of this criteria. Now what you have to
do, - to demonstrate that some putative report about the Prophet is true - is
show how your historical data fits this criteria. And to do that, no doubt,
you will turn to the rijal works. Let's see how good your defence of them is.
I have already noted in my response to Saifullah the problems of sectarian
prejudices.
Not only do you beg the question, but you set up a straw man. To argue "what
you are implying is then mass conspiracy on a global scale" only works only if
you have demonstrated the putative mutawatir reports to be indeed mutwatir. Do
I have to keep on repeating myself? This fabulous evidence you keep speaking
of, what is it? For your argument to work, you have to demonstrate the veracity
of the rijal works. And I am very skeptical that you can do that.
GHALI
> But it didn't proliferate on a low scale! And that is not an
> assumption! Do you actually have any details of the manuscripts we
> have!? Let us just say of Muwatta alone! Where is Cook's proof?
IMRAN
Please enlighten us. I'd like to see your manuscript evidence and how strong
the evidence is for their authenticity.
GHALI
> No wrong again! The isnad system is authentic becuase of this
> historical reality of a global scale!
IMRAN
Really? And where did you read this? In a story tale? Numerous repetitions
of an assertion will not instantiate it. What is your evidence of the
historical reality of tawatur *as it happened*? Where are your proofs
concerning the rijal works?
GHALI
> As for the second, well Abbots papyri alone from the 50's! here, show
> we have an Isnad system from the time of Malik. So on the assumption
> things don't pop up in vacuums we redact this system and we find that
> at least it is very close to what Azami says. I am resting my
> conclusions on safe grounds here!
IMRAN
Would you mind explicating a bit more here? Merely mentioning "Abbot" [sic]
and "papyri" does not suffice as an argument. What about Abbott? What about
papyri? What does early written transmission prove? What about the rijal? Do
you have any arguments for that? And the other so-called early sources? And
you assume the reliability of the isnads once again. Sure, Azami shows that
Schacht's methodology is based on erroneous examples, and thus we see the
distinction made between juridical and non-juridical hadiths. Whatever ...
but Azami fails to provide any alternative to Schacht's analysis of the
hadith. Just how does one go about it? The only way one is to examine them
is on the basis of so-and-so said XXXX. Just who is so-and-so? What did he
say? How do you know? How can you trust the putative historical reports? I
cannot see how you are so confident in the fact that mere *ascriptions* are
sufficient to deem a hadith as authentic. Even an early Mu'tazilite like
Ibrahim an-Nazzam would prohibit people from saying "The Prophet said ...",
but rather, "It has been related to us that the Prophet said ...". So you
are resting your conclusions on highly contestable assumptions, far away
>from safe grounds.
GHALI
> Quite apt eh! Refute the empirical data of Schact and call it
> examples! Gives it a false sense of security that their are plenty of
> other examples out there that undermine the Isnad system. Where are
> they? Examples should obviously avoid an Azmai dissection.
IMRAN
Well, this is what Azami says himself "So even if mistakes in isnads and
ahadith exist, Schacht has produced no evidence that would cause us to impugn
the good faith of the majority of the transmitters or abandon the hadith
literature." See what I mean by providing no alternative? I have already dealt
with Azami's criteria of isnad analysis in my reply to Saifullah, so I refer
you there once more. But all Azami is saying here is that the isnad system is
true unless proven otherwise. But in light of fabrications of both the matn
and the isnads, how can one simply assume their truth by default?
GHALI
> The assumption is in your denial!
IMRAN
Au contraire, your assumption is looking shakier than ever.
GHALI
> That is right another conspiracy with the biographies. It is just
> getting more and more complicated. I would love to see you put this on
> paper. Iftikhar Zaman would have a field day with you. Know of his
> stuff? Just say he likes to go for simple explainations.
IMRAN
Once again, see my posting to Saifullah where I look at examples of sectarian
controversies, e.g. between Sunni and Shi'ite transmitters. Nearly all scholars
admit the heated sectarian and political conflicts that emerged in early Islam,
and this gave rise to the fabrications of hadith for political reasons, e.g. in
the case of the Bakriyya vs. Shi'a. There's no need to bring in conspiracy
theories (just your argument from incredulity) but a simple observation. In
what context were the biographies written? Who wrote them? On what basis was a
person seen as good or bad? For example, Malik and Shafi'i reject narratives
>from any person who is a Shi'a. And there are many converse applications of
this rule in Shi'a literature. There are numerous assumptions that you are
taking for granted. If this is all too complex, then too bad. Whoever said it
would be easy tackling the subject of hadith authenticity?
GHALI
> No *IF* here just you having simplistic fun with a keyboard!
IMRAN
It is indicative of serious contingencies which are merely assumed in your
'argument' for hadith authenticity.
GHALI
> Well you should be! His arguments go along a similar line except with
> the later collections. Quite funny this. Not interested when you know
> your going in with a sinking ship. You've drowned a long time ago.
IMRAN
Oh please, spare me the rhetoric. If I'm going down on a sinking ship, then
you're already well on your way to Davy Jones's locker. Do you seriously think
that throwing a few names at me and claiming they have refuted the opposition,
along with incessant hammering of the "!" key on your keyboard and constant
usage of the pedantic "we" (to somehow give a shine of universal conformity to
your argument) will suffice as a substitute for a real argument? Not only that
but your reasoning is riddled with fallacies and problematic assumptions.
GHALI
> Yes statistic is part of his argument. But a major part is his "Isnad
> cum matn" analysis which has not been touched. That is what WE are
> using so you are constucting a straw man here. Is that how the cliche
> goes?
IMRAN
It's all in the isnads ... once you get through the points I've raised above,
then we can talk about this.
GHALI
> The argument are their! The proof is their! You are ignoring them and
> just pasting without thought. What am I to do with that!
IMRAN
Like I said, chucking names and purported proofs is not sufficient. An
argument is defined as "a connected series of statements to establish a
definite proposition". So what are your propositions, inferences and the
conclusions that follow? I haven't even begun to seriously consider and/
or criticize your evidence, since all you've done is show the short-
comings and inadequacies of your polemic.
Imran.
M.S.M. Saifullah
> Your arguments, as I have read them, can be narrowed down to a basic polemic,
> viz., that the concept of mass fabrication is implausible because of tawatur
> methodology. In response, I have argued that this is a very weak argument as
> it rests on highly contestable assumptions. I do not mind reading Motzki's
> work against Juynboll, so forward to me if you have it available. But I would
> be interested in hearing your arguments, if you have any that is, instead of
> having you fall back on someone who can argue for you.
Tawatur makes fabrication impossible. It is not a weak argument. Do you
expect people in different localities separated by a few thousands of
kilometers came together to hatch a consipracy of a monumental scale that
can't be even detected? Have they destroyed all the evidence? If they have
then how can you claim that such a conspiracy is possible? Well, you see
it is a argument which can cut against you.
As for your argument, what evidence did you provide to show that Tawatur
makes fabrication impossible a weak argument? Arguing without evidence is
no argument. It is called empty talk. Show us an example with a hadith to
prove your point.
> There is a unanimous agreement among scholars, medieval and contemporary that
> the hadith literature contains historical truth, and also fabrications. There
> is nothing paradoxical about this. The differences between scholars is on the
> isnad system. Orthodoxy has declared that isnad analysis suffices to show the
> classical corpus of hadith to be authentic. Western scholars generally have
> been skeptical, and said that it is difficult to distinguish the historical
> core from the non-factual encrustations. Your flawed assumption is this. If
> one claims that an alleged corpus contains both truth and fiction, then one
> *knows* what the truth and fiction is. Not necessarily. When you tell me about
> some event that occurs, you tell me what you *thought* happened. Not what had
> really happened. Thus, Thomas Kuhn argues that there can be no such thing as
> a bare, uninterpreted fact. So your report contains *opiniated* truth. Now,
> this is not necessarily a bad thing. But such opinions may accumulate to
> give rise to something which eventually is totally non-factual. Clearly, in
> the hadith literature, there are some reports which are questionable, and fit
> into certain patterns. For example, miraculous events, political statements,
> topoi, schemata, etc. Other reports are perfectly 'normal', and there is no
> need to seriously question them. And further, I never claimed I knew what the
> truth was in the hadith corpus, and what the fabrications were. I am simply
> arguing against your position that the isnad + tawatur suffices as proof for
> accepting the hadith. So that's one straw man out of the window.
Firstly, you have not provided any evidence against the argument that
Tawatur makes forgery impossible a weak argument. You have assumed that
your argument is correct and hence rest of what you argue further is
correct. But what we are asking you is for an evidence. With no
evidence any argument you make is simply a big zero. Show us a hadith
that has reached tawatur but it has been forged.
Secondly, the orthodoxy does not claim that "isnad analysis suffices to
show the classical corpus of hadith to be authentic". A Hadith
"... cannot be authentic unless both its parts are perfect."
[M. Mustafa al-Azami, "Studies In Early Hadth Literature", 1992, American
Trust Publications (Indianapolis, USA), pp. 305]
This is the most basic thing in hadith literature. Al-Azami also points
out that even if the isnad is faulty, it can contain the subject matter
which is true as can be verified from parallel independent chains. If the
matn is faulty then the hadith is discarded.
> I have already answered some of your points which will pertain to the rijal
> works in my response to Saifullah, so I refer you to there. The sort of thing
> I have in mind is what the New Testament scholar John Meier uses to assess
> facts revolving around the historical Jesus. He lists the following four
> criteria (which I have added to some of my own comments):
And I have already answered your allegations about rijaal works. The
problem with you is that of over-reliance on internet based sources. Try
opening a book sometimes to understand how things work in hadith sciences.
The only thing that I can say about your assessment of rijaal works and
your examples about shi'ite narrators being rejected by Sunni is that it
is ridiculuous. I have shown you examples and if you want more about the
people who had the leanings towards Qadariyyah and Murjiyyah and whose
hadith was acceptable, I do not mind giving you some. But first you have
to bring some evidence to show that tawatur can bring about forgery... Let
us see what your next statement is.
> 1. Multiple, independent sources: Events which are reported by independent,
> and especially early, sources are likely to be historical.
We are talking about tawatur here. In Mutawatir transmission you have
people who have reported independently a particular action or saying of
the Prophet, SAW.
> 2. Dissimilarity: If an event or saying attributed to Muhammad is different
> from pre-Islamic Arabian thought, then it probably doesn't derive from it,
> and belongs to the historical Muhammad.
Well, Islam abolished many of the pre-Islamic Arabian practices. Does that
mean that this event was not historical? It is like saying if my son does
not speak my language even after staying in my house for 15 years, he is
not from me. What kind of argument is this?
> 3. Embarrassment: Sayings or events that would have been embarrassing or
> difficult for the early Muslims are unlikely to have been invented and so
> are likely historical.
Let us quote some material from al-Azami's "On Schacht's Origins Of
Muhammadan Jurisprudence", 1996, The Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies &
Islamic Text Society, p. 205. This deals about Schacht who claimed that
the early authorities suppressed undesirable and embarassing material
coming from the Prophet, SAW.
"Supression of undesirable material:
In a further attempt to discredit the scholars of the time, Schacht claims
that since the hadith as narrated by Hisham (d. 146 AH) shows the Prophet
and `A'isha in a disconcerting light, the crucial point was formally
mitigated in a version with the new isnad Malik - Yahya b. Sa`id - `Amra -
`A'isha, and a shortened one with the isnad Malik - Nafi` - Ibn `Umar -
`A'isha... Oddly enough, Bukhari, Muslim, `Abdur Razzaq and Ibn Hanbal all
record Hisham's version without noting or suppressing this
'disconcerting' aspect of the Prophet's behaviour. Moreover, Nafi` died 30
years earlier than Hisham, and according to Schacht, Hisham's version most
probably did not exist in the life of Nafi`. Schacht thus asks us to
believe that Nafi` had the foresight to see that after 30 years Hisham
would present the Prophet and `A'isha in a disconcerting light, and thus
mitigated the crucial point before its existence."
What do you think now?
> 4. Rejection/execution: It is accepted by scholars that the Prophet was
> initially rejected, and so was his message. Why did he provoke people in
> this manner? Information which is supposedly historical must explain this
> particular fact. There is also confirmation from non-Islamic sources that
> the Prophet had a radical self-understanding of himself, i.e. as a man of
> God who is preaching to pagan Arabia (e.g. in the Armenian Chronicler).
How authentic is this Armenian Chronicle? This Armenian Chronicle is about
Jewish refugees from Edessa join with the Prophet to conquer the land of
Israel. And guess what! Crone and Cook have used it in "Hagarism" and
admit to be "geographically implausible" as well as chronologically
impossible. Need one say more? [p. 7].
> 5. Coherence: Once we have established a body of historical facts,
> then
> other events can be assessed by how well they fit in with the
> established
> picture. These are the standard critieria which scholars use in
> investigating the historical Jesus, and can be applied to Muhammad as well.
But the problem with the Western scholars is that they have tried various
tricks of their trade but they do not have a voice in unison before we can
even speak to them about anything. The difference between the assessment
of Islamic literature and Biblical literature is like between day and
night. In Islamic literature, the important thing is the disclosure of
sources which is akin to law of witnesses. The witnesses are examined
according to their moral uprightness and chronology. If we use this method
on the Biblical literature not a single sentence could be proved to be
authentic. Even the existence of many big figures would be difficult to
prove. How can one ever prove that a guy called Mark or Matthew wrote the
New Testament Gospel?
> Note that mutawatir reports are a part of this criteria. Now what you have to
> do, - to demonstrate that some putative report about the Prophet is true - is
> show how your historical data fits this criteria. And to do that, no doubt,
> you will turn to the rijal works. Let's see how good your defence of them is.
> I have already noted in my response to Saifullah the problems of sectarian
> prejudices.
And those issues of sectarian prejudices are dealt with in detail. If you
are not satisfied we can provide you more examples. But we will wait for
your response first and see how good it is.
> Not only do you beg the question, but you set up a straw man. To argue "what
> you are implying is then mass conspiracy on a global scale" only works only if
> you have demonstrated the putative mutawatir reports to be indeed mutwatir. Do
> I have to keep on repeating myself? This fabulous evidence you keep speaking
> of, what is it? For your argument to work, you have to demonstrate the veracity
> of the rijal works. And I am very skeptical that you can do that.
But just a few sentences above you were talking about "independent"
sources.... what about that?
What you can show is only skepticism. What we want to show you is proof of
your skepticism. So far there is no proof from your side except that you
have a good ability to cut and paste from internet.
> Well, this is what Azami says himself "So even if mistakes in isnads and
> ahadith exist, Schacht has produced no evidence that would cause us to impugn
> the good faith of the majority of the transmitters or abandon the hadith
> literature." See what I mean by providing no alternative? I have already dealt
> with Azami's criteria of isnad analysis in my reply to Saifullah, so I refer
> you there once more. But all Azami is saying here is that the isnad system is
> true unless proven otherwise. But in light of fabrications of both the matn
> and the isnads, how can one simply assume their truth by default?
What is the reference for al-Azami's statement on isnad? If mistakes in
isnad and hadith can be identified then what does that mean? It means that
there is a tool to separate the wheat from the chaff.
By the way of examples of fabrication of both matn and isnad you are
silent. Argumentum e silento, eh?
<repetitions deleted>
Wassalam
Saifullah
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/
M.S.M. Saifullah
Assalamu-alaykum wa rahamatullahi wa barakatuhu:
> >From the picture of the document, it looks like kufic script and not hijazi,
> which would make it unlikely to be Uthman's actual Qur'an. The binding tech-
> niques and the writing materials also seem to date from a later period. With
> many such manuscripts, after Muslims moved to naskh script and abandoned
> kufic, old kufic manuscripts of the Qur'an were thought to be much older than
> they actually were and even colophons were added to them making those claims.
> There is another manuscript in Turkey which also claims to to Uthman's and even
> has his blood on it. Such evidence is not particularly convincing.
Neither is your red-herring anymore convincing. We are talking about
Sam-Fogg Mss collection where he clearly mentions the issue of carbon
dating. The early Mss of the Qur'an usually come with monumental Kufic
script as evidenced in a Mss in Beit al-Qur'an, Bahrain.
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Mss/bayt1a.html
as well as early Islamic inscriptions such as:
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Inscriptions/hamid2.html
What is your evidence that the `Uthmanic Qur'ans should have been written
in Hijazi script? As expected none. Just because `Uthman resided in the
Hijaz does not mean that the script has to be Hijazi. Kufic script was
already available during that time and was used in literary papyri of 22
AH. See:
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Papyri/PERF558.html
As for colophons, we have to believe your statement that they were added
later to prove the people in 20-21st century that Muslims did indeed have
early Mss. These early Muslims had the forethought that such a thing
should be done to help the Muslims of 20-21st century. Please come up with
something convincing; not just some confusion or skepticism thrown around.
It does not prove your case.
> I say you are quite imaginative. And your allegations on Berg fail to connect.
What was your argument for showing that the "allegations on Berg fail to
connect"? As expected none.
Wassalam
Saifullah
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/
Imran Razi
> > Is reading and understanding biographical material sufficient to deem it as
> > being true?
>
> Is quoting from the internet sufficient to deem the biographical material
> untrue? Get a life!
>
This is the heart of the issue, how to deal with reports we can never
conclusively determine to be true? Where do the presumptions lie?
I think holism is the best approach here, as it is with any
interpretation of experience, where no piece is infallible
independently from other pieces. (Kind of like interpreting the Quran
correctly).
The other issue involved in this thread is how to handle earlier
biographers who did this same work? I think we need to give the same
answer.
wa salaam,
Imran Razi
ghali
> Your arguments, as I have read them, can be narrowed down to a basic polemic,
> viz., that the concept of mass fabrication is implausible because of tawatur
> methodology. In response, I have argued that this is a very weak argument as
> it rests on highly contestable assumptions. I do not mind reading Motzki's
> work against Juynboll, so forward to me if you have it available. But I would
> be interested in hearing your arguments, if you have any that is, instead of
> having you fall back on someone who can argue for you.
Why is it a weak argument though? And I am not going to paste entire
detailed arguments on the newsgroup because you can't be bothered to
read some of Motzki's work. Anyway falling back on someone is
somethign your keen to do quite alot I must say. Problem is they let
go! In fact an entire article of Motzki in English is available on the
internet if you just bothered to look!
> IMRAN
> Nope, perfectly reasonable position. The isnads are the key to determining
> and ascribing authenticity status to the hadith corpora.
>
What! A different premise leading to a different conclusion is a
shocking truth?! It is a platitude.
>> IMRAN
> Your flawed assumption is this. If
> one claims that an alleged corpus contains both truth and fiction, then one
> *knows* what the truth and fiction is. Not necessarily. When you tell me about
> some event that occurs, you tell me what you *thought* happened. Not what had
> really happened. Thus, Thomas Kuhn argues that there can be no such thing as
> a bare, uninterpreted fact. So your report contains *opiniated* truth. Now,
> this is not necessarily a bad thing. But such opinions may accumulate to
> give rise to something which eventually is totally non-factual. Clearly, in
> the hadith literature, there are some reports which are questionable, and fit
> into certain patterns. For example, miraculous events, political statements,
> topoi, schemata, etc. Other reports are perfectly 'normal', and there is no
> need to seriously question them. And further, I never claimed I knew what the
> truth was in the hadith corpus, and what the fabrications were. I am simply
> arguing against your position that the isnad + tawatur suffices as proof for
> accepting the hadith. So that's one straw man out of the window.
Well you claimed that you did not DENY that there was an authentic
core. Back tracked once you found out it was a contradiction?! LOL! So
we now go onto the position of " I just don't know". Well I did show
that language does rest on a human aspect. Now apply that logic to
language. You won't!
>
> IMRAN
> I have already answered some of your points which will pertain to the rijal
> works in my response to Saifullah, so I refer you to there. The sort of thing
> I have in mind is what the New Testament scholar John Meier uses to assess
> facts revolving around the historical Jesus. He lists the following four
> criteria (which I have added to some of my own comments):
Note the reference to a John Meier. Use your own arguments! The rest
is irrelevent
> Note that mutawatir reports are a part of this criteria. Now what you have to
> do, - to demonstrate that some putative report about the Prophet is true - is
> show how your historical data fits this criteria. And to do that, no doubt,
> you will turn to the rijal works. Let's see how good your defence of them is.
> I have already noted in my response to Saifullah the problems of sectarian
> prejudices.
Yes but if we have reports that are collected with an Isnad in
different parts of the world we can at least redact it to earlier
sources and so on. Now Yassin Dutton with manuscripts of the Muwatta a
section which is dated from his time in Nabia Abbots book, has
redacted his work to his time at least. This is what I mean. Multiple
references around the world arre not some collective imagination of
the Borg. Not difficult to comprehend that!
> Not only do you beg the question, but you set up a straw man. To argue "what
> you are implying is then mass conspiracy on a global scale" only works only if
> you have demonstrated the putative mutawatir reports to be indeed mutwatir. Do
> I have to keep on repeating myself? This fabulous evidence you keep speaking
> of, what is it? For your argument to work, you have to demonstrate the veracity
> of the rijal works. And I am very skeptical that you can do that.
The evidence from primary sources I have repeated many times with
manuscripts that can be redacted to the time of the Successors.
References again! can be found in Nabia Abbots work, Motzki's work in
Der Islam 2001, Yassin Dutton's work in his PHD of the Muwatta,
Iftikhar Zamans PHD in Journal of Islamic studies, and so on and soon.
In front of me now I have over 15 references to primary sources. And I
am not going to paste them on the internet. You just go to the
library!
> IMRAN
> Please enlighten us. I'd like to see your manuscript evidence and how strong
> the evidence is for their authenticity.
That is right, oyu have to see the manuscript yourself. They are just
recorded in books . What can I do?
I will finish the rest of the reply later
Ghali
ghali
> Greetings.
>
> I'm still waiting for some references regarding the dating of the manuscript
> you spoke of in your last posting. When you have them, let me know.
Are you having me on? Saifullah has provided the references. A certain
Dr souad Maher in Cairo University has carbon dated the manuscript. As
for the so called dodgy reference, that was an extra. But the
reference is a LIBRARY. Not difficult to call the Librarian is it? It
is like saying this. The manuscripts for a ma'il manuscript is in the
British Library. Go on call the Rector he will gice you the detials. I
don't think it is difficult to do that!
> >From the picture of the document, it looks like kufic script and not hijazi,
> which would make it unlikely to be Uthman's actual Qur'an.
Who said it was Uthmans. They gave an the early range, but in fact by
my personel correspondence it is probably Ummayad. We talk of ranges
not exact dates. The most it can be is late Ummayad about 60-70 years
after codification. Anyway what is it with this hijazi and Kufic thing
? Personally I don't think Kufic is derived from Hijazi. More like
both scripts developed together.
The binding tech-
> niques and the writing materials also seem to date from a later period. With
> many such manuscripts, after Muslims moved to naskh script and abandoned
> kufic, old kufic manuscripts of the Qur'an were thought to be much older than
> they actually were and even colophons were added to them making those claims.
Thanks for that! So what! Just useless information here. What does
this refute from the dating?
> There is another manuscript in Turkey which also claims to to Uthman's and even
> has his blood on it. Such evidence is not particularly convincing.
Who are you arguing with? Yourself? Who said that it was Uthmans
blood? Anyway the script is probably late ummayed, early Abbasid.
> Also, I may add for interested readers, a new anthology called "Method and
> Theory in the Study of Islamic Origins" is being published by Brill hopefully
> by the end of the year by Berg. He has collected scholarly material from both
> skeptics and non-skeptics to discuss these issues. I look forward to that
> publication.
Well you do that. That is look forward to it!
> I say you are quite imaginative. And your allegations on Berg fail to connect.
More like you haven't bothered to connect! Where are the problems with
my evidence? You repeating yourself doesn't do anything. And repeating
Berg is not going to do anything. Primary evidence please!
Ghali
imran...@xtra.co.nz
DR. SAIFULLAH
> Well, to be honest, I do not think you understood what I said before. The
> radio-carbon dating only gives an approximate range of dates which could
> be well over 60 years. So, asking Ghali for a "date" is something you
> should not have done if you really understood how radio-carbon dating is
> carried out and how the data come out of the analysis.
IMRAN
No, I do know about various methods of dating (Actually, I learn about them
in some of my papers on anthropology, particularly in the paper on human evol-
ution where the dating of fossil material is extremely important) but Ghali
has to demonstrate that given the range of possible dates that emerge from
dating, this range *sufficiently* falls below the date ascribed to the Qur'an
by Wansbrough.
<snipped comments on Christian Missionaries>
DR. SAIFULLAH
> As for your other complaint that I quoted Berg's material without
> referencing. What exactly is your problem? You seem to suggest that each
> and everything that I quote from either the internet or any other
> electronic source has to be referenced. This is internet and the material
> here gets quoted and re-quoted from various sources. People quote my
> material without referencing me and I do not complain about it as do lots
> of other people. When one is quoting the material from a book then there
> are some issues about referencing it depending upon how much is used.
IMRAN
Let us back-track for a moment. Ghali made the farcical suggestion that Berg
should not be trusted because of his opiniated comments on Wansbrough. Now, I
am sure you know, at least I hope, that this is arguing ad hominem. Whatever
Berg may say about Wansbrough (pro or con), and in whatever manner he depicts
the nature of the evidence, this most definitely does not substantiate simple,
childish comments about trusting him or not. One needs to look at what Berg's
arguments are. From what I've seen, some are good. Some are not so good. Is
one to give serious credence to asinine assertions about not trusting some
person, X, because we think he's mistaken on an issue? What this all comes
down to is an individual evaluation of the arguments. Initially, when I sent
the link to SRI, it was because I thought it contained some good information
pertaining to hadith criticism (and I still think it does) Whether one agrees
with Berg or not is besides the point. His surveys of scholars and their
summaries are very helpful indeed.
Without delving too much longer on this trivial issue, my point was this. You
deem Berg as reliable, even though he holds opinions that you do not (as is
clearly evident from the fact that his comments on Wansbrough have been ins-
erted into your article). This, I do too, and have no qualms about it. What
Ghali was implying is that simply because (from our viewpoint) Berg has
slipped on an issue or two, this somehow, *de jure*, dissolves his trustworth-
iness on the matter of hadith.
DR. SAIFULLAH
> If I quote Berg does it mean I rely on his material sometimes and in other
> times I ditch it? Well, we only take what makes sense in Berg's material.
IMRAN
Well done! You've realized what I am getting at. We are interested in what
his arguments are. We hope we may learn something from what he has to say on
the issue. Whether he is neo-Nazi, or into punk rock is of no interest to me.
DR. SAIFULLAH
> Just because I quoted his material does not mean that I had to accept the
> rest of it. This is akin to a coinsmith who finds a forgery amidst his
> pile and promptly proceeds to dispose of the rest of the coins without
> giving to them the individual scrutiny that they deserve. This would be
> ludicrous!
IMRAN
I am so glad you said this. Perhaps you should advise Ghali with this good
analogy.
DR. SAIFULLAH
> Curiously, you did not complain when Berg uses the Koren and Nevo who
> have nothing but circular arguments. Wansbrough never claimed that he
> has the evidence to show what he is claiming. Koren and Nevo said that
> their research validates part of Wansbrough's thesis. Given these facts
> can Berg be trusted? This was one of Ghali's points.
IMRAN
Am I to make public knowledge every matter on which Berg and I disagree? Now
remember what you said earlier. I find Berg's material tremendously helpful,
even though some of his material I sharply disagree with. And just what does
one mean by "can Berg be trusted"? It's such a foolish question I cannot see
how Ghali and yourself are entertaining it. If by "trust" you mean "does one
believe in his evidence" Which evidence? If you are talking about Wansbrough,
then, no - as I said before, I do not find Berg's exposition on Wansbrough
convincing. But then, I e-mailed him personally, and here is what he had to
say (if I may let him speak for himself in his defence):
"[Y]ou are absolutely right when it comes to Wansbrough's hypothesis and the
importance of manuscript evidence ... Bear in mind, please, that the article
I wrote was written to present Wansbrough's arguments in the best possible
light. I too have some problems with his theory. The year 800 C.E. seems a
bit late. After all the calligraphy on the Dome of the Rock is older."
On the other hand, if by "trust" you mean "does one believe in Berg as a
good scholar"? Then my answer would be yes. He certainly has a significant
amount of knowledge of the subject, but of course, the preliminaries would
involve an independent evaluation of his arguments.
Finally, I'm not too interested in your red herrings regarding Berg's own
methodology and its similarity to Wansbrough. The intial charge was one of
not trusting the man, and that, it can safely be said, has fallen flat on
it's face.
<snipped further red herrings>
GF Haddad
Remarks on some of the material encountered in this thread.
1. <<Take for example Hisham ibn Urwah's father. He
is not accepted by some narrators after he moved to Iraq, because his
memory faded during that time. Narrations that are attributed to him
through Iraqis are rejected by some.>>
Not "some." Two. And this is an anomalous position. It is
positively untrue that "his memory faded during that time."
The criticism is based solely on the fact that Hisham in his last
period (he was 71 at the time of his last trip to Iraq), for the
sake of brevity, would say "My father, from `A'isha"
(abi `an `A'isha) and no longer pronounced, "narrated to me"
(haddathani). Hence Ibn Hajar rejects the objection as negligible
in Tahdhib al-Tahdhib (11:45) saying: "It was clear enough to the
Iraqis that he did not narrate from his father other than what he
had heard directly from him." In Taqrib al-Tahdhib (#7302), he
states of Hisham, "thiqa, rubbama dallasa - trustworthy, may have
occasionally left his narrator unnamed" but Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut and
Bashshar `Awwad Ma`ruf said in their Tahrir Taqrib al-Tahdhib (4:41),
a thorough review of Ibn Hajar's findings in al-Taqrib: "It seems
the words 'rubbama dallasa' are based on the sayings of Ya`qub ibn
Shayba and Malik, although his [Hisham's] narration from his father
is retained in the fundamental manuals of Islam, among them the two
Sahihs, so this [criticism] is negligible."
2. <<ibn al-Arabi, the famous Hanafi jurist has rejected the
narrations which allege the Prophet was affected by magic, and he
does not give any credence to its being narrated by Bukhari.>>
There is no famous Hanafi Scholar named Ibn al-`Arabi and it
does not matter if/when lone Scholars do not give credence to
something in the Sahihayn when the Umma is in agreement over the
sihha of their marfu` contents.
As for the hadith of magic in al-Bukhari, the authoritative opinion
is al-Hakim in al-Iklil fi Ma`rifat `Ulum al-Hadith, where he
declares it among the Sahih but shadhdh (anomalous) narrations.
3. <<I don't think any scholar denies the frivolous fact that in
the mass of the hadith literature, there is a historical nucleus
wrapped in mythological encrustations and theological embellishments.>>
It would be difficult to deny not having seen a worse case of
litotic nonsense.
4. <<They [isnads] were collected in different parts of the world by
different collectors. It is only now! in this century of ours that we
can look at this system globally. Maybe this insight gives this false
illusion?>>
First comes the illusion that a modern perspective on hadith is
more inclusive or global than that of the early scholars. Abu Bakr
al-Isma`ili in al-Mustakhraj `ala al-Sahih compiled four volumes of
hadith narrations with the grade of sahih according to al-Bukhari's
criterion but with his own chains of transmission. Al-Dhahabi said
of this brilliant work: "I have thoroughly studied his technique and
memorization and I can categorically conclude that the moderns may
safely despair of ever reaching the ancients in memorization and knowledge."
5. <<Clearly, in the hadith literature, there are some reports which
are questionable, and fit into certain patterns. For example,
miraculous events, political statements, topoi, schemata, etc.>>
It would be interesting to see the above respondent grapple with
a mutawatir miraculous event or explain how what he considers a topos
in the language of the early Muslims is necessarily factually questionable .
6. <<The very origin of isnad system was to detect the forgery and hence the
statement of Ibn Sirin that: "They did not ask about the isnad but when
the fitna (civil war) occurred they said: 'Name to us your men' Those
who belonged to the People of the Sunnah, their traditions were accepted
and those who were innovators, their traditions were neglected."
Ibn Sirin died in 110 H.>>
This is confirmed by al-Hasan al-Basri's (d. 110) reaction to someone
who requested his isnad: "O man! I neither lie nor was ever called a liar!"
Narrated by al-Mizzi in Tahdhib al-Kamal (1:259).
7. <<In fact, if we read what Ibn Sirin
actually said the statement implies that isnad were used even before the
Fitna.>>
Isnad was definitely used before the Fitna. Here are some reports
to this effect:
- From `Umar: "Whoever finds a book containing knowledge that he did not
hear from a person of learning, let him dip it in water until its ink
is diluted." Narrated by al-Khatib in al-Kifaya and al-Sakhawi in Fath al-Mughith.
- From `Ali: "When I heard something from the Messenger of Allah (saws),
Allah would benefit me with it as He wished; but when Someone other
than him narrated it to me, I would make him swear to it; if he took
an oath, I would believe him." Al-Tirmidhi, Abu Dawud, Ahmad and others.
- From Abu Hurayra and Anas: "Verily, this knowledge is our Religion,
therefore let each of you carefully observe from whom he takes his
Religion!" (From Abu Hurayra and Anas in al-Khatib's al-Jami` li-Akhlaq
al-Rawi and al-Hakim's Mustadrak; from Ibn Sirin and Ibn `Awn in
Muslim's Sahih and al-Khatib's al-Faqih wal-Mutafaqqih).
8. <<Very few of
the traditions received by us belong to the category of the Mutawatir...
they are "very few in number and hardly ever touch on legal matters".
So even if mutawatir reports manage to ascertain themselves as being
authentic, what about the rest?">>
There are over 300 hundred narrations categorized as mutawatir in al-
Kattani's Nazm al-Mutanathir. Plenty of them touch on legal matters.
As for "the rest": Al-Dhahabi estimates there are 10,000 sahih hadiths
in toto. Ibn Hajar states that many sahih ahad hadiths, especially
those in the Sahihayn, carry mutawatir strength in the eyes of the
expert who is convinced of their categorical authenticity.
9. <<A corpus of hadith
like Sahih Al-Bukhari is seen as closed and official, ascertained by the
archaic principles of isnad analysis. Some of the hadith I find in there
are very weird, and very objectionable from an ethical and scientific
point of view. I also find the usual theological and mythical embellish-
ments, as well as the peculiar cases of topoi and schemata in hadiths.
And therefore, I am interested in getting to the historical core.>>
There are hundreds of extant commentaries on Sahih al-Bukhari. Which
one(s) have you read with a hadith specialist?
Hajj Gibril
ghali
> > But it didn't proliferate on a low scale! And that is not an
> > assumption! Do you actually have any details of the manuscripts we
> > have!? Let us just say of Muwatta alone! Where is Cook's proof?
>
> IMRAN
> Please enlighten us. I'd like to see your manuscript evidence and how strong
> the evidence is for their authenticity.
But I have and you have just ignored it. The details of the manuscript
available on the Muwatta are in the reply of Yassin Dutton to Calders
work some of which is on the internet! Saifullah has given the
address. Schacht a long time ago had some form of rough catalogue of
the manuscripts in North Africa of which Yassin Dutton Relies on. This
is the argument. You have early manuscripts from the early years say
90- 100 years after Maliks death in Cordoba, Morocco, Eygpt , and in
Syria. They are very similar or at least say have a core which is
common. Would it not be prudent to say that they all did not make it
up with the pecularities of the Isnad and Matn for each collection
which is very coherent with the bibliogarphy literature we have. Also
don't forget the commentaries from that time with manuscripts which
are very early. They also have chunks of Maliks work, in the Kitab al
Umm of Shafi and his Risala ( We have a manuscript of his students in
Dar-Al-Kutb now!) They all were into the conspiracy (also see the
online book review of Dutton in Journal of Islamic Studies). So should
we not say that we can logically redact it Maliks time. Now with this
same argument we can do this with the Sahiih of Muslim , Bukhari and
the general collections as well as the Books of Sirh and al Waqidis
sirah. But early collections also from the time of Malik exist in
Abdullah bin Wahb collection ( a dated manuscript) The papyri of Abbot
of WHICH I GAVE AN EXAMPLE USING ZUHRI'S WORK. Did you not bother to
read our previous thread. I am not quoting just names but giving the
details of there arguments. But again I am not going to waste my time
pasting databases for the likes of you when you have not even bothered
to reply to Motzki's rebuttle to Juynboll or to the Zuhri fragment.
These are just examples of an argument.
Their are many other early collections that have come into our
possession that have been noted by Motzki in his Prophet and the Cat.
He shows clearly the problems with conspiracy theories. They would
have to account for this apparent coherence and they don't. Do you
understand? Just because they have isnads in the collection it does
not show that this is a circular argument. You have to also explain
why the Isnads are "Fabricated" like this ( using say the common link
theory of Juynobll) and why are the matns with variations that are
consitent, just pop up in collections made roughly within a similar
period. Who are these people popping around the world whispering in
the ears of the Hadith collectors. Who are they? You criticism of
Saifullah goes no where near this. You just have pasted information
>from other sources that talk about different things. They do not
address this issue. Also the bibliogrraphies can be tested in this way
above the so called "subjective" criteria by seeing the abberent
variations of students in the collections and comparing them to what
they have to say about them in terms of memory and so on. In most
cases as IFtikhar Zaman shows in the Journal of Islamic Studies? they
are consitent. Again explain this using your fabricating model. You
need to provide proof for your argument. For even Patricia Crone
admits that we have to adopt the prinicple that it is on the person
claiming fabrication to provide the proof ( In one of her replies in
Arabica to Seargent). Don't worry there is an argument for this.
> GHALI
> > No wrong again! The isnad system is authentic becuase of this
> > historical reality of a global scale!
>
> IMRAN
> Really? And where did you read this? In a story tale? Numerous repetitions
> of an assertion will not instantiate it. What is your evidence of the
> historical reality of tawatur *as it happened*? Where are your proofs
> concerning the rijal works?
It is very easy to be skeptical over and over again. Even as a child I
learnt to say why? ad infinitum ignoring the argument before me. The
evidence for the historical reality has been shown in a SMALL part in
the above sample of the Muwatta. Answer this and we will proceed.
> IMRAN
> Would you mind explicating a bit more here? Merely mentioning "Abbot" [sic]
> and "papyri" does not suffice as an argument. What about Abbott? What about
> papyri? What does early written transmission prove? What about the rijal? Do
> you have any arguments for that? And the other so-called early sources? And
> you assume the reliability of the isnads once again. Sure, Azami shows that
> Schacht's methodology is based on erroneous examples, and thus we see the
> distinction made between juridical and non-juridical hadiths. Whatever ...
> but Azami fails to provide any alternative to Schacht's analysis of the
> hadith. Just how does one go about it? The only way one is to examine them
> is on the basis of so-and-so said XXXX. Just who is so-and-so? What did he
> say? How do you know? How can you trust the putative historical reports? I
> cannot see how you are so confident in the fact that mere *ascriptions* are
> sufficient to deem a hadith as authentic. Even an early Mu'tazilite like
> Ibrahim an-Nazzam would prohibit people from saying "The Prophet said ...",
> but rather, "It has been related to us that the Prophet said ...". So you
> are resting your conclusions on highly contestable assumptions, far away
> >from safe grounds.
But I HAVE! In the previous thread using one of the Papyri's from
Zuhri's work in her collection. You have just ignored it. Do you think
then you are worth me typing over 600 pages on the newsgroup!? This
Rijal thing is a bit boring, because it does not answer this
historical problem elucidated above. All your argument comes to in the
end is this. It is subjective. Not really academic. Another
replacement for the "why" of childhood. You have to address the
consistency apparent in these works. For example see again! The
extract from abbots work on Zuhri in our previous thread. This is the
argument, we, as noted have matns which are similar in different parts
of the world with the rijal works mentioning the exact names of the
teachers and students with variations and all to account for the Isnad
in each matn. Explain this, how did it appear? It is not enough to
claim fabrication ( as the owness is on you). You have to provide a
model and give its details citing all of Juynbolls, Cooks, Crones work
on the newsgroup. Stop relying on names use your own arguments. Sounds
familiar?
> IMRAN
> Well, this is what Azami says himself "So even if mistakes in isnads and
> ahadith exist, Schacht has produced no evidence that would cause us to impugn
> the good faith of the majority of the transmitters or abandon the hadith
> literature." See what I mean by providing no alternative?
Talk about out of context or what! Azami is saying that even if there
are mistakes we can trace the student who made them by comparing the
same matn from the different students. We can trace where their is
tadlis and so on. It is similar in criminal proceedings. Take
different witnesses into different rooms and see where the variations
lie. Note the simplicity of the argument. Someone gave me the wrong
meaning for a word therefore we cannot trust the entire Language
system. A bit pathetic don't you think?!
> IMRAN
> Au contraire, your assumption is looking shakier than ever.
No your assumptions are shattered!? SAD!
> IMRAN
> Once again, see my posting to Saifullah where I look at examples of sectarian
> controversies, e.g. between Sunni and Shi'ite transmitters. Nearly all scholars
> admit the heated sectarian and political conflicts that emerged in early Islam,
> and this gave rise to the fabrications of hadith for political reasons, e.g. in
> the case of the Bakriyya vs. Shi'a. There's no need to bring in conspiracy
> theories (just your argument from incredulity) but a simple observation
But the observation does not explain anything. Controversies yes! But
there still is a core that you have to account for!!
> IMRAN
> It is indicative of serious contingencies which are merely assumed in your
> 'argument' for hadith authenticity.
Talk about rhetoric. LOL!
> IMRAN
> Oh please, spare me the rhetoric. If I'm going down on a sinking ship, then
> you're already well on your way to Davy Jones's locker. Do you seriously think
> that throwing a few names at me and claiming they have refuted the opposition,
> along with incessant hammering of the "!" key on your keyboard and constant
> usage of the pedantic "we" (to somehow give a shine of universal conformity to
> your argument) will suffice as a substitute for a real argument? Not only that
> but your reasoning is riddled with fallacies and problematic assumptions.
Well the "We" refers to the orthodox beliefs of the Muslim Majority. I
think I am entitled to this "we"! So do the exclaimation marks bother
you. Then !!!!!!!. Now I feel much better. Is this all you have to
comment about? In the end is this your argument?
> GHALI
> > Yes statistic is part of his argument. But a major part is his "Isnad
> > cum matn" analysis which has not been touched. That is what WE are
> > using so you are constucting a straw man here. Is that how the cliche
> > goes?
>
> IMRAN
> It's all in the isnads ... once you get through the points I've raised above,
> then we can talk about this.
No it is in the Historical reality of a common core throughout the
Muslim World. Who are you to prioritize?
> IMRAN
> Like I said, chucking names and purported proofs is not sufficient. An
> argument is defined as "a connected series of statements to establish a
> definite proposition". So what are your propositions, inferences and the
> conclusions that follow? I haven't even begun to seriously consider and/
> or criticize your evidence, since all you've done is show the short-
> comings and inadequacies of your polemic.
" Chucking names and purported proofs" Sounds familiar to me with your
tedious quotations from your mates over and over again. What do you
think Saifullah? and I think we can take your lack of seriousness as a
polemical way to avoid the issues.
Ghali
> Imran.
M.S.M. Saifullah
Assalamu-alaykum wa rahamatullahi wa barakatuhu:
> " Chucking names and purported proofs" Sounds familiar to me with your
> tedious quotations from your mates over and over again. What do you
> think Saifullah? and I think we can take your lack of seriousness as a
> polemical way to avoid the issues.
You are asking my opinion? Well, I am waiting for Imran to come up with
something interesting on the issue of hadith. He has lot to answer for
some of the tricks which he played on us.
I am also waiting for Muhammad Ghoniem to join us, insha'allah. He has a
good hadith resource which would give us all the possible isnads for a
hadith. We can check out the isnad to find the people and their
geographical localities, especially the second generation narrators
onwards. I think we are in for a good discussion, insha'allah. Also check
G. F. Haddad's message....
Wassalam
Saifullah
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/
M.S.M. Saifullah
Assalamu-alaykum wa rahamatullahi wa barakatuhu:
> Without delving too much longer on this trivial issue, my point was this. You
> deem Berg as reliable, even though he holds opinions that you do not (as is
> clearly evident from the fact that his comments on Wansbrough have been ins-
> erted into your article). This, I do too, and have no qualms about it. What
> Ghali was implying is that simply because (from our viewpoint) Berg has
> slipped on an issue or two, this somehow, *de jure*, dissolves his trustworth-
> iness on the matter of hadith.
We have read your post and as you have said that you are not bothered
about trivial issues. So, let us move on to something which we really
should be concerned about, e.g., you evidence to show that mutawatir
transmission can be fabricated, biographical dictionaries can't be trusted
etc. Remember that we do not want statements from you and neither cutting
and pasting stuff off the internet. We want solid evidence that we can
look into such as an example of the hadith and analysis of issues
surrounding tawatur and biographical dictionaries.
We can assure you that we will deal with things as much as possible from
our end, insha'allah.
Wassalam
Saifullah
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/
imran...@xtra.co.nz
DR. SAIFULLAH
> Another related issue here is that of creation of supporting traditions.
> In this hypothesis, a hadith was fabricated, the isnad constructed and
> projected forward in time. Let us assume that some person from second or
> third generation of transmitters fabricated a hadith and perhaps made an
> arrangement for the duplication of isnad, entrusting his students with
> the secret and instructing them to ask the scholars of a hundred years
> later or even more to fabricate new isnads to support his false hadith,
> and that the request was accepted by Ibn Hanbal and Bukhari and others.
> This would mean that the originator of the fabricated hadith was able to
> contact scholars scattering from Khurasan to Egypt and from Syria to Yemen
> informing them of the need to project the doctrine back to early scholars?
> Collusion and forgery on so wide a scale is hard to credit.
IMRAN
Why must it all happen the way you describe it? The geometric increase of
hadith only stopped in the 3rd century when the official corpus was fixed by
the hadith scholars. There was no "fixed" corpus of hadith before this, but
rather, various sahifa or juz (family documents) existed. We also know that
new hadith were being actively sought out by people to record and list (tad-
win al-hadith). My concerns are with what may have been injected into this
early period when the hadiths were being proliferated. I don't know why you
have brought up this particular argument of isnads "projecting forward in
time". What I am talking about is the difficult problem of sifting through
the hadith corpus trying to determine what's true and what's not. See my
comments in the earlier posting.
DR. SAIFULLAH
> We already mentioned to you that the people in the isnad are checked for
> their sectarian leanings. You do not seem to get certain things. Further,
IMRAN
This is precisely my point which you fail to understand. The sectarian issue
is important because it shows the problematic nature of bias. After the death
of the Prophet, there emerged, as we all know, the political conflict between
Ali and Abu Bakr. The supporters of Ali we know as the Shi'a. And those of Abu
Bakr we called the Bakriyya. I came across this statement by Ibn Abi'l-Hadid
(d. 655/1257), commentator on the Nahj al-Balaghah, that it was the Shi'ite
party who began to create hadith eulogies:
"... Know that the origins of fabrications in fada'il traditions were due to
the Shi'ite, for they forged in the first instance traditions concerning their
leader. Enmity towards their adversaries drove them to this fabrication ...
When the Bakriyya saw what the Shi'ite had done, they fabricated for their own
master traditions to counter the former ... When the Shi'ite saw what the
Bakriyya had done, they increased their efforts ..."
Also, this statement regarding forgeries of Mu'awiya to oppose Ali:
"Then Mu`awiya wrote to his governors saying: "Hadith about Uthman has
increased and spread in every city, town and region. When this letter from me
reaches you, summon the people to relate the merits of the Companions and the
first caliphs. And do not let any Muslim relate anything about Ali without
bringing something contradicting this about the Companions. This I like better
and it pleases me more, it invalidates Abu Turab's claims and those of his
Shi'ite in a more definitive way and it is for them more difficult to bear
than the virtues and the merits of Uthman." Mu`awiya's letters were read out
to the people. And many forged reports concerning the merits of the Companions,
in which there was no [grain of] truth, were related. The people went out of
their way in relating reports in this vein until they spoke thereof in glowing
terms from the pulpits. The teachers in the schools were instructed to teach
their young pupils a vast quantity of these until they related them just as
they studied the Quran and they taught these to their daughters, wives and
servants. God knows how long they persisted in this."
DR. SAIFULLAH
> the famous statement of Ibn Sirin (d.110H): "They did not ask about the
> isnad until when the Fitna (Civil War) arose they said: 'Name to us your
> men.' Those who belonged to the People of the Sunnah, their traditions
IMRAN
Meaning, it was not a rigid criteria. The early oral tradition was deemed as
being sufficient, and you had the "family" sahifa sometimes. See my earlier
post on the difficulties with this assumption of trustworthiness.
DR. SAIFULLAH
> were accepted and those who were innovators, their traditions were
> neglected." implies that isnad were used even before the Fitna. After the
> Civil War they became more cautious and began to inquire about the sources
> of information and scrutinise them. So, isnads were not a "response" to
> fabrication of hadith. The isnad existed at the time of Ibn Sirin and were
IMRAN
The *science* of the isnads was not present earlier for authentication. As
Librande says: "the isnad as an *authenticating* device first appeared, and
then only in a rudimentary form, in the last third of the first century of
Islam." (Librande, op. cit., p. 147).
DR. SAIFULLAH
> used even before the Fitna. After the Fitnah the scrutiny of isnad
> started. This can be evidenced by critical statements of Malik ibn Anas,
> al-Zuhri, Sufyan ibn Uyainah etc. about certain narrators in the
> biographical works.
IMRAN
Sure. But then my earlier statement still stands, with a slight modification
perhaps. The isnad [as an authenticating device] appeared as a response to the
fitna.
DR. SAIFULLAH
> Imran, if the contemporary sources narrate about a person that he was not
> a liar or a heretic or whether he was sound in narrating the material
> or not who are we to judge who he is and who he is not?
IMRAN
<sigh> Here we go again. See my earlier comments in posting (1). This is an
assumption that is extremely difficult to hold in light of the negative forms
of evidence I have outlined in my earlier posting, so I refer you to there.
DR. SAIFULLAH
> As for your statement that for "the Sunni scholars, the Shi'a are
> considered the worst liars and fabricators of hadith", you ignorance is
> clarly showing when we considered what al-Bukhari says about `Abd al-Malik
> Ibn A`yan in his Du`afa al-Sagheer [p. 73]:
IMRAN
I was merely quoting the opinions of the founders of the four schools of
thought (which, BTW, can be found all over the internet).
DR. SAIFULLAH
> "Abd al-Malik Ibn A`yan: He was a Shi`ah. Narrated from him Ibn `Uyaynah
> and Ibn Sumay`. He is acceptable/fair in hadith."
IMRAN
OK, that's one.
DR. SAIFULLAH
> Ibn Hajar in his Taqrib al-Tahdhib says about him [Volume I, p. 517]:
>
> "Abd al-Malik Ibn A`yan al-Kufi: the freed slave of Banu Shayban,
> truthful, Shi`ah, one hadith of his is narrated in the two Sahihs..."
IMRAN
The tally rests at one. And he transmitted one hadith in the two Sahihs. Wow.
I am talking about serious large scale transmission of hadith here, Doctor. I
refer you once again to the earlier part of this posting to the face-off bet-
ween the Bakriyya and the Shia's fabrications for political causes. The Bakr-
iyya deemed a good companion who was one of their own, and vice-versa with
the Shi'a.
DR. SAIFULLAH
> Now what about your statement that for "the Sunni scholars, the Shi'a are
> considered the worst liars and fabricators of hadith"? Please do not try
> certain tricks on us which can be detected easily.
IMRAN
It is not a trick, but a serious question. You have not said anything signi-
ficant regarding the early political conflicts where sectarian prejudices had
deemed a person either good or bad.
DR. SAIFULLAH
> Shafi`i rejected the testimony of Rafidah Shi'ah (these are extreme
> Shi'ites) because they *consider it lawful* to make false testimony in
> favour of their folks. He did not reject them because they were Shi`ah.
IMRAN
And where is the evidence for this? What about the others within the Sunni
tradition who thought it was also lawful to fabricate? (see earlier posting)
The political influence permeates right to the actual sealing of the official
corpus. The Shi'a scholar A.S. Hashim comments on Bukhari:
"Collected the Hadith over a period of many years, having established
certain strict criteria. Political times were very troublesome especially
against Ahlul Bayt (during Al-Mutawak'kil's rulership), therefore Bukhari
was circumspect, having mentioned less about Ahlul Bayt's narrations than
others of the Al-Sihaah Al-Sittah. Of the 2210 Hadiths claimed to have been
narrated from A'isha, Bukhari and Muslim accepted only 174 as genuine
according to their criteria."
http://www.al-islam.org/short/alhadith/Pages/Page2.html
Contemporary Sunni Muslims haven't been too favourable with the Shi'a say-
ings. Similarly, contemporary Shi'a reject various reports from Sunni collec-
tions, e.g. in Bukhari:
http://www.al-islam.org/encyclopedia/chapter8/3.html
Others reject Sahih (Sunni) traditions which describe God in an anthropomorphic
fashion:
http://www.al-islam.org/encyclopedia/chapter9/1.html
http://www.al-islam.org/encyclopedia/chapter9/2.html
And others attack Abu Hurayra:
http://www.al-islam.org/encyclopedia/chapter9/3.html
DR. SAIFULLAH
> When are you going to elevate your standard from cutting and pasting
> material off the internet without bothered to authenticate them? We know
> people make mistakes but this is getting too much...
IMRAN
I use the internet as a reference source, in the same manner as you do. If
I find something useful or relevant, I will include it in my posting. It may
be wrong, and you can correct me on that. If you have a problem with that,
then that's just too bad.
DR. SAIFULLAH
> Since you need some education more than cutting and pasting off the
> internet, let us provide you some on the issue of what is considered as a
> general consensus when it comes to accepting hadith from a person.
<snipped criteria>
> As it is clear from reading the above material, hadith scholars hold
> different views about accepting hadith from innovators. The best and fair
> opinion is that as long as innovators did not openly make da'wah to their
> sect and the hadith is acceptable.
IMRAN
But don't you see, this is precisely the problem. Just who is an innovator?
Which sect is seen as good, and which is seen as bad? The point is that we do
not have an objective viewpoint, rather, we are reading from a person's view-
point as to who is good and who is bad.
DR. SAIFULLAH
> We only see you abilities to cut and paste material from the internet
> rather than producing evidence. Another thing that we see is your claim
IMRAN
Cut and paste eh? You don't seem to have a problem when you cut and paste
material from the web without referencing onto your website, as you did with
Berg, so stop whining.
<...>
DR. SAIFULLAH
> This is about Khawarij. We have already seen the Shi`ah being used as
> narrators of hadith. What about those who lost their memory and were not
IMRAN
Fair enough. I never really thought about the Khawarij, but I did see a
problem with the debates surrounding the Shi'a. What I would be interested
in is the transmitters who were *not* accepted. From this, we could extract
the evidence and criteria for rejecting, e.g. the Popperian method of fals-
ification. You have also mentioned it, such as the liars, or those that had
a tendency to lie. But this still stands as a weak criteria. The assumption
embedded in this line of reasoning is that the author(s) of a particular
rijal work are completely dispassionate, objective, and completely unbiased
and furthermore, have an infinite God-like temperament to discern who can
be seen as a trustworthy person, and who cannot. The problem is that these
people themselves were writing from a particular viewpoint, and held a
number of beliefs, biases, prejudices, etc. This is why, as Robson noted,
there is no *strict* criteria for judgement in the rijal works.
<...>
DR. SAIFULLAH
> So, there is no sectarian preference here to reject a person's hadith
> because of his weak memory. `Ata's memory got weakened in his old age but
> his early hadiths are perfectly acceptable.
IMRAN
Which is pretty self-explanatory ... older people have less reliable memory.
DR. SAIFULLAH
> Nobody has shown why they can't be trusted. Neither have you! So, what is
> your point in repating it again and again!
IMRAN
The point is this. You are arguing *ad ignorantiam*. It is like me saying:
"Nobody has shown why the Gospels can't be trusted!"
DR. SAIFULLAH
> Is quoting from the internet sufficient to deem the biographical material
> untrue? Get a life!
IMRAN
The good Doctor is shifting the burden of proof. I defy him to prove that the
Gospel biographies are NOT true biographies. We all know that Mark, Matthew,
Luke and John were trustworthy since they were inspired of God, and therefore,
were God fearing people. Surely, they cannot dare lie. Who are we to judge
them? All of the Church Fathers spoke highly of the evangelists. It would take
a conspiracy of mass proportions to believe that the Gospels are not true. And
because no one has shown them to be untrue, they are therefore, true. And let
us not forget the manuscript evidence. It's all childishly simple, right
Doctor?
CONCLUDED.
imran...@xtra.co.nz
In this posting, I will concentrate on Dr. Saifullah's objections, and give
various counter-arguments. Unfortunately, time does not permit me to respond
to Ghali's ornamental rehashing of Dr. Saifullah's arguments, nor keep up with
their tag-team action. Therefore, I will try to address issues in this post
which will, ipso facto, answer Ghali's polemics on the hadith. I will reply
to his material when I get the time. One final note, this post is divided in-
to two separate e-mails to make them easier to read, since the length of the
discussions is getting considerably lengthy. So here goes.
DR. SAIFULLAH
> On the contrary the authenticity of the hadith is determined both by isnad
> and matn. It is just not isnad which comes into play. Matn plays an
> important role too for determing the authneticity of a hadith.
IMRAN
The coherency of matn information may be seen as a necessary prerequisite to
determining the authenticity of the hadith. Nevertheless, it is still true of
my earlier claim that what made a hadith authentic or not was primarily on
the basis of 'prophetic ascription' for the medieval hadith specialists. L.T.
Librande explains,
"Hadith specialists understood their concerns for authenticity in the light
of the Prophet's authority. The value of hadith lay in their role as witnesses
of the Prophet's behavior. Therefore, authenticity was a matter of testimony."
-- L.T. Librande 'Hadith', in "The Encyclopedia of Religion", ed. Mircea
Eliade, Vol 6., (NY, Macmillan: 1987), p. 146.
This is the heart of the issue: did testimony, as construed by the hadith
specialists, suffice to deem the body of hadith authentic?
DR. SAIFULLAH
> I wonder why you have used internal and external evidences here. Isnad
IMRAN
Very simple. All historians use internal evidence to consider whether some
historical report is true or false. The simplest example is that of contra-
dictions. If, say, you have a contradictory report (matn) which comes from
different isnads, then something is not quite right. External form of
evidence is also important. For example, whether a particular report has a
good correlation with the background evidence of history.
DR. SAIFULLAH
> involves men. The men have history and it is recorded by those who met
> them in one way or another. If the people who met them said that the
> person A is reliable and trustworthy, who are we do judge that person A?
IMRAN
You fail to understand the problem here. When we investigate some matter on
whether a particular hadith is authentic or not, it does not suffice to merely
say: "Well, report X was reported by A, who heard it from B, who heard it from
C, who heard it from D. And I know this chain is authentic because I find it
is written in some ancient text, and this ancient text says A, B, C and D are
all great guys." Do you not see the problem here? All you keep saying is "who
are we to trust so-and-so?" By your logic, one could never dismiss the authen-
ticity of biographical works where person X writes about person Y, because
you could simply answer: "who are we to judge X?"
What evidence, or at least, historical assurance can given for the classical
rijal works (i.e. Ibn Abi Hatim's "Kitab Al-Jarh wa-al-ta'dil", Al-Dhahabi's
"Kitab Tadhkirat'ul-huffaz"; "Mizan al-i'tidal", Ibn Hajar al-'Asqalani's
"Tahdhib al-Tahdhib"; "Lisan al-Mizan", etc)? All you have been saying so far
is that they must be true because no one has proven them false. And of course
this is an argument from ignorance, an elementary fallacy.
Furthermore, even if we assume the rijal to be generally true, all that would
follow from this is that *if* an isnad is true (i.e. if its mentioning of the
people involved in some particular transmission is correct) then we could
trust the report, because it involved, for example, persons, A, B, & C, and we
know from the rijal that A, B, C could be trusted. Consider the following
analogy. The local Imam of some community could be accepted by all people in
that community as a good and trustworthy person. Now, I could come along and
make a claim, E, and say that I heard it from the Imam. What follows is that
*if* I heard it from the Imam, then E would be true. I could have made up an
isnad, and put the Imam in it, for example.
The dilemma is this. Memory and testimony are generally trusted. That is a
proposition that is granted as a priori (for the sake of argument). If some-
one comes to me and says something, I usually believe him or her. Or if I am
reading a book, watching TV, etc - I generally believe what is written and
said (testimony). But there are important assumptions hidden here that will
need to be exposed to see the difficulties that emerge. Suppose I suddenly
have some reasons to think the local newspaper is not trustworthy. Perhaps I
have reasons to think that it makes up stories, it is extremely biased, it
reports sightings of UFOs, Ghosts, etc and claims these are all authentic
sightings, for example. Then I will become skeptical, and have trouble in
discerning what is true and what isn't. Call this the background evidence.
>From this sort of a problem, we can extract the following principle:
* Memory and testimony are to be trusted a priori, in the absence of negative
evidence and in proportion to the degree of the claim being made (the back-
ground evidence).
Now apply this to the hadith. Clearly, we have negative evidence. We know for
a fact that isnad and matn fabrication did occur. We also have fantastical and
miraculous claims (deemed Sahih) in the hadith corpora. Thus, we have problems
with the background evidence: there is a clash between our a priori principles
of memory and testimony and the background evidence. This does not mean that
therefore, the hadith are automatically disqualified. It means that you will
need to make more of an effort to substantiate claims to hadith authenticity.
And so far, there has been no evidence put forward to substantiate your claims
to rijal authenticity or of the isnads in light of the problematic background
evidence.
Interestingly enough, I remember Meherally doing some work on a critical look
at some of the hadith:
http://www.mostmerciful.com/hadithbook-sectionone.htm
On fabricated hadith:
http://www.mostmerciful.com/al-albaani.htm
And Meherally's piece on the problematic transmissions from Abu Hurayrah:
http://www.mostmerciful.com/abu-hurayrah.htm
As for Azami's piece on Calder, I have gone through it. His three-fold criteria
is (a) the disclosure of the sources, (b) the continuity of the isnad and (c)
the trustworthiness of the transmitters (a general, descriptive account of
Muslim transmission of hadith). Regarding (c), this is basically your argument
as well: who are we to question so-and-so's assessment of transmitters. Cyril
Glassé correctly notes that:
"The method was based on the assumption that it was unthinkable for God-fearing
men to lie about matters which they held sacred; each human link in the chain
was vouchsafed by others. If there were persons in the isnad whose integtrity
could be doubted for any reason, however small, the authenticity of the Hadith
was to that extent weakened; conversely if there existed several distinct
accounts and varied chains of transmission for a single Hadith, its
authenticity was to that extent strengthened." -- Cyril Glassé, 'Hadith' in
"The Concise Encyclopedia of Islam", (London, Stacey International: 1989),
p. 141.
Therefore, it comes down to your credulity/incredulity on the question of this
assumption. Just out of interest, I got an e-mail from a Muslim (who wishes to
remain anonymous) with the following quote from a Muslim scholar. I thought you
may be interested:
"Fabricating hadiths was not limited to the enemies of Islam but also good
pious Muslims fabricated hadiths thinking that they were doing a good deed and
when they were asked, "How do you lie to the Prophet of Allah", they replied,
"We do not lie against him but for him." For lying is only considered as lying
if it is pre-determined. Muslim reported on the authority of Yahya ibn Said al-
Qattan, and from his father, who said, "I have never seen good people telling
more lies in any matter than when they do with the hadith." That is as Muslim
said: lying flows from their tongues unintentionally." Muslim reported on the
authority of Abi Zinad who said, "I saw in Madina One hundred trusted believers
but would not trust them when it comes to the Hadith." Alhafez Ibn Hagar said
"Some ignorant people, being puffed up have fabricated threatening and wooing
Hadith". To defend themselves they said, "We did not lie against the Prophet we
did what we did to support his tradition."
.... Abdallah Annahawandi said to one of the followers of Ahmad, "From where did
you get those hadiths which you recite in order to make peoples hearts tender
(Raqa'q)?" He replied, "We made it up to make the heart of the masses tender."
Ibn al-Gozi said of this follower of Ahmad that he was an ascetic who deserted
the lusts of this world, he used to live solely on herbs and the markets of
Baghdad were shut the day he died.
Ahmad bn Muhammad al-Marouzi, one of the staunchest traditionalists of his time,
and a strong defender of the Sunna who used to reproach anyone who deviates from
it, in spite of all that he used to fabricate the Hadith and change it.
Bukhari reported in his at-Tarikh al-Awsat on the authority of Omar bn Sobeyh
bn 'Omran at-Tamimi that he said: I made up the prophet's farewell speech.
And al-Hakem in his Madkhal on the authority of Abi 'Ammar al-Marouzi, it was
said to Abi 'Esmah: from where did you get on the authority of 'Akramah and the
authority of Ibn 'Abbas in the virtues of the Qur'an chapter by chapter, and
the followers of 'Akramah have none of it? He replied: "I saw the people
neglecting the Qur'an and showed more interest in the work of Abu Hanifa and
Ibn Ishaq, so I made up these Hadith." (Mahmood Abu Rayyah, Adwa' 'Ala As-
Sunnah Al-Muhammadeya, Dar al-Ma'aref, Cairo, 1980, pp. 111-112).
Also,
"The Hadith fabricators did not leave their work without producing some support
to what they manufactured that suit their fabrication. Tahawi wrote in al-
Moshkel on the authority of Abu Huraira: If you were told a Hadith you
appreciate and do not dislike, believe it, whether I said it or not! For I say
that which is appreciated, not that which is unlikable. Khalid bn Yazid said:
I heard Muhammad bn Sa'eed ad-Demeshqi saying: If I found some good speech, I
saw no reason why I should not make a chain of authority for it." (Mahmood Abu
Rayyah, p. 110)
This clearly challenges your assumption on trustworthiness. On the material
transmitted you wrote:
DR. SAIFULLAH
> ... The point here being that the way of transmission of material
> in Islamic tradition is different from that of rest of the world. There
> are certain regulations which forbids the forgeries!
IMRAN
I understand your argument, but I do not think it is sufficient enough a
criteria, and I give additional reasons below.
DR. SAIFULLAH
> There are two issues here. Mutawatir transmission of hadith and of the
> Qur'an. The latter is well-known for its mutawatir transmission primarily
> because almost every Muslim had to know the Qur'an. As for the former,
> study of hadith is a very specialized field and hence there are not many
> people who actually end up studying like what people do with the Qur'an.
> Hence it is not surprising that all hadiths do not have a mutawatir type
> transmission, save a few.
IMRAN
Whtever the story may be, we have very few mutawatir hadith. So the argument
>from tawatur, if successful, only manages to ascertain the veracity of a very
small portion of the hadith.
DR. SAIFULLAH
> As for the issue involving jurists and their opinion on certainity of the
> events, Wael Hallaq has already discussed it in "On Inductive
> Corroboration, Probability and Certainty in Sunni Legal Thought," in
> Nicholas L. Heer, ed., Islamic Law and Jurisprudence: Studies in Honor of
> Farhat J. Ziadeh (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990), pp.
> 3-31. Sha'afi also discusses the issue of "Yakeen" in his Risalah.
IMRAN
Fair enough, I will get around to reading up on that article. But this is a
side-issue for the moment. Let us proceed.
DR. SAIFULLAH
> As for Juynboll claim that "very few in number and hardly ever touch on
> legal matters", it is be reminded that the hadith scholars themselves have
> not agreed on what constitutes a "large number of reporters" in a
> mutawatir transmission though the minimum is agreed to be 4 and over. For
> more info, please see:
IMRAN
Yes, I understand this, but it is not important to the argument I am pressing.
DR. SAIFULLAH
> As for question "what about the rest?" not being mutawatir does not mean
> that they are forged or inauthentic!
IMRAN
No, it does not mean they are forged, but neither does it automatically give
the status of them being true. For the mutawatir hadith, I can understand the
argument of why one would deem them authentic. But I wonder how you would be
able to prove, or at least provide a degree of assurance, that the contents
of ahad hadith are authentic? This will not be an easy thing to do, since, we
first have the problem of miracles. All of the prophetic miracles (other than
the Qur'an), come from ahad hadith. Also, the rituals of Islam come from hadith
where the Prophet was taught by the Angel Gabriel (e.g. prayer, etc). One need
not deny the conceptual possibility that the Prophet split the moon (Saheeh Al-
Bukhari, #3637; Saheeh Muslim, #2802) or that water flowed through the hands of
the Prophet when his companions got thirsty and had no water, filling up some
vessel, allowing 1,500 companions to drink and make ablution (Saheeh Al-Bukhari
#3576; Saheeh Muslim, #1856). But the burden of proof is on you to provide some
strong evidence this really happened. You can't just say, "Oh, because you fail
to provide negative evidence, we can believe this really happened!" We have the
Humean problem of induction (which goes back, once again, to what I said in the
post earlier about a priori principles on memory and testimony clashing against
background evidence. Thus, we have Hume remarking:
"The many instances of forged miracles, and prophecies, and supernatural
events, which, in all ages, have either been detected by contrary evidence,
or which detect themselves by their absurdity, prove sufficiently the strong
propensity of mankind to the extraordinary and the marvellous, and ought
reasonably to beget a suspicion against all relations of this kind. This is
our natural way of thinking, even with regard to the most common and most
credible events." (Hume, "Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding", Sect. X.
Of Miracles) His full essay can be read at:
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/david_hume/human_understanding.html
And this has nothing to do with trustworthiness. The local Imam may be the
most trustworthy man on the planet. Nevertheless, if he told me he saw a UFO,
or that a Ghost came to him and recited fairy tales, I would need more evidence
than the *mere fact* that he's a good guy to believe that all of this had
really happened! This is precisely why the early Mu'tazilites were very
skeptical about some of the hadith which denied common sense (see "Islamic
Theology: Traditionalism and Rationalism" by Binyamin Abrahamov, which contains
a short, but excellent survey of the battle that raged between the rationalists
of Islam and the traditionalists). The classical work to check out is Ibn
Qutaiba's "Ta'wil Mukhtalif al-Hadith", which contains a number of arguments
of the ahl al-kalam against the traditionalists. They also questioned sometimes
the 'khabar al-khassa' (traditions based on the authority of individual
transmitters only).
So anyway, I would be interested in know what you've got to say about this.
DR. SAIFULLAH
> If the Ahad hadith is transmitted by a well-known authority then is there
> anything wrong in accepting it? An Ahad hadith can be Sahih too!
IMRAN
It depends. No one is denying that an ahad hadith can be sahih, but the real
question is whether one can be sure of its veracity. The best example is one
of miracles, which I have commented on above.
DR. SAIFULLAH
> The issue of transmission of hadith and related material is already
> discussed above. There are certain known ways in which the material is
> transmitted. Not everybody is allowed to transmit whatever they feel like.
IMRAN
Of course, that was the claim made by the early hadith specialists.
DR. SAIFULLAH
> Since you have a nagging problem of authenticity of the sources, can you
> prove anything in history that is authentic by whatever criteria to come
> up with? It is easier to voice skepticism about each and everything but
> then hey! we can ask you to tell us precisely what happened in Afghanistan
> when Americans bombed?
IMRAN
Nice move of a red herring and erecting a straw man. There is a huge difference
between the news of the Americans bombing Afghanistan and ancient hadith corpora
which were written hundreds and hundreds of years ago. First, the news of what
the Americans did in Afghanistan was reported on TV, the newspapers, magazines,
etc, and was viewed and read by millions of people around the world. Remember, I
said that memory and testimony is to be trusted in the absence of negative evid-
ence and in proportion to the nature of the claim being made. The event was very
recent, and was nothing fantastical (just the usual expression of US colonial
tendencies!). The difference between this and hadith is (1) the hadith
literature is very old, (2) it is merely written text (as compared to what we
have *seen* on TV), (3) we are aware of forgeries of both isnad and matn (as
opposed to our knowledge of forgeries on TV and newspapers), and (4) the hadith
literature contains claims that are almost *sui generis*, e.g. miracles,
various eschatological stories, etc.
Also, let us first discriminate between two different ways of looking at
authenticity. As Librande puts it,
"By nature, hadith are exemplary. They were judged authentic by virtue of
their acceptability as carriers of what the transmitters believed about the
Prophet and the early community. Western scholars have asked one question in
their quest for authenticity: Is the hadith historically reliable? Muslim
scholars have meant something else by authenticity: has the testimony to the
example of the Prophet's words and deeds been reliable?" (Librande, op. cit.,
p. 148)
My opinion is inclined more towards the suggestions of Fazlur Rahman (who, by
the way, accepted Goldziher's criticism as generally on the mark) that we may
see the hadith as a valuable source for the history of how the early Muslims
thought about the Prophet, their ideas, attitudes, etc. However, I do not see
how the claim can be made that the hadith are an authentic source of data for
knowing exactly what the Prophet said and did. Implicit to this position is
the assuption that we can easily reconstruct the historical past by analyzing
text, and a problematic one at that. This, of course, brings us into the
realm of hermeneutics.
Rizwi S. Faizer provides another helpful insight:
"It is ... important to understand that when one talks about the authenticity
of a tradition, one is not referring to the veracity of that tradition but
merely to the fact that that tradition had existed at some time in the past.
It need not have been true, it may even have been false, but it had certainly
been stated earlier." ("THE ISSUE OF AUTHENTICITY REGARDING THE TRADITIONS OF
AL-WAQIDI AS ESTABLISHED IN HIS KITAB AL-MAGHAZI", Journal of Near Eastern
Studies, April 1999 v58 i2)
So sure, if by 'authentic' we mean "is the tradition situated at some point in
the historical past?", then absolutely, I have no arguments there. Since we can
hold with a degree of assurance that memory and testimony can be trusted, I've
got no reason to deny that people spoke, recorded and communicated reports of
the Prophet (but this comes after we look at the sort of claim being made, i.e.
do we detect *obvious* theological/political embellishments?). However, if, we
are to construe 'authentic' meaning "is the tradition true?" then this is a
totally different question altogether, and will require a completely different
methodology.
DR. SAIFULLAH
> By the way, it was not Goldziher who came up with the political reasons
> for fabrication. This actually shows you have not come in grips with what
> the Islamic scholars have said in the past. Long before Goldziher, the
> scholars of the hadith have listed the reasons for fabrication of the
> hadith and isnad. Try reading Suhaib Hasan's "Criticism Of Hadith Among
> Muslims With Reference To Sunan Ibn Majah". Further, we should also stress
> that the statement of Ibn Sirin was precisely to disclose the sources of
> information whether they were sectarians or the followers of Sunnah. Even
> a basic book on biography such as Ibn Hajar's Taqrib al-Tahdhib would say
> what a person's political leanings were! See also al-Bukhari's Dua`fa
> al-Sagheer for such biographical sketches.
IMRAN
I was referring to the context of Western criticisms of the hadith. I have
already read Suhaib Hasan's material, and in fact, if you will remember, I
cited him and one of his books on 8 reasons he listed for fabrications of
hadith (which, for some reason, Ghali scoffed at - perhaps he doesn't like
Hasan much?)
DR. SAIFULLAH
> As for the extending the hadith back to Prophet, SAW, al-Azami has dealt
> with it in great detail in his book "On Schacht's Origins Of Muhammadan
> Jurisprudence", 1996, The Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies & Islamic Text
> Society. I can smell Schact here. The second and third generation
> transmitters of the hadiths were considered by Schacht to have involved in
> this conspiracy of "Projecting Back". If the hadith is projected back by
> these authorities it would mean that the person who invented the hadith
> has to ask his teachers and students as well as other Muslim scholars in
> various parts of the Muslim world to graft the isnad which would take the
> hadith back to the Prophet, SAW, or his companions. As anyone can see,
> this would also require that the same hadith present in the books of
> earlier scholars be impugned and new isnad grafted. This means a
> conspiracy of monumental proportions that would involve people from
> different parts of the Muslim world to come together and hatch such a
> plot.
IMRAN
In his article on the hadith, Robson makes the following points (see J. Robson,
'Hadith' in the encyclopedia of Islam", Vol III, Leiden, E.J. Brill: 1971) with
respect to the development and criticism of hadith. On the isnads, he notes
that in Ibn Ishaq's work, we do have isnads, but they do not extend back to the
Prophet (p. 23). Similarly, with Malik b. Anas's al-Muwatta, we do have some
isnads which go back to the Prophet, but there are reports which have partial
isnads, and yet other reports are absent of an isnad (ibid). It was Shafi'i,
argues Robson, who pressed for the complete isnads back to the Prophet (which
is what Schacht argues in his book too). His predecessors, while adducing
traditions from the Prophet, use them on the same level as they use traditions
>from the companions and successors - interpret them in the light of their own
'living tradition' and allow them to be superseded by it (Schacht, "Origins",
Chaper 1). The point being that the isnad was rather shaky in its rudimentary
form, and slowly evolved to the point where the isnads had to make their
terminus the Prophet himself (as Shafi'i had stated). Therefore, one need not
allege that the later successors of the Prophet intentionally fabricated and
conspired on matters of hadith. The early period of Islamic tradition saw a
blend of historical facts, political opinions, mythical stories, etc, etc. It
is not as easy as your bifurcation of "it's either true OR it was all a mass
conspiracy". This is simply a fallacy - you are posing a false dilemma. We do
know of the political problems in early Islam. Robson also tells us of the
storytellers: "The kussas (storytellers) were men who invented the most extra-
prdinary traditions to which they attached seemingly impeccable isnads, their
purpose being to astonish the common people and receive payment for their
stories" (Robson, op.cit, p. 24) Of course, these were easily detected. Others
fabricated hadith to spread some particular doctrine. And yet others fabricated
hadith to exhort men to live righteously (ibid). As Robson says: "The fact that
different types of people invented traditions shows how important Hadith had
become. Because of this, ingenious men made use of it to propagate their
ideas." (ibid, p. 25). As for the rijal works, there are a number of problems
as well. He notes that the rijal works are "frequently contradictory" on the
matter of who was a trustworthy person, and who was not. Also, "the books were
mainly compiled from the third century onwards". Some of the problems with the
hadith (even though we agree that the traditionalists did scrutinize them):
"One readily notices phrases from the Old and New Testament put into the mouth
of the Prophet as his sayings. There are references to towns far from Arabia
which were to be conquered, even to towns not yet founded in the Prophet's
time. Parties which arose in the early Muslim period are named, e.g. Kharidjis,
Murdji'a, Kadariyya, Djahmiyya. Reference can be found to the rightly-guided
Caliphs, and there are unmistakable references to the Umayyads and the
Abbasids. Many miracles are attributed to the Prophet, although the Kur'an
does not represent him as a miracle-worker. There is great detail regarding the
tribulations before the end of the world, and regarding the Last Judgment.
There are also elaborate descriptions of heaven and of hell. The Western mind
finds it difficult to accept such material as genuinely coming from the
Prophet. While one does not feel justified in explaining away the whole body
of Tradition on these lines, it is quite clear that much material coming from
a later date has been attributed to the Prophet, and this makes it very
difficult to find a satisfactory criterion by which one may recognize what
is genuine." (ibid, p. 26-27).
So you see, you are going to need more than tentative assumptions and the mere
fact that we have rijal works and isnads to sort out this mess.
Continued ...
imran...@xtra.co.nz
Constantly in their arguments, Dr. Saifullah & Ghali raised the tawatur
argument in defence of the *absolutely authenticity* of the hadith (see Dr.
Saifullah's quote below) that are mutawatir. Just to remind readers of the
position they are arguing for, here is what Dr. Saifullah said earlier:
DR. SAIFULLAH
> "Tawatur makes fabrication impossible. It is not a weak argument. Do you
> expect people in different localities separated by a few thousands of
> kilometers came together to hatch a consipracy of a monumental scale that
> can't be even detected? Have they destroyed all the evidence? If they have
> then how can you claim that such a conspiracy is possible? Well, you see
> it is a argument which can cut against you."
Ghali's re-hashing is as follows:
GHALI
> "Each Isnad in these collections also have there own peculiar regular
> irregularites in the matn. So how do you account for this, tha same story in
> different collections around the Muslim world. Shadowy conspirators hoping
> from one collector to the next just to give us this false sense of security?
> Come on! SO the Hadith ARE insantiated by tawatur. Now Iftikhar Zaman shows
> you can show this phenomenon with ALOT of the Ahadith. There is no way to
> explain this. You try to. Go on. The best you have got is Juynoboll."
IMRAN
Here I wish to take them to task for this weak argument. Dr. Saifullah gets
things rolling with a brilliant circular argument. He argues that "tawatur
makes fabrication impossible" from this, he argues that the mutawatir hadith
are authentic (since conspiracy theories are impossible). And of course, he
knows this is true because these hadith are mutawatir! At no point do we see
any arguments from Dr. Saifullah attempting to demonstrate that the mutawatir
hadith are truly mutawatir, therefore, he is simply begging the question. And
this brings me on to the next point. Dr. Saifullah shifts the burden of proof
and demands me to DISprove that some purported mutawatir hadith is mutawatir,
(second fallacy) and wishes to hold that because no negative evidence exists,
the mutwatir hadith are true, which is the third fallacy in his reasoning of
ad ignorantiam. The fourth fallacy in Dr. Saifullah's argument is the fallacy
of bifurcation. He argues that either (a) mutawatir hadith are true OR (b) a
mass conspiracy took place. This is not necessarily true, as I will shortly
demonstrate. We may add a fifth flaw, and that is Dr. Saifullah's argument is
an argument from incredulity, he cannot fathom how forgeries may have taken
place, and from this he concludes that the mutawatir hadith are flawless.
The same five fallacies are found in Ghali's polemic. Except, he's found a
raft with Iftikhar Zaman written on it that he's holding on to.
Let us take a look at Gautier Juynboll's common link theory, which both these
gentlemen love to hate, following Ghali's recommendation. I have not seen any
substantial refutation of it, and in particular, the specific example we find
in Juynboll's book of Sufyan ath-thawri's anti-bagdad tradition. See his
"Muslim Tradition", pp. 207-213. I will summarize his argument.
Juynboll chooses to look into al-Khatib's "Ta'rikh Baghdad" and Ibn al-
Jawzi's "Kitab al-mawdu'at" for a tradition that will serve to prove his own
example. In this tradition, we can tell from the matn where and when it came
into existence, the numerous isnads have a common link, and finally the many
commentaries by al-Khatib and Ibn al-Jawzi on the isnads help Juynboll to
construct his hypothesis. (p. 207)
The tradition speaks about the builders and future rulers of the city, the
Abbasid caliphs, and has a number of variants. With all the variations taken
into consideration, we can read it as follows:
"A city will be built between [the rivers] Dijla and Dujayl [and Qatrabull
and as-Sarat] in which the treasures of the earth will be amassed [and in
which the kings and tyrants of the earth will assemble]; verily, it will go
under, go to ruin, perish, suffer disgrace, be devastated (etc.) more quickly
than an iron pin, an [iron] ploughshare, a piece of [heated] iron, a kuhl
stick, a pickaxe in unfirm, soft earth; ... than a dry pin in moist earth."
This amalgam of variants, Juynboll calls A (p. 208)
Another variant runs: "it will be more firmly implanted in the earth than an
[iron] ploughshare, which he calls B (p. 208)
The tradition is mutawatir, and Juynboll gives a very helpful diagram of it
on p. 209 (which I advise interested readers to refer to, since my own attempt
at giving a schematic will not do justice):
(1) Prophet <- Anas <- Abu 'Ubayda <- SUFYAN ATH-THAWRI
(2) Prophet <- Jarir <- Abu 'Uthman <- Asim <- SUFYAN ATH-THAWRI
Chains (1) and(2) converge at SUFYAN who is the COMMON LINK. From Sufyan,
there "fans out" a direct link to 12 of his pupils, F1-F12. Also, there are
four chains going directly from Asim to pupils F8-F11 (missing out Sufyan):
(3) Prophet <- Jarir <- Abu 'Uthman <- Asim <- F8, F9, F10, F11.
In total, we have 18 isnads, 2 through Anas b. Mailk and Abu Ubayda (chain 1)
and 16 through Jarir b. Abd Allah, Abu Uthman Abd ar-Rahman b. Mull and Asim
b. Sulayman al-Ahwal (chain 2). These two chains converge at the common linkage
of Sufyan himself. However, some transmitters after Sufyan allege they did not
hear the tradition from Sufyan, but directly from Asim (chain 3). (See pp. 208-
209).
Those who heard the tradition (version A) *only* from Sufyan are:
F1: Salih b. Bayan.
F2: Hammam b. Muslim.
F3: Isma'il b. Aban.
F4: Adb al-Aziz b. Aban.
F5: Ismail b. Yahya/b. Najih.
F6: Ammar b. Sayf.
Other transmitters who related version A, but not soley on Sufyan's authority
are as follows:
F8: Ammar b. Sayf (apart from the isnad which has Sufyan in it, there is also
one which runs "Ammar b. Sayf 'an Asim 'an Abi 'Uthman ..." skipping over
Sufyan. In another isnad, Ammar says he heard the tradition not directly
from Asim but some *thiqa* (p. 210) mystifying the link between Ammar and
'Asim.
F9, F10 & F11 appear in isnads where Sufyan does not appear, but Juynboll
argues that Sufyan may indeed have been part of those isnads. He makes this
claim on the following observations. First, we have:
F9: Sayf. b. Muhammad who is a nephew of Sufyan, the son of a sister.
F10: Muhammad b. Jabir, a blind transmitter who transmitted traditions he had
come to note, 'stolen' from others (p. 211).
And then,
F11: Abu Shihab, whose isnad is supposed to run "Abu Shihab 'an Asim ...",
but on the authority of al-Khatib, the isnad is actually meant to be as
follows: "'an Sufyan ath-Thawri 'an 'Asim'" meaning Sufyan had been
left out.
The implication is clear, Sufyan's name in the last four isnads was deleted,
"since the identification of that celebrated transmitter with isnads suppor-
ting this commonly recognized forgery was felt to be irreconcilable with his
reputation." (p. 211). Another attempt, Juynboll notes, to clean Sufyan's
name was in version B where the term "rusukhan" was used instead of "dhahaban"
or "halakan".
Also, F6: Abd ar-Razzaq and F7: Abu Sufyan 'Ubayd Allah transmitted version B
on the authority of Sufyan. It should be noted that Abd ar-Razzaq (F6) is in
between Sufyan and F12: Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Umar al-Yamani.
Juynboll notes that with the exception of Abd ar-Razzaq (F6), all the other
transmitters of the tabaqa (F1-5, F7-11) are accused of having fabricated it,
while poor al-Yamani (F12) gets away being labeled unreliable. The conclusion
that draws together is this:
"In different terms: according to a multitude of references to such early
critics as Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, Yahya b. Ma'in and others, al-Khatib and Ibn al-
Jawzi want us to believe that a dozen or so obscure transmitters, in ignorance
of each other, separately and individually, forged one and the same tradition
which they all, again in ignorance of one another, separately and individually
claim to have heard from one and the same famous man. The sheer, unfathomable
coincidence obviously never caused any of the early critics to think twice,
whereas the later authors simply copied and never applied hadith criteria of
their own. Only one calamity had to be avoided at all costs: Sufyan himself
could not possibly be saddled with this tradition." (pp. 211-212).
In footnote 206, Juynboll writes:
"A dozen of so transmitters coinciding in 'inventing' the same matn, each
under his own steam, apparently never caused any hadith expert to bat an eye-
lid"
Although the ascription of version B to Sufyan may be contestable, version A
is indisputably his own concoction. To buttress his conclusion, Juynboll turns
to the biographical details. We find such details as Sufyan angering the
Abbasids, etc (p. 212). The lesson to be learnt from Sufyan's fabrication are
as follows:
* A hadith being mutawatir provides no guarantee it is true.
* "In his [Sufyan] days manufacturing of traditions was a recognized weapon
in the hands of those who sought to air political political - or, for that
matter, any other - ideas."
* "Thay many of Sufyan's own sayings, through no effort of himself, were
eventually provided with isnads going back to the prophet is perfectly fea-
sible."
To conclude,
"[W]e have seen how an anti-Bagdad tradition depicting the initial stages of
the building of that city is supported by sixteen isnads, the majority of which
converge in Sufyan ath-Thawri and the rest of which present transmitters who
had conceivably strong connections with him. Ruling out the coincidence that a
dozen traditionists invented individually a saying which they then, quite by
chance, all attributed to the same master, we have to come to the inescapable
conclusion that it is Sufyan himself who has to be held accountable for it. A
motive for bringing it into circulation may be sought in his anti-Abbasid att-
itude." (p. 213).
Juynboll shows how mutawatir fabrication can, and *did* occur. And it need not
be the global conspiracy Dr. Saifullah and Ghali keep talking about. Let's not
attack strawmen here. And of course, Ghali will protest that Zaman's arguments
have not been taken into consideration. The problem is simple. Zaman has no
arguments vis-a-vis Juynboll:
"The problem is that he [Iftikhar Zaman] does not discuss in adequate detail
how the other isnād-based theories (namely the spreading isnāds theory and
Juynboll's version of the common link theory) fare in explaining the data.
Thus, the dissertation does not achieve its stated goal of testing the
different theories of the development of hadiths against the data in order
to evaluate how each one performs compared to the other ones."
And,
"He [Iftikhar Zaman] does not attempt to substantiate his viewpoint that other
theories do not explain the data as well. Rather, he poses it as a challenge to
the proponents of other theories to explain the data. In my view, based on
Zaman's observations, an argument can be constructed against the "spreading
isnads theory," but I don't see how or if it is effective against all versions
of the "common link theory".
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~beh/hb/xyzs.html
Please Ghali, do not try certain tricks on us which can be detected easily.
To conclude, Juynboll's example explicility refutes Dr. Saifullah's claim
that "tawatur makes fabrication impossible". Furthermore, it shows how the
mass global conspiracy hypothesis is merely a straw man. We have a localized
example of exactly how tawatur fabrication could, and did occur, with isnads
easily being projected back to the Prophet himself.
M.S.M. Saifullah
Assalamu-alaykum wa rahamatullahi wa barakatuhu:
> Why must it all happen the way you describe it? The geometric increase of
> hadith only stopped in the 3rd century when the official corpus was fixed by
> the hadith scholars. There was no "fixed" corpus of hadith before this, but
> rather, various sahifa or juz (family documents) existed. We also know that
> new hadith were being actively sought out by people to record and list (tad-
> win al-hadith). My concerns are with what may have been injected into this
> early period when the hadiths were being proliferated. I don't know why you
> have brought up this particular argument of isnads "projecting forward in
> time". What I am talking about is the difficult problem of sifting through
> the hadith corpus trying to determine what's true and what's not. See my
> comments in the earlier posting.
If you would bother to read correctly why I brought the issue of isnads
"projecting forward in time" you would notice that it is a response to
your accusation that it could have happened that way. As usual you did not
provide the proof for your accusation in the form of a hadith.
Your next complaint is that there was no official "fixed" corpus of the
hadith till third century and in the third century collections the
official corpus got fixed. To this I should say that you do not know even
the basis of each of the collections of hadith. The first thing is that
there was no "official" meeting to include which books to be considered
authoritative". Secondly, the dislike of the Ulema and scholars to be
associated with the rulers. Thirdly, none of the hadith collections are
complete collections:
"The two sahih collections did not gather the totality of the authentic
ahadith as proved by al-Bukhari's testimony: "I have not included in my
book al-Jami` but what is authentic, and I left out among the authentic
for fear of [excessive] length."
[Muhammad Ajaj al-Khatib, Al-Mukhtasar al-Wajiz Fi `Ulum al-Hadith, 199,
Mu'assasat al-Tiasalah, p. 35.]
In an another narration al-Bukhari said:
"I selected/published [the content of] this book - meaning the Sahih book
- from about 600,000 hadiths/reports. Abu Sa`d al-Malini informed us that
`Abdullah Ibn `Udayy informed us: I heard al-Hasan Ibn al-Husayn
al-Bukhari say: "I have not included in my book al-Jami` but what is
authentic, and I left out among the authentic what I could not get hold
of.""
[Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, Tarikh Baghdad Aw Madinah al-Salaam" 1931, Volume
2, Maktabat al-Khanji and Al-Maktabat al-`Arabiyyah, Cairo: pp. 8-9.
The title of al-Bukhari's Sahih is "al-Jami` al-Musnad al-Sahih
al-Mukhtasar min Umoor Rasul Allah wa Sunnahi wa Ayyamih". The word
al-Mukhtasar, 'epitome', itself explains that al-Bukhari did not make any
attempt at a comprehensive collection. In other words, al-Bukhari did not
"fix" the hadith canon even in third century AH!
So did Muslim:
"I did not include everything that I judge authentic/Sahih, I only
included what received a unanimous agreement, i.e., what fulfilled all the
criteria of authenticity agreed upon [by the scholars]."
[Al-Nawawi, Sahh Muslim Bi Sharh al-Imam al-Nawawi, Volume I, 1994, Dar
al-Khayr, p. 2]
>From the above quotation, it is clear that Imam Bukhari and Muslim's
collection is a partial collection of authentic material and not a
partially authentic collection of material. So, Muslim did not "fix" the
official corpus of the hadith in the theird century CE.
And so did Abu Dawud. He collected 4800 traditions out of the mass of
500,000 which he had collected and he has similar statements to make. We
will not bore you with more references [we will show you if you are
really in desparate need!]. You can check it out yourself. The
other collections of al-Nas'ai, al-Tirmidhi and Ibn Majah are no different
from the above collections. The collectors collected a mass of traditions
and out of which they choose a few. Further they did not collect anything
officially. Please read before you even write such nonsense here. We
should also add that the Sunan of Ibn Majah took a great deal of time to
enter into what Muslims consider "authoritative" list of books than any
other collection. Some even consider Malik's Muwatta to be the part of
authoritative books.
Before the collections of six authoritative books of hadith, there existed
major and minor collections such as Musannaf of `Abd al-Razzaq
[d. 211, published in 1972 in 11 volumes], Sahifah of Hamaam ibn Munabih
[d. 110] - edited and printed edition, Jami` of Ma'mar ibn Rashid [d.
153] - printed along with Musannaf of `Abd al-Razzaq, Musannaf of Ibn
Jurayj [d. 150 H]. What about Musnad of al-Tayalisi [d. 204] which is
printed? How about Malik's Muwatta which contains many Prophetic
traditions? Malik died in 179 H and his Muwatta has come to us in many
transmissions, e.g., from Yahya b. Yahya al-Laythi (d. 234); he studied
under Malik during the last years of Malik's life, from al-Shaybani [d.
189] which includes the Prophetic traditions and that of Companions but
excludes Malik's comments etc. There are also notable transmission of
Muwatta from Ibn Bukhayr [d. 231], `Ali b. Ziyad [d. 183 and one of the
earliest known transmissions of Muwatta], al-Qa`nabi [d. 221], Abu Mus`ab
al-Zuhri [d. 242, the last one to have related the Muwatta from Malik]
etc. All these transmission of Muwatta are published. The transmission of
Suwayd al-Hadathani [d. 240] is incomplete but substantial fragment of
this transmission is present in Zahiriyya library and it seems even this
is edited and published. Abbott also dates a fragment of Muwatta to second
half of the second century. We should not forget the Musnad of
Ahmad [d. 241]. His son edited his Musnad after his death with
meticuluous care. These early books were the source of later
editions of that came to be known as authoritative collections. Compare
this with what Imran says that "There was no "fixed" corpus of hadith
before this, but rather, various sahifa or juz (family documents)
existed." And guess what:
"The juz'... in the technical sense ... must have evolved slightly later
than the Musannaf and Musnad works." [M. Z. Siddiqi, Hadith Literature:
Its Origin, Development & Special Features, 1993, Islamic Text Society, p.
13.]
The juz' came after Musannafs, Sahifas and Musnad. In other words, it
should have come about the same time when the Sahihs came. We really
wonder if Imran really understands what he is talking about. `Abd
al-Razzaq's Musannaf itself is huge comprising of 11 volumes and we have
to believe that the early hadiths existed as "various sahifa or juz".
Apart from that one can compare the hadiths from Sahifa of Hammam b.
Munabbih with the later day hadith collections such that those of Bukhari,
Muslim, Ahmad.
"... the texts in Hammam and those recorded in Ibn Hanbal, Bukhari and
Muslim with the same isnad show almost complete identity, except for a few
omissions and interpolations which do not affect the sense of the reports.
On the other hand, the same ahadith as told by other transmitters in the
three collections studied show a rich variety of wording, again without
changing the meaning of the reports."
Further:
"... I have found practically no sign of careless or deceptive practices
in the variant texts common to the Sahifa of Hammam bin Munabbih."
[R. M. Speight, "A Look At Variant Readings In The Hadith", 2000, Der
Islam, Band 77, Heft 1, p. 170 and p. 175].
It is interesting to note that Hammam introduces his material with the
words "Abu Hurayrah told us in the course of what he related from the
Prophet", thus giving the source of his information in the manner which
became known as "sanad" or "isnad", i.e., the teacher of chain of teachers
through whom an author reaches the Prophet, a practice invariably and
systematically followed in later hadith compilations.
Imran another complaint is that why should we believe that the hadiths
increase the way we had described. The answer to this is simple. Why
should we reject positive evidence for Imran's no evidence either
positive or negative? Imran has not proven any of his claims but he doubts
our positive evidence. What kind of argument is he trying to make?
> This is precisely my point which you fail to understand. The sectarian issue
> is important because it shows the problematic nature of bias. After the death
> of the Prophet, there emerged, as we all know, the political conflict between
> Ali and Abu Bakr. The supporters of Ali we know as the Shi'a. And those of Abu
> Bakr we called the Bakriyya. I came across this statement by Ibn Abi'l-Hadid
> (d. 655/1257), commentator on the Nahj al-Balaghah, that it was the Shi'ite
> party who began to create hadith eulogies:
Apart from your usual pedantic statements about who are called Shi'a,
there is no substance in them. We did not "fail to understand" the
sectarianism was one of the causes of hadith fabrication. In fact, Ibn
Sirin [d. 110] mentions it in his report about it.
> "... Know that the origins of fabrications in fada'il traditions were due to
> the Shi'ite, for they forged in the first instance traditions concerning their
> leader. Enmity towards their adversaries drove them to this fabrication ...
> When the Bakriyya saw what the Shi'ite had done, they fabricated for their own
> master traditions to counter the former ... When the Shi'ite saw what the
> Bakriyya had done, they increased their efforts ..."
How do you know the above statement is authentic? What are your proofs and
evidences?
We are least concerned about fada'il traditions that involves eulogizing
the leader or a city or a madhab. Our concern here is Prophetic
traditions and that the traditions which his companions narrated
from him. This is clearly a red-herring on your part. We are discussing
the authenticity of Prophetic and Companions' traditions and you talk
about fada'il traditions. Interesting, eh?
> "Then Mu`awiya wrote to his governors saying: "Hadith about Uthman has
> increased and spread in every city, town and region. When this letter from me
> reaches you, summon the people to relate the merits of the Companions and the
> first caliphs. And do not let any Muslim relate anything about Ali without
> bringing something contradicting this about the Companions. This I like better
> and it pleases me more, it invalidates Abu Turab's claims and those of his
> Shi'ite in a more definitive way and it is for them more difficult to bear
> than the virtues and the merits of Uthman." Mu`awiya's letters were read out
> to the people. And many forged reports concerning the merits of the Companions,
> in which there was no [grain of] truth, were related. The people went out of
> their way in relating reports in this vein until they spoke thereof in glowing
> terms from the pulpits. The teachers in the schools were instructed to teach
> their young pupils a vast quantity of these until they related them just as
> they studied the Quran and they taught these to their daughters, wives and
> servants. God knows how long they persisted in this."
We again ask you what is your evidence concerning the truthfulness of
above paragraph. You have no problems in doubting what we write, but when
it comes to the authenticity of the statements that you present there is
no word about it. One rule for you and one rule for us. Some hypocrisy!
And as we have already said, our discussion here is not about fada'il of
either `Uthman or `Ali or Mu`wiyah nor are we interested in the fada'il of
any city or locality. We are concerned about the Prophetic and Companion
traditions.
> > the famous statement of Ibn Sirin (d.110H): "They did not ask about the
> > isnad until when the Fitna (Civil War) arose they said: 'Name to us your
> > men.' Those who belonged to the People of the Sunnah, their traditions
>
> IMRAN
> Meaning, it was not a rigid criteria. The early oral tradition was deemed as
> being sufficient, and you had the "family" sahifa sometimes. See my earlier
> post on the difficulties with this assumption of trustworthiness.
What do you mean it was not a rigid criteria? If you mean it was before
the civil war in the fourth decade, then people did not ask about isnad
but isnad did exist at that time. Only after the civil war that occurred
in the fourth decade the isnad came into the picture in a rigourous
fashion. And you say it was not a "rigid" criteria! And what was the other
criteria, if asking for isnad was the not the "rigid" criterion? As
expected you have no answer and consequently you have not even bothered to
discuss it.
And these family sahifa. This is some news to me. Have you got any
examples of family sahifa that you have in your mind? And that there was
no isnad associated with it? Or they did not use isnad extensively? And
correctly?
> > were accepted and those who were innovators, their traditions were
> > neglected." implies that isnad were used even before the Fitna. After the
> > Civil War they became more cautious and began to inquire about the sources
> > of information and scrutinise them. So, isnads were not a "response" to
> > fabrication of hadith. The isnad existed at the time of Ibn Sirin and were
>
> IMRAN
> The *science* of the isnads was not present earlier for authentication. As
> Librande says: "the isnad as an *authenticating* device first appeared, and
> then only in a rudimentary form, in the last third of the first century of
> Islam." (Librande, op. cit., p. 147).
Well, we have Ibn Sirin who died in 110 AH and talking about the civil war
or fitnah of first Islamic century and that they started asking about the
men who transmitted the traditions. The issue of "origin" of isnad has
already been agreed by Western scholars and they date it to the period of
civil war. See for example the works of al-Azami, Horovitz, Robson and
Abbott on this issue.
And we have evidence from the first century collection of hadith in Sahifa
of Hammam b. Munabbih who gives the isnad his collection as the Prophet ->
Abu Hurayrah -> Hammam. Abu Hurayrah died in 58 H and this book should
have been compiled before his death given the nature of transmission of
hadith . This isnad is also faithfully represented in the later works of
Bukhari, Muslim and Ahmad. We have evidence and you have none. You have
Librande with a statement and we have a first century hadith with isnad
faithfully produced in later collections? So, who is better?
> > used even before the Fitna. After the Fitnah the scrutiny of isnad
> > started. This can be evidenced by critical statements of Malik ibn Anas,
> > al-Zuhri, Sufyan ibn Uyainah etc. about certain narrators in the
> > biographical works.
>
> IMRAN
> Sure. But then my earlier statement still stands, with a slight modification
> perhaps. The isnad [as an authenticating device] appeared as a response to the
> fitna.
It seems you just can't take a stand on any issue and defend it properly.
Your argument changes like a chameleon changes his colours. You first
started off by saying the the appearance of isnad was late and then
when we brought the evidence you concerning the statement of Ibn
Sirin and the endorsement of western scholars you quote a guy called
Librande who says that the isnad appeared in a rudimentary form in the
last third of the first century. And now you have a "slight modification"
which says that isnad appeared as an authenticating device as a response
to fitnah. Do you have a fixed position from where we can understand your
argument?
> DR. SAIFULLAH
> > Imran, if the contemporary sources narrate about a person that he was not
> > a liar or a heretic or whether he was sound in narrating the material
> > or not who are we to judge who he is and who he is not?
>
> IMRAN
> <sigh> Here we go again. See my earlier comments in posting (1). This is an
> assumption that is extremely difficult to hold in light of the negative forms
> of evidence I have outlined in my earlier posting, so I refer you to there.
I am sorry who have not produced a SINGLE shred of evidence showning the
unreliability of the biographical literature in hadith. What was your
negtive "evidence"?
1. For "the Sunni scholars, the Shi'a are considered the worst liars and
fabricators of hadith" [Source: Internet]
2. "a good/bad person of good/bad integrity/memory depending on their
sectarian perference." [Source: I can't figure out, can you?]
We have refuted both of your allegations giving examples from the hadith
scholars. You have statements, we have evidence. And now what? More talk
from you.
> DR. SAIFULLAH
> > As for your statement that for "the Sunni scholars, the Shi'a are
> > considered the worst liars and fabricators of hadith", you ignorance is
> > clarly showing when we considered what al-Bukhari says about `Abd al-Malik
> > Ibn A`yan in his Du`afa al-Sagheer [p. 73]:
>
> IMRAN
> I was merely quoting the opinions of the founders of the four schools of
> thought (which, BTW, can be found all over the internet).
Your source is internet and our sources are the one which deal with the
issues of narrators. As one can see you have no defence for your statement
"the Sunni scholars, the Shi'a are considered the worst liars and
fabricators of hadith"
> DR. SAIFULLAH
> > "Abd al-Malik Ibn A`yan: He was a Shi`ah. Narrated from him Ibn `Uyaynah
> > and Ibn Sumay`. He is acceptable/fair in hadith."
>
> IMRAN
> OK, that's one.
>
> DR. SAIFULLAH
> > Ibn Hajar in his Taqrib al-Tahdhib says about him [Volume I, p. 517]:
> >
> > "Abd al-Malik Ibn A`yan al-Kufi: the freed slave of Banu Shayban,
> > truthful, Shi`ah, one hadith of his is narrated in the two Sahihs..."
>
> IMRAN
> The tally rests at one. And he transmitted one hadith in the two Sahihs. Wow.
> I am talking about serious large scale transmission of hadith here, Doctor. I
> refer you once again to the earlier part of this posting to the face-off bet-
> ween the Bakriyya and the Shia's fabrications for political causes. The Bakr-
> iyya deemed a good companion who was one of their own, and vice-versa with
> the Shi'a.
Well, we have already discussed this issue earlier. What you have quoted
are the fada'il traditions which were invented. But we are talking about
Prophetic and Companion traditions. You claimed earlier that for "the
Sunni scholars, the Shi'a are considered the worst liars and
fabricators of hadith" and the evidence that you showed was that of Imam
Shafi'i saying about them. But we already told you that
"Al-Shafi`i said: "I accept the testimony of the people of desires except
al-Khattabiyyah among the Rafidah since they deem it lawful to make false
testimony in favour of their folks.""
[Isma`il Ibn `Umar Ibn Kathir, Al-Ba`ith al-Hathith Sharh Ikhtisar `Ulum
al-Hadith, 1951, Maktabat wa-Mataba`at Muhammad `Ali Subayh wa Awladuh:
Al-Qahirah, p. 110.]
Shafi`i rejected the testimony of Rafidah Shi'ah (these are extreme
Shi'ites) because they *consider it lawful* to make false testimony in
favour of their folks. He did not reject them because they were Shi`ah.
Imam Malik held the opinion similar to that of Shafi'i. And we have the
example of `Abd al-Malik Ibn A`yan al-Kufi who was Shi'a and his testimony
was accepted on the grounds that he did not make da'wah to his sect. The
testimony of those who openly made up traditions, whether they belonged to
ahl al-Sunnah or any other sect is rejected even if they did it
unknowingly. You should read some fundamental stuff on the issue that
deals with the acceptance of testimony from a person.
> DR. SAIFULLAH
> > Now what about your statement that for "the Sunni scholars, the Shi'a are
> > considered the worst liars and fabricators of hadith"? Please do not try
> > certain tricks on us which can be detected easily.
>
> IMRAN
> It is not a trick, but a serious question. You have not said anything signi-
> ficant regarding the early political conflicts where sectarian prejudices had
> deemed a person either good or bad.
We know it is a trick. A serious question requires a serious answer with
evidences. What was your evidence? None.
As for political conflicts and sectarian prejudices, the hadith
specialists have already discussed these issues. Try reading Suhaib
Hasan's "Criticism Of Hadith Among Muslims With Reference To Sunan Ibn
Majah". He gives specific examples of sectarian inventions, prejudices for
town, race or one's Imam (aka fada'il traditions), sayings of wisdom
turned into truth, ignorant ascetics, personal motives, zanadiq, rawafids
etc. The early hadith scholars already knew about these people and their
inventions and you are not the first one who suddenly came up with this
issue.
> DR. SAIFULLAH
> > Shafi`i rejected the testimony of Rafidah Shi'ah (these are extreme
> > Shi'ites) because they *consider it lawful* to make false testimony in
> > favour of their folks. He did not reject them because they were Shi`ah.
>
> IMRAN
> And where is the evidence for this? What about the others within the Sunni
> tradition who thought it was also lawful to fabricate? (see earlier posting)
>
> The political influence permeates right to the actual sealing of the official
> corpus. The Shi'a scholar A.S. Hashim comments on Bukhari:
Well, within the Sunni tradition anybody who invents anything or tells a
lie, his testimony is rejected, whether he is from People of the Sunnah
or belonging to any sect. I have not come across any such tradition
which endorses this position either in my readings or discussing with
people who are experts in Hadiths. It is easy to guess that you got this
"tradition" off the internet. Can you trace it back to the Prophet, SAW
and/or his Companions to support your claim? Full isnad please!
As for Shi'ites, we have already said that those who openly calls for
da'wah to their sect their testimony is rejected. So, please do not quote
"Shi'a scholar A.S. Hashim comments on Bukhari" among other things. It is
irrelevent to us and our discussion. And why are you flogging a dead horse
even after we have told you how the testimony of a person associated with
a sect is accepted?
> DR. SAIFULLAH
> > When are you going to elevate your standard from cutting and pasting
> > material off the internet without bothered to authenticate them? We know
> > people make mistakes but this is getting too much...
>
> IMRAN
> I use the internet as a reference source, in the same manner as you do. If
> I find something useful or relevant, I will include it in my posting. It may
> be wrong, and you can correct me on that. If you have a problem with that,
> then that's just too bad.
Too bad for you and your over-reliance on internet based sources. We again
ask you, if you are truthful, please produce the evidence for the claim
that for "the Sunni scholars, the Shi'a are considered the worst liars and
fabricators of hadith" and "a good/bad person of good/bad
integrity/memory depending on their sectarian perference."
> But don't you see, this is precisely the problem. Just who is an innovator?
> Which sect is seen as good, and which is seen as bad? The point is that we do
> not have an objective viewpoint, rather, we are reading from a person's view-
> point as to who is good and who is bad.
Innovator is the one who innovates in the religion and which the Shari'ah
does not grant permission. If you want precise definition, there are
plenty of books available on this issue in English.
The point is that you have not read on the subject to have a view point
leave alone "objective view point"!
> > This is about Khawarij. We have already seen the Shi`ah being used as
> > narrators of hadith. What about those who lost their memory and were not
>
> IMRAN
> Fair enough. I never really thought about the Khawarij, but I did see a
> problem with the debates surrounding the Shi'a. What I would be interested
> in is the transmitters who were *not* accepted. From this, we could extract
> the evidence and criteria for rejecting, e.g. the Popperian method of fals-
> ification. You have also mentioned it, such as the liars, or those that had
> a tendency to lie. But this still stands as a weak criteria. The assumption
> embedded in this line of reasoning is that the author(s) of a particular
> rijal work are completely dispassionate, objective, and completely unbiased
> and furthermore, have an infinite God-like temperament to discern who can
> be seen as a trustworthy person, and who cannot. The problem is that these
> people themselves were writing from a particular viewpoint, and held a
> number of beliefs, biases, prejudices, etc. This is why, as Robson noted,
> there is no *strict* criteria for judgement in the rijal works.
Well, here again we go. Lot of talk, lack of examples and then we are
asked to produce evidence. What is this? And where did Robson noted that
there is "no *strict* criteria for judgement in the rijal works"? As
usual no proper references.
> DR. SAIFULLAH
> > So, there is no sectarian preference here to reject a person's hadith
> > because of his weak memory. `Ata's memory got weakened in his old age but
> > his early hadiths are perfectly acceptable.
>
> IMRAN
> Which is pretty self-explanatory ... older people have less reliable memory.
What is pretty self-explanatory is that your statement "a good/bad person
of good/bad integrity/memory depending on their sectarian perference" is
still standing unproven.
Older people have less reliable memory. But there are many old narrators
who reached over 100 years old and whose testimony has been accepted.
Why not check the books of narrators about such people? It is not a
general rule!
> DR. SAIFULLAH
> > Nobody has shown why they can't be trusted. Neither have you! So, what is
> > your point in repating it again and again!
>
> IMRAN
> The point is this. You are arguing *ad ignorantiam*. It is like me saying:
> "Nobody has shown why the Gospels can't be trusted!"
Coming up with more rhetoric. Let us take an example of al-Bukhari book of
narrators called Tarikh al-Kabir which has about 20,000 entries of names
with some information about each. The first version was copied by Al-Fadl
b. `Abbas al-Sa'ig. The second version was transmitted by Muhammad b.
Sulayman b. Faris al-Dallal. The third and perhaps the final version was
transmitted by Muhammad b. Sahl al-Muqri'. These versions differ at a few
places but the difference is not significant. [al-Azami, Studies In Hadith
Methodology & Literature, 1992, American Trust Publications, pp. 79-80].
You can check how other rijal works of al-Dhahabi, al-`Ijli, Ibn Hajar,
Ibn Hibban etc. were edited and printed using various Mss.
Now please can you bring some evidence to show why can't the rijal works
be trusted apart from you argumentum ad ignorantiam?
> DR. SAIFULLAH
> > Is quoting from the internet sufficient to deem the biographical material
> > untrue? Get a life!
>
> IMRAN
> The good Doctor is shifting the burden of proof. I defy him to prove that the
> Gospel biographies are NOT true biographies. We all know that Mark, Matthew,
> Luke and John were trustworthy since they were inspired of God, and
therefore,
This is a red-herring. We are asking him to produce the evidence that
1. For "the Sunni scholars, the Shi'a are considered the worst liars and
fabricators of hadith"
2. "a good/bad person of good/bad integrity/memory depending on their
sectarian perference.
And as expected there is none. And this guy blames us for shifting the
burden of proof!
> were God fearing people. Surely, they cannot dare lie. Who are we to judge
> them? All of the Church Fathers spoke highly of the evangelists. It would take
> a conspiracy of mass proportions to believe that the Gospels are not true. And
> because no one has shown them to be untrue, they are therefore, true. And let
> us not forget the manuscript evidence. It's all childishly simple, right
> Doctor?
Nobody has even accused of evangelists as liars and neither are we
claiming that the material from them is untrue. Imran is putting words in
our mouth. The New Testament scholars have themselves shown that the New
Testament accounts do not match well within themselves and at times
blatantly contradict each other. And if we were to apply the criteria of
hadith specialist on Mark, Matthew, Luke and John whom nobody knows
(praises of Church Fathers who never met them is not a proof of their
existence!], there is not much we can discuss there. The transmission of
material in Islam is based on disclosure of sources and al-Azami discusses
it in his book "Studies in Early Hadith Literature", Chapte IV called
"Tahammul al-`Ilm". The difference of the transmission of hadith and
hadith related material in Islam is not like the transmission of Gospels
or the sayings of Church Fathers.
Wassalam
Saifullah
M.S.M. Saifullah
> > On the contrary the authenticity of the hadith is determined both by isnad
> > and matn. It is just not isnad which comes into play. Matn plays an
> > important role too for determing the authneticity of a hadith.
>
> IMRAN
> The coherency of matn information may be seen as a necessary prerequisite to
> determining the authenticity of the hadith. Nevertheless, it is still true of
> my earlier claim that what made a hadith authentic or not was primarily on
> the basis of 'prophetic ascription' for the medieval hadith specialists. L.T.
> Librande explains,
We will test your "claim" by checking the hadiths which had 'prophetic
ascription':
On the authority of the Anas, the Prophet, SAW, said:
"I am seal of the Prophet, if Allah Wishes"
[Al-Suyuti, Tadhrib al-Rawi, 1959, Madinah, p. 186]
This hadith was invented by Muhammad b. Sa`id al-Maslub, killed by Abu
Ja`far, the Abbasid Caliph. To know about the rejected hadiths attributed
to the Prophet, SAW, and his companions, please see Muhammad b. `Ali
al-Shawkani, Al-Fawa'id al-Majmu`ah fi al-Ahadith al-Mawdu`ah, 1380/1960,
Cairo. It is edited by Mu`allim Yamani and very good for beginners. We
have given one example to show how weak this argument is. And it is as bad
as the argument which claimed that for "the Sunni scholars, the Shi'a are
considered the worst liars and fabricators of hadith" and that the
"good/bad person of good/bad integrity/memory depending on their
sectarian perference". No evidence and hence case dismissed!
Interestingly, al-Azami also mentions the issue Bakriyyah and Shi'ah
fabrication of hadith which Imran was trying to use to show the doubts
about large scale fabrication. Quoting al-Shawkani's "Al-Fawa'id" the
hadiths that were fabricated are listed:
42 spurious traditions about the Prophet.
38 spurious traditions about the first three Caliphs
96 spurious traditions about `Ali and his wife Fatimah
14 spurious traditions about Mu`awiyah.
[Al-Azami, Studies In Early Hadith Literature, 1992, American Trust
Publications, p. 217.]
In other words, the hadith specialists were aware of the fabrications! And
that any hadith which is taken back to the Prophet, SAW, is not considered
authentic! Compare this with Imran's statement "it is still true of my
earlier claim that what made a hadith authentic or not was primarily on
the basis of 'prophetic ascription' for the medieval hadith specialists".
A clear contradiction!
> This is the heart of the issue: did testimony, as construed by the hadith
> specialists, suffice to deem the body of hadith authentic?
If you really had an issue, you would have provided the examples. No
examples and mere claims are not going to be entertained here. We do not
have time to waste on you.
> > involves men. The men have history and it is recorded by those who met
> > them in one way or another. If the people who met them said that the
> > person A is reliable and trustworthy, who are we do judge that person A?
>
> IMRAN
> You fail to understand the problem here. When we investigate some matter on
> whether a particular hadith is authentic or not, it does not suffice to merely
> say: "Well, report X was reported by A, who heard it from B, who heard it from
> C, who heard it from D. And I know this chain is authentic because I find it
> is written in some ancient text, and this ancient text says A, B, C and D are
> all great guys." Do you not see the problem here? All you keep saying is "who
> are we to trust so-and-so?" By your logic, one could never dismiss the authen-
> ticity of biographical works where person X writes about person Y, because
> you could simply answer: "who are we to judge X?"
The hadith is judged by both matn and isnad. You do not seem to get the
fundamentals of hadith sciences even after we have repeated them again and
again.
As for your "example", what do you know about the capability of A, B, C,
and D to repeat and memorize the report X. Are they all hafiz or some of
them have paraphrase what they heard about report X? Since the
are reporting an event from only one chain. It will be classified as
"Gharib" [strange]. Whether it is Sahih or Hasan or any other
category depends on the ability of each of the narrator to transmit the
material. It is not as simple as what you have imagined.
There are two issues here. One is the transmission of the biographical
works and the other is the content per se in biographical works. As for
contents per se of the biographical material such as a person
truthfulness, his date of birth and death, his sectarian leanings if any
[with or without da'wah], we trust them for a reason. The reason being
they were recorded by those who were their contemporaries and were passed
on along with hadith literature. It was not like somebody who said 50
years after the death of a person that he was a liar. This testimony does
not count in hadith literature. Let us take an example to show how this
methodology works. Schacht takes the statement of Ibn Sirin that: "They
did not ask about the isnad but when the fitna (civil war) occurred they said:
'Name to us your men...." and declares it to be a fabrication on the basis
that the civil war referred to in the statement was the one which started
with the death of the Umayyad Caliph Walid bin Yazid who died in 127 H,
whereas Ibn Sirin had already died in 110 H! Schacht was caught by
studying the rijal works.
The next issue of that of authenticity of transmission of rijal works.
Please refer to our earlier mail on this issue.
> What evidence, or at least, historical assurance can given for the classical
> rijal works (i.e. Ibn Abi Hatim's "Kitab Al-Jarh wa-al-ta'dil", Al-Dhahabi's
> "Kitab Tadhkirat'ul-huffaz"; "Mizan al-i'tidal", Ibn Hajar al-'Asqalani's
> "Tahdhib al-Tahdhib"; "Lisan al-Mizan", etc)? All you have been saying so far
> is that they must be true because no one has proven them false. And of course
> this is an argument from ignorance, an elementary fallacy.
And what evidence have you got to show us that they rijal works can't be
trusted? Have you got the evidence to show improper transmission? No. Have
you got the evidence to show wrong-doing and large scale fabrication in
rijal works? No. All you have is that that for "the Sunni scholars, the
Shi'a are considered the worst liars and fabricators of hadith" and that
the "good/bad person of good/bad integrity/memory depending on their
sectarian perference". Do you have any evidence to show it? No. All you
have are your doubts. Your doubts do not constitute any evidence. Please
bring us some solid evidence to prove your position. We have been asking
you again and again but we do not see anything coming from you. Is it so
hard for you to produce the evidence to back up your claims?
And I never said that the rijal works "must be true because no one has
proven them false". Neither did I claim it. So, please do not put words
into my mouth to alleviate your already battered position.
> Furthermore, even if we assume the rijal to be generally true, all that would
> follow from this is that *if* an isnad is true (i.e. if its mentioning of the
> people involved in some particular transmission is correct) then we could
> trust the report, because it involved, for example, persons, A, B, & C, and we
> know from the rijal that A, B, C could be trusted. Consider the following
> analogy. The local Imam of some community could be accepted by all people in
> that community as a good and trustworthy person. Now, I could come along and
> make a claim, E, and say that I heard it from the Imam. What follows is that
> *if* I heard it from the Imam, then E would be true. I could have made up an
> isnad, and put the Imam in it, for example.
You have forgotton the matn. It is also studied for the authenticity of
the report.
Another thing you have forgotton is that the hadith scholars are aware of
such a trick being played in the hadith literature. You were not the first
smart-aleck to come up with this stuff. See
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Hadith/Ulum/asb6.html
for examples on this issue and how this is detected by studying all the
isnads of the hadith. There are books written on these kind of hadiths.
<big snip of useless ramblings>
> Interestingly enough, I remember Meherally doing some work on a critical look
> at some of the hadith:
Now that you do not have anything else to say you start to ride on
Meherally's. Have you got your own ideas which can be substantiated? So
far we have not seen much of evidence of substantiation from you except
that you quote things here and there to generate red-herrings.
> Therefore, it comes down to your credulity/incredulity on the question of this
> assumption. Just out of interest, I got an e-mail from a Muslim (who wishes to
> remain anonymous) with the following quote from a Muslim scholar. I thought you
> may be interested:
Does that quote prove any of your points such as for "the Sunni scholars,
the Shi'a are considered the worst liars and fabricators of hadith" and
that the "good/bad person of good/bad integrity/memory depending on their
sectarian perference" and "it is still true of my earlier claim that what
made a hadith authentic or not was primarily on the basis of 'prophetic
ascription' for the medieval hadith specialists". As expected none. Have
you compared what your anonymous "friend" had quoted from what is present
in the hadith literature about forgeries? No. But you say:
> This clearly challenges your assumption on trustworthiness. On the material
> transmitted you wrote:
You can't even produce the evidence for your claims and you are saying
that it "clearly challenges your assumption on trustworthiness". Some
challenge, eh!
> > There are two issues here. Mutawatir transmission of hadith and of the
> > Qur'an. The latter is well-known for its mutawatir transmission primarily
> > because almost every Muslim had to know the Qur'an. As for the former,
> > study of hadith is a very specialized field and hence there are not many
> > people who actually end up studying like what people do with the Qur'an.
> > Hence it is not surprising that all hadiths do not have a mutawatir type
> > transmission, save a few.
>
> IMRAN
> Whtever the story may be, we have very few mutawatir hadith. So the argument
> >from tawatur, if successful, only manages to ascertain the veracity of a very
> small portion of the hadith.
Well, we are not asking you to produce a statement. we are asking you to
show the evidence. Evidence please! Show us evidence or evidences to back
up whatever you are claiming.
> No, it does not mean they are forged, but neither does it automatically give
> the status of them being true. For the mutawatir hadith, I can understand the
> argument of why one would deem them authentic. But I wonder how you would be
> able to prove, or at least provide a degree of assurance, that the contents
> of ahad hadith are authentic? This will not be an easy thing to do, since, we
> first have the problem of miracles. All of the prophetic miracles (other than
> the Qur'an), come from ahad hadith. Also, the rituals of Islam come from hadith
> where the Prophet was taught by the Angel Gabriel (e.g. prayer, etc). One need
> not deny the conceptual possibility that the Prophet split the moon (Saheeh Al-
> Bukhari, #3637; Saheeh Muslim, #2802) or that water flowed through the hands of
> the Prophet when his companions got thirsty and had no water, filling up some
> vessel, allowing 1,500 companions to drink and make ablution (Saheeh Al-Bukhari
> #3576; Saheeh Muslim, #1856). But the burden of proof is on you to provide some
> strong evidence this really happened. You can't just say, "Oh, because you fail
> to provide negative evidence, we can believe this really happened!" We have the
> Humean problem of induction (which goes back, once again, to what I said in the
> post earlier about a priori principles on memory and testimony clashing against
> background evidence. Thus, we have Hume remarking:
We will deal with this issue when Mohammad Ghoniem is back to France from
the US, insha'allah. He has the resources to analyse the complete matn and
isnads of the hadith. We will discuss various of arguments yours on the
issue of ahad hadith and the miracles of the Prophet, SAW, belonging to
that category. We need some time to sort this out...
> DR. SAIFULLAH
> > The issue of transmission of hadith and related material is already
> > discussed above. There are certain known ways in which the material is
> > transmitted. Not everybody is allowed to transmit whatever they feel like.
>
> IMRAN
> Of course, that was the claim made by the early hadith specialists.
It can be even seen on the Mss of the various transmission of Sahihs of
Muslim and Bukhari, Sunans of Ibn Majah and Abi Dawud, for example. The
give the complete isnad of who got from where and how. See Robson's "The
Transmission of Muslim's Sahih," JRAS, 1949, 49-60 for the way Muslim's
Sahih was transmitted. It is your claim that "that was the claim made by
the early hadith specialists". As usual and as expected no evidence!
> In his article on the hadith, Robson makes the following points (see J. Robson,
> 'Hadith' in the encyclopedia of Islam", Vol III, Leiden, E.J. Brill: 1971) with
> respect to the development and criticism of hadith. On the isnads, he notes
> that in Ibn Ishaq's work, we do have isnads, but they do not extend back to the
> Prophet (p. 23). Similarly, with Malik b. Anas's al-Muwatta, we do have some
> isnads which go back to the Prophet, but there are reports which have partial
> isnads, and yet other reports are absent of an isnad (ibid). It was Shafi'i,
> argues Robson, who pressed for the complete isnads back to the Prophet (which
> is what Schacht argues in his book too). His predecessors, while adducing
> traditions from the Prophet, use them on the same level as they use traditions
> >from the companions and successors - interpret them in the light of their own
> 'living tradition' and allow them to be superseded by it (Schacht, "Origins",
> Chaper 1). The point being that the isnad was rather shaky in its rudimentary
> form, and slowly evolved to the point where the isnads had to make their
As you see you have put so much material here that we need to discuss them
one by one. We will be dealing with Malik's Muwatta as rest of the stuff
is dealt with here and there. Malik's Muwatta is not a collection of
hadith. "It is" as Goldziher says "a corpus juris, not a corpus
traditionum..." [Siddiqi, Hadith Literature, 1993, p. 7]. The intention of
Muwatta was not to collect the hadiths and grade them but to illustrate
the law, ritual and religious practice, by the ijma` as recognized by the
people of Madinah. Since it is a book of law, you do not expect to see the
hadith of the Prophet, SAW, being quoted completely with full isnad. One
can confirm it even by studying the book "The Reliance of the Traveller",
translated by Keller.
This issue of mursal or mawquf hadiths in Malik's Muwatta were
well-known. al-Zurqani had compiled such hadiths and commented on them.
As for Shaafi'i stretching the isnad back to the Prophet, SAW, this is
indeed laughable. Al-Azami has given devastating refutation of Schacht's
arguments. Imran's quote is from the year 1971 when this volume of EI was
published. Al-Azami's refutation appeared in 1985 [On Schacht's Origins of
Muhammadan Jurisprudence, New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1985.] One
really wonders why he did not bother to even mention the book.
> So you see, you are going to need more than tentative assumptions and the mere
> fact that we have rijal works and isnads to sort out this mess.
Did your quote prove any of your points such as for "the Sunni scholars,
the Shi'a are considered the worst liars and fabricators of hadith" and
that the "good/bad person of good/bad integrity/memory depending on their
sectarian perference" and "it is still true of my earlier claim that what
made a hadith authentic or not was primarily on the basis of 'prophetic
ascription' for the medieval hadith specialists". No. Then what is your
point of spilling so much material without even getting back to core of
your claims?
Wassalam
Saifullah
M.S.M. Saifullah
> To conclude, Juynboll's example explicility refutes Dr. Saifullah's claim
> that "tawatur makes fabrication impossible". Furthermore, it shows how the
> mass global conspiracy hypothesis is merely a straw man. We have a localized
> example of exactly how tawatur fabrication could, and did occur, with isnads
> easily being projected back to the Prophet himself.
Let us have a look at the claim of Juynboll whom Imran is trying to parrot
in this newsgroup.
1. Why is the Juynboll does not even provide any example of it in six
authoritative collections? Instead he had used al-Khatib's Tarikh and Ibn
al-Jawzi's Kitab al-Mawdu'at [the name says more than anything else!]. We
will see more about it.
2. Juynboll himself has said that both al-Khatib and Ibn al-Jawzi have
rejected the narrators F1-5 and F7-11 and for F12, he has been deemed
unreliable. It never even manage attain the status of mutawatir as the
narrators F1-5 and F7-11 and F12 are deemed unreliable! Our guy claims
that this tradition has reached tawatur! Shall we say poor reading
comprehension!
Let us take an example of F3 guy called Isma`il b. Aban.
Al-Bukhari said in "Du`afa al-Sagheer", p. 16.
"Isma`il b. Aban, from Hisham Ibn `Urwa: His hadith is abandoned, his
kunya is Abu Ishaq and he is Kufan."
In the footnotes we read:
"Isma`il b. Aban al-Ghanawai al-Kufi al-Khayyat... Ahmad abandoned him.
Ibn Hibban said: He used to attribute fabricated hadith to the
trustworthy. Muslim and al-Nasai said: His hadith is abandoned."
Ibn Hajar states in "Taqrib al-Tahdhib", Volume I, p. 65.
"Isma`il b. Aban al-Ghanawai al-Kufi al-Khayyat.... His hadith is
abandoned and was accused of fabrication...."
So, there you go. If people like him attribute fabricated hadith to the
trustworthy then how are they going to be considered reliable. Bukhari,
Muslim, Ahmad, al-Nasai all rejected him. They rejected him for a reason.
It will be interesting to see what is the fate of other narrators of this
hadith. But I do not have time to go into this right now.
3. If Juynboll was really interested in showing that tawatur can lead to
mass-scale forgery why did he choose a hadith which has narrators all been
rejected [F1-5 and F7-11 and F12] and picked it up from no other book but
al-Jawzi's Kitab al-Mawdu'at, a collection of forged hadiths?
4. And as expected Juynboll started to attack Sufyan al-Thawri for
"harbouring" anti-`Abbasid feeling by quoting "... beware of these
princes, do not seek to approach them, do not get caught up in anything
they do." Junyboll also suspects that Sufyan al-Thawri's anti-`Abbasid
feeling may well have moulded into a hadith, or more than one for that
matter, which was or were felt openly critical of the `Abbasid policies
[nota bene: he only suspects with no evidence to show]. It did not occur
to him that Malik was physically beaten because he did not give a fatwa
that suited the whims of Governer of Madinah, Ja`far b. Sulayman. Ahmad
Ibn Hanbal was beaten just because he did not subscribe to Mu`atazila
views. There is a long history of Islamic scholars to be not associated
with the rulers. So, the case of Sufyan al-Thawri is no different for
asking people to be "... beware of these princes, do not seek to approach
them, do not get caught up in anything they do." So, Juynboll has to come
up with something better than this.
4. Juynboll's conclusions are this:
"In different terms: according to a multitude of references to such early
critics as Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, Yahya b. Ma'in and others, al-Khatib and Ibn
al-Jawzi want us to believe that a dozen or so obscure transmitters, in
ignorance of each other, separately and individually, forged one and the
same tradition which they all, again in ignorance of one another,
separately and individually claim to have heard from one and the same
famous man. The sheer, unfathomable coincidence obviously never caused any
of the early critics to think twice, whereas the later authors simply
copied and never applied hadith criteria of their own. Only one calamity
had to be avoided at all costs: Sufyan himself could not possibly be
saddled with this tradition."
There are certain questions that need to be asked. What are the dates of
death of each of these narrators that are being rejected? Juynboll does
not go into this issue to show whether they all were from the same place
or different or whether they met each other. There is nothing there in his
analysis. Why is that whoever wanted to forge a hadith would use a weak
narrator? This itself is perplexing and Juynboll does not discuss this
issue. It would be a good idea to use a reliable and trustworthy narrator
to let it pass through the scholarly circles and make it reach tawatur.
Unfortunately for Imran, Junyboll provided him with an example that
neither reaches tawatur nor authenticity. Well, start blaming
Bukhari, Muslim, Ahmad, Nasai and others!
There are other issues but we will save it for later.
Wassalam
Saifullah
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/
M.S.M. Saifullah
> In his article on the hadith, Robson makes the following points (see J. Robson,
> 'Hadith' in the encyclopedia of Islam", Vol III, Leiden, E.J. Brill: 1971) with
> respect to the development and criticism of hadith. On the isnads, he notes
> that in Ibn Ishaq's work, we do have isnads, but they do not extend back to the
> Prophet (p. 23). Similarly, with Malik b. Anas's al-Muwatta, we do have some
> isnads which go back to the Prophet, but there are reports which have partial
> isnads, and yet other reports are absent of an isnad (ibid). It was Shafi'i,
> argues Robson, who pressed for the complete isnads back to the Prophet (which
> is what Schacht argues in his book too). His predecessors, while adducing
> traditions from the Prophet, use them on the same level as they use traditions
> >from the companions and successors - interpret them in the light of their own
> 'living tradition' and allow them to be superseded by it (Schacht, "Origins",
> Chaper 1). The point being that the isnad was rather shaky in its rudimentary
> form, and slowly evolved to the point where the isnads had to make their
I happen to check al-Azami's "On Schacht's Origins Of Muhammadan
Jurisprudence" when I got back home. Al-Azami's interestingly starts off
the refutation of Schacht's hypothesis about isnad system with a quote
from Robson who applauded Schacht's findings. As for Malik's Muwatta
containing partial isnads and that Shafi'i completed the isnad back to the
Prophet, SAW, it is a lie. Al-Azami in the Appendix 1 clearly shows that
the Muwatta' itself has the complete isnad of the hadith which Malik
quotes with partial isnads. Further al-Azami also uses the contemporary
sources such as Malik's students who transmitted his Muwatta' with full
isnad as well as parallel traditions. The complete isnad was known to
Malik and Shafi'i did not have to come and stretch back to the Prophet,
SAW. And some of the examples which Schacht cites are his own mistakes.
Apart from this Schacht blatantly reverses the evidence to prove his
point. He fails to inform the reader that Malik's book al-Muwatta was
compiled some forty years earlier than Shafi'i's. In other words the
correct and complete isnad is dated earlier than the one which Schacht
quotes as broken. So, according to Schacht, the mistake was remedied
before it was ever committed!
We have here Imran who has no qualms about quoting the material which is
not only old but already refuted!
Wassalam
Saifullah
MahmudTaha
<ms...@eng.cam.ac.uk> wrote on 30 Apr 2002 15:09:14 GMT:
>On 28 Apr 2002, MahmudTaha wrote:
>
>> If you wanted to inform us that a lot of specimens from the Sanaa
>> manuscripts have been dated, you would be wrong. As you may learn from
>> Dr. Puin and his colleagues at Saarbruecken University: There is only one
>> manuscript the parchment substrate of which has been carbon dated (around
>> 790 AD), namely the palimpsest. Another manuscript has been dated (around
>> 715 AD) by arguments related to the history of arts. That's all.
>
>Perhaps you meant 690 CE?
Yes, indeed, I apologize for this lapsus calami. The parchment substrate has
been dated around 690 AD, so the first layer of Koranic script could have been
from before 700 AD, and the second one later, of course.
> In the journal Pantheon [article by von Bothmer] as well as Yasin Dutton in
his
> private communication with von Bothmer have said that a Mss dating from
> Umayyad period has been discovered in Sana'a. von Bothmer arrived at the
> conclusion by partly studying the ornamentation.
This ms. must be the one which has been dated 715 AD.
>As for the dating of other Sana'a Mss and articles by Puin, M. Jenkins, U.
>Dreibholz, Hussa Sabah please see "Masahif San'a'" [1985, Dar al-Athar
>al-Islamiyyah]. Many of the Mss are dated to first century of hijra.
They have been "dated" to say early 7th century AD due to their Hijazi script
and their early state of orthography. This is not what I would term "dated".
Those who can read German are adviced to visit the homepage of "Universitaet
des Saarlands", where they will find a few number of articles about the matter.
Peace,
Mahmud K. Taha
asimm...@yahoo.com
> > the Qur'an), come from ahad hadith. Also, the rituals of Islam come from hadith
> > where the Prophet was taught by the Angel Gabriel (e.g. prayer, etc).
Actually, the rituals of Islam, the sunnah, come from the PRACTICAL
perpetuation of the ummah since the beginning of its inception. These
practices, such as prayer, are mutawattir not based upon the hadeeth
books. If one were to ask any Muslim how he or she prays, the answer
is not "I learned from Bukhari". It is similar to the PRIMARY manner
in which the Quran was transmitted, through oral perpetuation. It is
noteworthy that in the debates between Abu Yusuf and Awzai, outlined
in Studies in Honour of Maulana Maududi, there was a clear distinction
between sunnah, the well-trodden path, and ahadeeth in early Islam.
What does not form mutawatir, are the variations of salaah such as
positioning of the hands in qiyaam. They constitute nothing but
preference according to the taste of the worshipper.
As far as ahad hadeeth are concerned, the Hanafis have not relied upon
them, the primary reason being a universal principle is not going to
be transmitted by one or two people alone. This is an example that
shows that ahadeeth are not accepted by isnad alone. Other criteria
are ahadeeth which should be transmitted by a number of people, but
are transmitted by only a few narrators, ahadeeth which contradict
basic observable facts are not accepted by ahadeeth specialists
despite the isnad. ibn Jawzi includes among the list ahadeeth which
supposedly prescribe medicinal cures for diseases. ibn Qayyim in
reference to a certain weak narration that said somewhat to the effect
that the narartion "Looking at beautiful faces is refreshing to the
eyes" would be rejected even if the narartors were as clear as the
shining sun.
ghali
> >Dreibholz, Hussa Sabah please see "Masahif San'a'" [1985, Dar al-Athar
> >al-Islamiyyah]. Many of the Mss are dated to first century of hijra.
>
> They have been "dated" to say early 7th century AD due to their Hijazi script
> and their early state of orthography. This is not what I would term "dated".
Well you even denied that folios were provisionally dated to this
period ( i.e. without carbon dating). You even emphasied it by
repeating and I quote ".. it is no untruth" But anyway remember this
"...Another manuscript has been dated (around 715 AD) by arguments
related to the history of arts. That's all."
No mention of carbon dating here and note the SINGULAR "manuscript".
That to is a blatant untruth!
> Those who can read German are adviced to visit the homepage of "Universitaet
> des Saarlands", where they will find a few number of articles about the matter.
Well that was the article I was talking about. I hope this accuracy is
not something we are expecting from Luxenburg!
Ghali
M.S.M. Saifullah
Assalamu-alaykum wa rahamatullahi wa barakatuhu:
> I happen to check al-Azami's "On Schacht's Origins Of Muhammadan
> Jurisprudence" when I got back home. Al-Azami's interestingly starts off
> the refutation of Schacht's hypothesis about isnad system with a quote
> from Robson who applauded Schacht's findings. As for Malik's Muwatta
> containing partial isnads and that Shafi'i completed the isnad back to the
> Prophet, SAW, it is a lie. Al-Azami in the Appendix 1 clearly shows that
> the Muwatta' itself has the complete isnad of the hadith which Malik
> quotes with partial isnads. Further al-Azami also uses the contemporary
> sources such as Malik's students who transmitted his Muwatta' with full
> isnad as well as parallel traditions. The complete isnad was known to
> Malik and Shafi'i did not have to come and stretch back to the Prophet,
> SAW. And some of the examples which Schacht cites are his own mistakes.
This is an addendum to the above argument. Adopting the "fortress
Schacht" kind of argument Cook says:
"... everyone knows, isnads grow backward" [Early Muslim Dogma, 1981,
Cambridge, p. 108]
What is the evidence for this? Well, to be honest there is none. The
supposed backward grouwth of isnad is not supported by textual evidence.
Schacht's evidence only demonstrates that incomplete isnad co-exists with
complete ones; but there is no positive evidence that the complete ones
grew backwards out of the incomplete ones. Al-Azami in his "On Schacht's
Origins Of Muhammadan Jurisprudence" has already shown that in the case of
Malik's Muwatta' the incomplete as well as complete isnads can be traced
back in Muwatta' itself as we have stated above. Shaafi'i did not come
along to complete the isnad back to the Prophet, SAW.
Cook in his "Eschatology and the Dating of Traditions" [Princeton Papers
in Near Eastern Studies, 1992, Vol. 1, pp. 25-47] has attempted to show a
positive evidence of backward growth of isnads. But when one takes a
closer look at his diagrams showing the alleged backward growth of isnad,
it is clear that it is nowhere near his claims. On p. 31 the higher part
of Prophetic strand exists parallel to the non-Prophetic ones, and they
meet in a late common link, Nu`aym b. Hammad. Commenting on this Rubin
says:
"[it] could be regarded as the origin of either type."
[Uri Rubin, "The Eye Of The Beholder: The Life Of Muhammad As Viewed By
The Early Muslims", 1995, Darwin Press: Princeton, p. 236.]
And as for the hadith of the Mahdi fleeing Madinah to Makkah, Cook draws a
diagram of strands on p. 34 with the common link being Qatada. He comments
that:
"the common link method does not perform well. As the diagram shows, we
have here a perfect instance of the phenomenon on which method turns: all
isnads pass through Qatada. On the Schachtian principles, we are bound to
conclude that the fabricator was wither Qatada himself, or a contemporary
of his, or a later figure. (This last would not be unlikely, since Qatada
belongs to the generation of the Successors). Yet the historical dating of
the tradition place it distinctly earlier than the floruit of Qatada, who,
if we trust the biographical sources, can only have been a child in the
life time of Ibn al-Zubayr. The best we could do would be to assume that
he had fabricated the tradition as a young man, and some time after the
event - neither of them attractive assumptions. " [p. 33]
Cook also says that this tradition "is never found ascribed to any other
authority". [Ibid.]
In other words, there is no evidence that it ever grew backwards out of a
non-Prophetic tradition. This has also some interesting implications
on the common-link theory of whom Imran has not seen any "refutation".
Everytime if one sees a common link in the strands of hadith, it does not
automatically lead to the conclusion that the common-link was the one who
brought about the forging the tradition. This is a general conclusion that
one can derive on the basis of example that Cook has shown. As for what
the Muslim hadith specialists have said about the hadith with a common
link we will save it for later, insha'allah.
To conclude we can be on the firm grounds that neither Schacht nor his
followers have shown the growth of isnad extending backward with any
positive proof. It is a different story to quote from Robson, and it is a
completely different story to provide a positive evidence.
Wassalam
Saifullah
M.S.M. Saifullah
> > In the journal Pantheon [article by von Bothmer] as well as Yasin Dutton in
> his
> > private communication with von Bothmer have said that a Mss dating from
> > Umayyad period has been discovered in Sana'a. von Bothmer arrived at the
> > conclusion by partly studying the ornamentation.
>
> This ms. must be the one which has been dated 715 AD.
It is dated to the time of al-Walid b. `Abd al-Malik between 705-715 CE or
86-96 H. See Y. Dutton's "An Early Mushaf According To The Reading of Ibn
`Amir", JQS, 2001, Volume III, p. 85 footnote 3.
> They have been "dated" to say early 7th century AD due to their Hijazi script
> and their early state of orthography. This is not what I would term "dated".
You first deny that there are no Mss "dated" to 7th centuy CE. When we
show you the evidence that there exist Mss dated to 7th century CE, to you
it appears as if they were noted "dated". At least be honest in whatever
you say...
Wassalam
Saifullah
asimm...@yahoo.com
> As-Salamu `alaykum:
>
> Remarks on some of the material encountered in this thread.
>
> 1. <<Take for example Hisham ibn Urwah's father. He
> is not accepted by some narrators after he moved to Iraq, because his
> memory faded during that time. Narrations that are attributed to him
> through Iraqis are rejected by some.>>
>
> Not "some." Two. And this is an anomalous position. It is
> positively untrue that "his memory faded during that time."
> The criticism is based solely on the fact that Hisham in his last
> period (he was 71 at the time of his last trip to Iraq), for the
> sake of brevity, would say "My father, from `A'isha"
> (abi `an `A'isha) and no longer pronounced, "narrated to me"
> (haddathani).
First of all, I believe you are confusing my statements with Imran:
1. The point I was bringing this out was to show that isnad is a
starting point for the determination of the authenticity of an
ahadeeth. Imran was making the argument that the ahadeeth specialists
determined the credibility of a narration based upon the NAMES alone.
Whether the criticism of Hisham is valid or not is irrelevant to the
point I was making.
2. When he was old, Hisham's memory suffered quite badly (Meezaan
al-Ai`tidaal, Al-Zahabi, Arabic, Al-Maktabah al-Athriyyah,
Sheikhupura, Pakistan, Vol. 4, pg. 301). I do not think that the
pronouncement by al-Dhahabi that Hisham's memory suffered quite BADLY
would be the result of:
"The criticism is based solely on the fact that Hisham in his last
period (he was 71 at the time of his last trip to Iraq), for the
sake of brevity, would say "My father, from `A'isha" (abi `an `A'isha)
and no longer pronounced, "narrated to me""
3. I have been told that Malik [ibn Anas] objected on those
narratives of Hisham which were reported through people of Iraq.
(Tehzi'bu'l-tehzi'b, Ibn Hajar Al-`asqala'ni, Arabic, Dar Ihya
al-turath al-Islami, Vol. 11, pg. 50)
Notice that Malik's objection to Hisham's reports are those that go
through the people of Iraq. From my understanding, this implies that
Malik is not objecting to Hisham's reporting in Iraq, but the people
of Iraq who reported from him. This necessitates that Malik did not
have an issue with the Hisham's memory in Iraq.
4. Point 3 is further confirmed when it becomes known that narrations
ascribed to Hisham, with an Iraqi or Basri chain in them, are not
reported by by people of Medina. Among them, the narrations alleging
Aisha's (R) age which contradict other information.
> 2. <<ibn al-Arabi, the famous Hanafi jurist has rejected the
> narrations which allege the Prophet was affected by magic, and he
> does not give any credence to its being narrated by Bukhari.>>
>
> There is no famous Hanafi Scholar named Ibn al-`Arabi and it
> does not matter if/when lone Scholars do not give credence to
> something in the Sahihayn when the Umma is in agreement over the
> sihha of their marfu` contents.
>
I meant to say Jassas, but that is besides the point.
1. The argument is meant to point out the fact that ahadeeth are not
accepted based upon isnad alone, which was contended by Imran.
2. Scholars have rejected this narration because it rejects the Quran
itself.
3. The claim that the ummah is in agreement of the marfu contents of
the sihha is an absurdity. If one asks what Brother Haddad means by
ummah, one can only wonder.
4. Razi has rejected the narration that alleges that Abraham (R) lied
on three occasions, despite the isnad.
> As for the hadith of magic in al-Bukhari, the authoritative opinion
> is al-Hakim in al-Iklil fi Ma`rifat `Ulum al-Hadith, where he
> declares it among the Sahih but shadhdh (anomalous) narrations.
>
How can one declare it saheeh, at the same time being shadhdh. The
Quran, in surah Baqarah alluded to the Jews trying to inflict the
Prophet with a magic spell, but the Quran is emphatic in other
instances that the Prophet was not affected by magic. Also, the
narration is ahad for the first two generations, meaning that such an
incident would have been reported by more than a few narrators.
ibn Jauzi said;
If you find a Hadith against the dictates of common sense or contrary
to a universal rule, consider it a fabrication; discussions about the
trustworthiness of its narrators are needless. Similarly, such
Ahaadith should be suspected as are beyond comprehension to the extent
that they leave no room for any possible explanation. Also, a Hadith
in which colossal recompense is promised for a minor deed and a Hadith
which is absurd in meaning are suspect. For example take this one: "Do
not eat a pumpkin that has not been halaled." Therefore, many Hadith
scholars consider absurdity in a Hadith as a clear evidence of the
narrators' prevarication.
Notice where it says discussions about the trustworthiness of its
narrators is needless.
> Isnad was definitely used before the Fitna. Here are some reports
> to this effect:
>
So was common sense. Shibli Numaani, in his Siraat un Nabi gives a
number of narrations which demonstrate that ahadeeth were rejected by
Sahabah from other Sahabah based upon clear injunctions of the Quran,
common sense, and other reasons, because they felt the Sahabah
misunderstood.
Aisha rejected the claim that the Prophet saw God Almighty on the
Miraaj. It may be argued that she was not informed of the narration,
but this is simply untrue for Aisha did not reject the claim based
upon being uninformed, she rejected it on a clear and unambiguous
verse of the Quran. The same is the case which alleges that the
Prophet spoke to the dead. Another case is ibn Abbass's rejection of
Abu Hurayra's claim that eating food cooked by fire nullifies wudhu.
He rejected the narration saying if it were so, water heated by fire
should necessitate wudhu. ibn Abbass did not question Abu Huraira's
integrity, but he rejected it based upon common sense and observable
phenomenon.
MahmudTaha
>Well you even denied that folios were provisionally dated to this
>period ( i.e. without carbon dating). You even emphasied it by
>repeating and I quote ".. it is no untruth" But anyway remember this
>
>"...Another manuscript has been dated (around 715 AD) by arguments
>related to the history of arts. That's all."
I remember quite well what I wrote. Here it is:
"If you wanted to inform us that a lot of specimens from the Sanaa manuscripts
have been dated, you would be wrong. As you may learn from Dr. Puin and his
colleagues at Saarbruecken University: There is only one manuscript the
parchment substrate of which has been carbon dated (around 790 AD), namely the
palimpsest. Another manuscript has been dated (around 715 AD) by arguments
related to the history of arts. That's all."
Apart from my lapsus calami (around 790 AD instead of the correctly 690 AD),
this assertion still is true. As I said: It is safe to say the Qurans with
Hijazi script are old ones, say first half of the 8th century AD. That however
cannot be termed kind of "dating".
>No mention of carbon dating here and note the SINGULAR "manuscript".
>That to is a blatant untruth!
Beyond this impertinence you have nothing to say!
>> Those who can read German are adviced to visit the homepage of
>>"Universitaet des Saarlands", where they will find a few number of articles
>> about the matter.
>
>Well that was the article I was talking about.
You seem to have understood not very much of it.
> I hope this accuracy is not something we are expecting from Luxenburg!
Both, Dr. Puin and Dr. Luxenberg are respected scholars, and your snide remarks
about Puin's accuracy is ridiculous.
By the way, Luxenberg's method in his book has nothing to do with the Sanaa
mss. Insofar Alexander Stille was mistaken in his article in The New York
Times.
Peace,
Mahmud K. Taha
ghali
>
related to the history of arts. That's all."
But I was talking about the above quote! That is a blatant untruth!
More than one manuscript has been dated using the history of arts!
>From the reference I have given you, this can clearly be seen.
> Apart from my lapsus calami (around 790 AD instead of the correctly 690 AD),
> this assertion still is true. As I said: It is safe to say the Qurans with
> Hijazi script are old ones, say first half of the 8th century AD. That however
> cannot be termed kind of "dating".
Is it? You know about all this controversy regarding the Hijazi
script? Kufic script does not develop from Hijazi. Ok.! But as you
agree regarding the early Hijzi script then we have quite a few around
the world. That is of folios with Hijazi script. Saifullah has given
some examples on his site. So using these samples alone we know that
there is no significant difference between the Quran now and the
ayah's in these folios. So from this random sample we say the Orthodox
version is more or else what you expect! It is on YOU then to provide
the proof that the redaction of the Quran is different.
> >No mention of carbon dating here and note the SINGULAR "manuscript".
> >That to is a blatant untruth!
>
> Beyond this impertinence you have nothing to say!
More like you have nothing to say!
> >Well that was the article I was talking about.
>
> You seem to have understood not very much of it.
Unbelievable! You give us this reference for a mistake of yours, more
a misquotation as well then you say we misunderstood it! SubhanAllah!
> Both, Dr. Puin and Dr. Luxenberg are respected scholars, and your snide remarks
> about Puin's accuracy is ridiculous.
Thanks for the Bibliography! No argument here! But would you agree to
Puin's provisional dating of the Hussain manuscript I wonder? You
would be surprised.
> By the way, Luxenberg's method in his book has nothing to do with the Sanaa
> mss. Insofar Alexander Stille was mistaken in his article in The New York
> Times.
Yes but his accuracy is probably from the samples you have shown as
bad as yours!
Ghali
ghali
> Here I wish to take them to task for this weak argument. Dr.
> Saifullah gets
> things rolling with a brilliant circular argument. He argues that
> "tawatur
> makes fabrication impossible" from this, he argues that the
> mutawatir hadith
> are authentic (since conspiracy theories are impossible). And of
> course, he
> knows this is true because these hadith are mutawatir!
Who in the world said we were arguing like this? Isn't it just great
that you win your arguments all the time. It helps when you make
your "victims" up! What we are saying for the umpteenith time is that if
we have reports from different regions in collections collected
within a small time period IN PRINCIPLE we adopt the simple law that at least
they did not fabricate it. In other words we redact it to an earlier
period and so on. If you reject the trustworthiness of this then as
mentioned bfore you have problems with language and any form of
"humanistic" interaction. Imagine a system in which we are guilty
until proven otherwise. It does not help either if you jump onto the
bandwagon of indecision. i.e " I don't know" because you fall
into the same paradox! The stupid thing is that the MODEL of Juynboll
mentioned here DEPENDS ON THIS ARGUMENT!! What are you playing at?
Or should I just quote you
"Please Imran, do not try certain tricks on us which can be detected
easily"
Much on that later.
> At no point do we see
> any arguments from Dr. Saifullah attempting to demonstrate that
the mutawatir hadith are truly mutawatir, therefore, he is simply begging the
> question. And this brings me on to the next point. Dr. Saifullah shifts the
> burden of proof and demands me to DISprove that some purported mutawatir hadith is mutawatir, (second fallacy)
The fallacy is in your logic. It is not begging the question but
primary proof that is provided. It is like giving maps and documents
from different regions for the existence of a historical battle and
been rebuffed with a shrug of a shoulder.
>and wishes to hold that because no negative evidence exists,
> the mutwatir hadith are true, which is the third fallacy in his
> reasoning of ad ignorantiam.
Saifullah is simply saying that if we provide proof of a muttawatir
nature(positive evidence) it is on YOU to provide evidence for ANY
form of
skeptical approach be it a fabrication or an indecision.
> The same five fallacies are found in Ghali's polemic. Except,
he's found a raft with Iftikhar Zaman written on it that he's holding on to
I snipped the last two because they are repetitions which I have
answered before in our previous threads. As For Mr Zaman, more
about him later.
> Let us take a look at Gautier Juynboll's common link theory,
which
> both these
> gentlemen love to hate, following Ghali's recommendation. I have
> not seen any
> substantial refutation of it
What! And that paste from the INTERNET on the Juynboll's article on
the famous isnad Malik, Nafi, Ibn Umar by Motzki is something I made
up is it? As well as his other articles that refute most of
Juynboll's points. Anyway this specific example has not been mentioned, agreed.
> > > (1) Prophet <- Anas <- Abu 'Ubayda <- SUFYAN ATH-THAWRI
> > >
> > > (2) Prophet <- Jarir <- Abu 'Uthman <- Asim <- SUFYAN ATH-THAWRI
> > >
> > > Chains (1) and(2) converge at SUFYAN who is the COMMON LINK. From
> Sufyan,
> > > there "fans out" a direct link to 12 of his pupils, F1-F12. Also,
> there are
> > > four chains going directly from Asim to pupils F8-F11 (missing
out
> Sufyan):
> >
>
Good Start here as the tradition is not even Muttawatir! More like
Mashur! By Definition Isnads with common links as a source are NOT
muttawatir. With basic disasters like this what are we to expect more
then the usual plagerism from books.As for F8-F11 they are MURSAL. Do
you know what that means?
> (3) Prophet <- Jarir <- Abu 'Uthman <- Asim <- F8, F9, F10, F11.
This isnad is Mursal as far as I know. Know any dates for thes
transmittors from Asim? Though not!
>However, some transmitters after Sufyan allege
> they did not
> > > hear the tradition from Sufyan, but directly from Asim (chain 3).
> (See pp. 208-
> > > 209).
> >
>
Did they? So give me the details of chain 3. What did they say?
Akhbaran? , Hadthna, Kalla ( He said), an ( on the authority of in
English ). Where they old enough to meet him?
> > > Those who heard the tradition (version A) *only* from Sufyan are:
> > >
> > > F1: Salih b. Bayan.
> > >
> > > F2: Hammam b. Muslim.
> > >
> > > F3: Isma'il b. Aban.
> > >
> > > F4: Adb al-Aziz b. Aban.
> > >
> > > F5: Ismail b. Yahya/b. Najih.
> > >
> > > F6: Ammar b. Sayf.
> >
>
As for the details of these narrators and what actually happened that
may need some time to look up. It is a complicated argument and the
delay is not a sign of your refutation. Preliminary impressions
actually point towards this example being an argument for us. See
below.
> > > The implication is clear, Sufyan's name in the last four isnads
was
> deleted,
> > > "since the identification of that celebrated transmitter with
> isnads suppor-
> > > ting this commonly recognized forgery was felt to be
irreconcilable
> with his
> > > reputation."
> >
>
That is Just funny. How in the world did he come to that conclusion.
His primary evidence just does not support this conclusion. It is
just him rambling on here. But the strange thing is this. If that was
the case then why didn't the other authors remove Thawri from the Isnad.
F1- F8) Especially as the collectors in many cases were the source
of BOTH Isnads i.e. the one with Thawri in it and the ones where he
was skipped. That Stupid were they? LOL!
> (p. 211). Another attempt, Juynboll notes, to clean Sufyan's
> name was in version B where the term "rusukhan" was used instead
of
> "dhahaban"
> or "halakan".
Now this is just again plain silly. How do you clear Sufyan's name by
changing the above words. By just ONE word people become convinced
that Sufyan is not the author? Most hadiths are narrated by MEANING.
Did you know that?
> > > "In different terms: according to a multitude of references to
such
> early
> > > critics as Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, Yahya b. Ma'in and others, al-Khatib
> and Ibn al-
> > > Jawzi want us to believe that a dozen or so obscure transmitters,
> in ignorance
> > > of each other, separately and individually, forged one and the
same
> tradition
> > > which they all, again in ignorance of one another, separately and
> individually
> > > claim to have heard from one and the same famous man. The sheer,
> unfathomable
> > > coincidence obviously never caused any of the early critics to
> think twice,
> > > whereas the later authors simply copied and never applied hadith
> criteria of
> > > their own. Only one calamity had to be avoided at all costs:
Sufyan
> himself
> > > could not possibly be saddled with this tradition." (pp.
211-212).
Now this is the crunch! Why are you quoting an argument that you in
first place do NOT ACCEPT!! This is the very argument from
"Incredularity?" that YOU DEEMED AS A FALLACY. I agree with Juynboll
that the argument is a strong point because I have been using it over
and over and over again to refute you. The point maybe strong but is
it valid with the narrators mentioned by Juynboll? Where they in
ignorance of each other? Did they act separately and individually?
Did they "project back" the narration to Thawri and how did they do
it?
How do we differentiate this from normal AHAD hadith, as this is one?
Good questions. from Juynboll. Not you though! I will give an example
though. Narrators within the same city who know each other can
project back a narration thru Thawri using "Famous Isnads". Nobody
DENIED
this. The Muwatta though as a "control group", according to the
mauscripts and Isnads we have, was transmitted from narrators in a
similar period in CLEARLY different geographic locations. Yassin
Dutton goes into the details of this.
> > > In footnote 206, Juynboll writes:
> > >
> > > "A dozen of so transmitters coinciding in 'inventing' the same
> matn, each
> > > under his own steam, apparently never caused any hadith expert to
> bat an eye-
> > > lid"
Well, well, need I say more.
> > >We find such details as Sufyan angering the
> > > Abbasids, etc (p. 212)
Where are your sources for this? Now try to push them forward without
an Isnad. Why? Because you don't believe in the system! You have just
shot yourself in the foot.
Could be? Maybe this is what happened ? But this does not answer what
we have been saying before. We have POSITIVE proof of GEOGRAPHIC
distribution of narrations being collected seperately, You have the
vague details of Juynbolls model with these narrators. The only
details you have given us is the number of narrators and the fact
that Hadith critics did not like them. When were they born? If it is
not know, then in addition to the usual criticisms we have an additional
reason for rejection. Who were there teachers and so on..
> > > Juynboll shows how mutawatir fabrication can, and *did* occur.
And
> it need not
> > > be the global conspiracy Dr. Saifullah and Ghali keep talking
about
> >
Note it is not Muttawair and also note how Juynboll uses the same
arguments we have been pressing to redact it to Thawri. Would you
accept this same argument if we can show narrations that can be
traced back to the companions by Juynbolls method. i.e. in Motzki's
article on the collection of the Quran in Der Islam 2001. Probably not!
>
> > > Please Ghali, do not try certain tricks on us which can be
detected
> easily.
> >
Nah, I refer you THIS SAME site for Motzki's refutation of your
initial denial that Juynboll believed PARTIALLY in the Isnad system.
And I would not expect you to come across this! All this tricky and
deceit everywhere. If you bothered to read Zaman's footnote in the
Journal of Islamic Studies on his commentary to Juynboll ( using the example
of Juynboll's theory on common names in isnads) you would have found the
crux of his argument. There is NO CONTROL GROUP with Juynbolls
explanations. In other words It can NEVER be falsified WHATEVER
evidence we provide. Remember your prinicple? Muslim explanations do
provide models for falsification. Iftikhar Zaman shows a way by using
one famous hadith ( on the issue of Saad ibn abi waqas's will) with
over 100 isnads. Now he has found a common coherence comparing the various the
rijal and texts, which Benhim mentions. Fabricated hadith do not have
this or if they do they are usually not traceable in most if not any
major collection of hadith. Ok!
> > >Furthermore, it shows how the
> > > mass global conspiracy hypothesis is merely a straw man.
Exactly then if you don't believe in this mass conspriacy hypothesis
DON'T USE JUYNBOLL and your whole thread is a waste of time! Just to
paste it again
".........................that a dozen or so obscure transmitters, in
ignorance
of each other, separately and individually, forged one and the same
tradition
which they all, again in ignorance of one another, separately and
individually
claim to have heard from one and the same famous man. The sheer,
unfathomable
coincidence obviously never caused any of the early critics to think
twice,
whereas the later authors simply copied and never applied hadith
criteria of
their own. "
What kind of argument then does this sound like?
Ghali
MahmudTaha
<ms...@eng.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>On 7 May 2002, MahmudTaha wrote:
>
>> This ms. must be the one which has been dated 715 AD.
>
>It is dated to the time of al-Walid b. `Abd al-Malik between 705-715 CE or
>86-96 H. See Y. Dutton's "An Early Mushaf According To The Reading of Ibn
>`Amir", JQS, 2001, Volume III, p. 85 footnote 3.
715 is what I recalled. In the meantime I had the chance to check it in the
original article by Hans-Caspar Graf von Bothmer "Meisterwerke islamischer
Buchkunst: koranische Kalligraphie and Illumination im Handschriftenfund aus
der Großen Moschee in Sanaa" in Werner Daum (ed.): "Jemen", Innsbruck,
Frankfurt/Main 1987, p. 177-180. von Bothmer on page 179 simply says about this
Quran: "One of these Qurans (see below) can be dated to the early 2nd/8th
century."
You may imagine the difference between dating this Quran made possible by some
happy lucky circumstances of art history and "dating" the other Sanaa Quran
mss. only by referring to their Hijazi script and early orthography
>> They have been "dated" to say early 7th century AD due to their Hijazi
>>script and their early state of orthography.
Of course I meant early 8th century - and that seems a fairly benevolent guess.
>> This is not what I would term "dated".
>
>You first deny that there are no Mss "dated" to 7th centuy CE.
Yes, I still deny it.
> When we show you the evidence that there exist Mss dated to 7th century CE,
You never have shown any evidence of mss. dated to the 7th century.
Please note that not the palimpsest has been dated to around 690, but the
substrate (parchment) of it. Scholars apparently still don't know when it was
written, not to mention the question when the only readible second layer of
script was written.
> to you it appears as if they were noted "dated".
Yes, as I said.
> At least be honest in whatever you say...
I can do without admonitions of people who tell the world of 42,000 Qurans
showing no differences in the text, of Qurans "from 68 AH" and "the well-known
al-Hussein Mss which is believed to be one of the Uthmanic Qur'ans" and fairy
tales like this.
Peace,
Mahmud K. Taha
GF Haddad
> First of all, I believe you are confusing my statements with Imran:
No. I took issue with your example of Hisham ibn `Urwa which
was used in inaccurate fashion. Here you continue to use it
in such fashion. Then I address some of the blunders of Imran.
I was addressing several posts in the thread all at once.
> 2. When he was old, Hisham's memory suffered quite badly (Meezaan
> al-Ai`tidaal, Al-Zahabi, Arabic, Al-Maktabah al-Athriyyah,
> Sheikhupura, Pakistan, Vol. 4, pg. 301).
The terms used by al-Dhahabi in the Mizan are: "tanaaqasa hifzuhu"
i.e. his memory diminished. Is this the same as "his memory suffered quite badly"?!
> pronouncement by al-Dhahabi that Hisham's memory suffered quite BADLY
Your reading of al-Dhahabi leaves quite much to be desired. Perhaps
you are lifting this mistake from a secondary source?
> 3. I have been told that Malik [ibn Anas] objected on those
> narratives of Hisham which were reported through people of Iraq.
> (Tehzi'bu'l-tehzi'b, Ibn Hajar Al-`asqala'ni, Arabic, Dar Ihya
> al-turath al-Islami, Vol. 11, pg. 50)
Malik's objections to Hisham are like his objections to
Ibn Ishaq. They are not retained by the Scholars.
> 4. Point 3 is further confirmed when it becomes known that narrations
> ascribed to Hisham, with an Iraqi or Basri chain in them, are not
> reported by by people of Medina. Among them, the narrations alleging
> Aisha's (R) age which contradict other information.
The detached clause "among them" is amusing. The whole purpose of
this exercise is precisely to find fault with the age of `A'isha
at marriage. But the Hisham loophole is invoked only by people of
little or no expertise in hadith.
> > 2. <<ibn al-Arabi, the famous Hanafi jurist has rejected the
> > narrations which allege the Prophet was affected by magic, and he
> > does not give any credence to its being narrated by Bukhari.>>
> >
> > There is no famous Hanafi Scholar named Ibn al-`Arabi and it
> > does not matter if/when lone Scholars do not give credence to
> > something in the Sahihayn when the Umma is in agreement over the
> > sihha of their marfu` contents.
> >
>
> I meant to say Jassas, but that is besides the point.
Al-Jassas' arguments are the apex of weakness and do not have one
leg to stand upon. None of the hadith Masters - none - objected
to the hadith of sihr!
> 1. The argument is meant to point out the fact that ahadeeth are not
> accepted based upon isnad alone, which was contended by Imran.
The rule is that when the isnad is sound the hadith is sound. This
is the general rule. There are exceptions. Further, there is a
terminology and a method to categorize these exceptions.
Al-Jassas, a non-expert in hadith, said the sihr hadith is a batil
forgery. Compare this verdict to al-Hakim's verdict that the sihr
hadith is sahih but shadhdh.
> 2. Scholars have rejected this narration because it rejects the Quran
> itself.
It certainly does not reject the Qur'an itself. This is about as
presumptuous as it gets. And what Scholars of hadith have rejected it?
> 3. The claim that the ummah is in agreement of the marfu contents of
> the sihha is an absurdity. If one asks what Brother Haddad means by
> ummah, one can only wonder.
I have listed the arguments of the hadith Masters over the sihha of the
marfu` contents of the Sahihayn. It has been an elementary axiom of
hadith studies among them for centuries. It really does not matter
who wonders about what on SRI.
> 4. Razi has rejected the narration that alleges that Abraham (R) lied
> on three occasions, despite the isnad.
Which Razi now? Al-Jassas again? Or Fakhr al-Din? Why do you discuss
hadith when you keep bringing up non-hadith authorities?
> > As for the hadith of magic in al-Bukhari, the authoritative opinion
> > is al-Hakim in al-Iklil fi Ma`rifat `Ulum al-Hadith, where he
> > declares it among the Sahih but shadhdh (anomalous) narrations.
> >
>
> How can one declare it saheeh, at the same time being shadhdh.
Is this a question? Are you not aware that there are disparities
whithin the grade of sahih and that these disparities
are found even in the Sahihayn? However, they are not of the kind
that brings the hadith under discussion out of the pale of sahih.
There are many such sahih hadiths in the Ahkam that are
not applied in wajib and sunna practice for that reason.
NOT every sahih hadith is retained or applied in practice.
See on this the section titled: "Not Every Sound Hadîth Forms
Evidence" in my recent post "The superiority of Fiqh over Hadith."
Contrary to your claim, there is nothing in the Qur'an that
disproves the hadith of sihr under discussion, whether in Surat
al-Baqara as you claimed, or elsewhere! There is nothing
in Ibn al-Jawzi's criteria either. That is, if Ibn al-Jawzi's
notorious severity in the art of detecting forgeries did not
disqualify him in the first place.
> Aisha rejected the claim that the Prophet saw God Almighty on the
> Miraaj. It may be argued that she was not informed of the narration,
> but this is simply untrue for Aisha did not reject the claim based
> upon being uninformed, she rejected it on a clear and unambiguous
> verse of the Quran.
If the dilala of the verse was as clear and unambiguous as you claim,
then it would have been kufr not to follow the position of `A'isha!
Yet the massive majority of the Companions thought otherwise. This
is a basic proof that her position (ra) was based on ijtihad and
was an isolated interpretation of the verse.
The same is the case which alleges that the
> Prophet spoke to the dead. Another case is ibn Abbass's rejection of
> Abu Hurayra's claim that eating food cooked by fire nullifies wudhu.
> He rejected the narration saying if it were so, water heated by fire
> should necessitate wudhu. ibn Abbass did not question Abu Huraira's
> integrity, but he rejected it based upon common sense and observable
> phenomenon.
The hadith that the Prophet (saws) spoke to the dead to the great
surprise of `Umar is sound and authentic even according to those
that hold that the dead cannot hear! As for Abu Hurayra's `illa,
it is not marfu` but patent ijtihad in explanation of the marfu`
hadith that the Prophet (saws) used to make wudu' in such cases.
He (saws) later abrogated this ruling.
Hajj Gibril
asimm...@yahoo.com
> asimm...@yahoo.com wrote in message news:<abhk8a$51i$1...@samba.rahul.net>...
>
> > First of all, I believe you are confusing my statements with Imran:
>
> No. I took issue with your example of Hisham ibn `Urwa which
> was used in inaccurate fashion. Here you continue to use it
> in such fashion. Then I address some of the blunders of Imran.
> I was addressing several posts in the thread all at once.
>
There is nothing inaccurate in the statements made.
> The terms used by al-Dhahabi in the Mizan are: "tanaaqasa hifzuhu"
> i.e. his memory diminished. Is this the same as "his memory suffered quite badly"?!
>
Whether you want to dispute the linguistics or not is irrelevant to
the fact that Dhahabi cited his memory as being deficient, badly or
whatever else you want to call it, and that type of judgment is not
made because Hisham forgot a few words.
> > pronouncement by al-Dhahabi that Hisham's memory suffered quite BADLY
>
> Your reading of al-Dhahabi leaves quite much to be desired. Perhaps
> you are lifting this mistake from a secondary source?
>
Yes I am, but the point still stands. I take it from an authority on
Arabic.
> Malik's objections to Hisham are like his objections to
> Ibn Ishaq. They are not retained by the Scholars.
>
In one stroke, viola. There is a clear cut case that narrations that
are reported through Iraqi chains and are traced to Hisham are not
pronounced by people of Medina. There is nothing unreasobale int he
assertion and you need to give some better evidence than merely
asserting that his objections are not retained by scholars.
> > 4. Point 3 is further confirmed when it becomes known that narrations
> > ascribed to Hisham, with an Iraqi or Basri chain in them, are not
> > reported by by people of Medina. Among them, the narrations alleging
> > Aisha's (R) age which contradict other information.
>
> The detached clause "among them" is amusing. The whole purpose of
> this exercise is precisely to find fault with the age of `A'isha
> at marriage. But the Hisham loophole is invoked only by people of
> little or no expertise in hadith.
>
Is that what the whole purpose of the exercise was, or was it to show
that there can be two points:
1. Hisham claimed something with respect to Aisha's age which
contradicts other well-known information regarding her age. This he
only reported when in Iraq. They are not even reported by people of
Medina where Aisha lived all her life.
2. That Malik did not trust the narrations of HIsham through Iraqis.
Notice that, as I stated before, Malik was not objecting to Hisham but
the people of Iraq from this statement. And there is nothing amusing
or unreasobale in this statement.
> >
> > I meant to say Jassas, but that is besides the point.
>
> Al-Jassas' arguments are the apex of weakness and do not have one
> leg to stand upon. None of the hadith Masters - none - objected
> to the hadith of sihr!
>
"the wrongdoers say you are following nothing but magic." (Bani
Israil -47) This is a clear an unambiguous statement that rejects any
notion of the Prophet being affected by magic. As Jassas says, whose
argument is based upon the INFALLIBLE word of God, not the opinion of
any hadeeth masters:
"...when Allah refuted the claim of the infidels and has stated 'The
wrongdoers say that you are following a man who is under the spell of
magic'. In reality this kind of ahadeeth is invented by apostates."
Sorry, but the apex that Jassas has standed on is the authoritative
Book of God Almighty.
> The rule is that when the isnad is sound the hadith is sound. This
> is the general rule. There are exceptions. Further, there is a
> terminology and a method to categorize these exceptions.
Whose general rule is this? What about the analysis of the
authenticity of a hadeeth based upon matn. Why did you cut out the
clear and unambiguous verdit of ibn Jauzi in the matter where he says
that if the meaning of the hadeeth is absurd than there is no need to
even examine the NARRATORS. Did he not say that some hadeeth
specialists consider the narration as proof of the lying of narrators.
Why does Imam Malik prefer the practice of Medina over ahadeeth. Why
do Hanafis not consider ahad hadeeth? The terminology and methods are
irrelevant to the fact that it contradicts the Quran.
> Al-Jassas, a non-expert in hadith, said the sihr hadith is a batil
> forgery. Compare this verdict to al-Hakim's verdict that the sihr
> hadith is sahih but shadhdh.
>
It is a fabrication, and any hadeeth specialist will tell you the
first method of determining the authenticity of the hadeeth is to
check if it is not rejected by the Criterion itself, the Furqna, i.e.
the ebook of Allah. Whether they remain true to their own standards
is their own issue.
> > 2. Scholars have rejected this narration because it rejects the Quran
> > itself.
>
> It certainly does not reject the Qur'an itself. This is about as
> presumptuous as it gets. And what Scholars of hadith have rejected it?
>
See the verse above. Just magically saying that it does not affect
the Quran does not make it so. To even claim that the Prophet, God
forbid, was affected by magic for well over a year and did not know
the reason why, and the narrations say, God forbid, that he did not
even know whether he slept with his wives or not, is nothing but
gibberish and nonsense.
> 3. The claim that the ummah is in agreement of the marfu contents
of
> > the sihha is an absurdity. If one asks what Brother Haddad means by
> > ummah, one can only wonder.
>
> I have listed the arguments of the hadith Masters over the sihha of the
> marfu` contents of the Sahihayn. It has been an elementary axiom of
> hadith studies among them for centuries. It really does not matter
> who wonders about what on SRI.
>
I did not say this. I said what does Br Haddad mean by ummah.
Because it is well known that Daraqtuni disagreed on ahadeeth in those
narrations. Whether his arguments are valid or not is not the issue
here. The issue is that what does Haddad mean by ummah. When it
comes down to it, what it means is those that he deems suits his
opinion.
> > 4. Razi has rejected the narration that alleges that Abraham (R) lied
> > on three occasions, despite the isnad.
>
> Which Razi now? Al-Jassas again? Or Fakhr al-Din? Why do you discuss
> hadith when you keep bringing up non-hadith authorities?
>
Please do not try and divert from the issue. Fakhr al-Din Razi said
it, and you know he did, and it proves my point. Razi rejected a
hadeeth because it contardicted the well-established fact of the
infallibility and sinlessness of the Prophets, much like the hadeeth
on magic.
> >
> > How can one declare it saheeh, at the same time being shadhdh.
>
> Is this a question? Are you not aware that there are disparities
> whithin the grade of sahih and that these disparities
> are found even in the Sahihayn? However, they are not of the kind
> that brings the hadith under discussion out of the pale of sahih.
Actually, brothe saifullah brought a quote in his discussion with
Imran on shaddh narrations being considere saheeh by some scholars.
But strange is a term for we cannot explain it, but we still affirm
its truth because we cannot come to terms with the fact that despite a
hadeeth having an isnad, it still can be fabricated, or misunderstood
by narrators.
> Contrary to your claim, there is nothing in the Qur'an that
> disproves the hadith of sihr under discussion, whether in Surat
> al-Baqara as you claimed, or elsewhere! There is nothing
> in Ibn al-Jawzi's criteria either. That is, if Ibn al-Jawzi's
> notorious severity in the art of detecting forgeries did not
> disqualify him in the first place.
>
I did not claim that surah Baqarah disproved the issue of sihr on the
Prophet. Nor did I bring up ibn Jauzi for the issue of sihr. I
brought it up to point out that hadeeth are not accepted by isnad
alone and your argument that it is is null and void. You know Jassas
brought a very relevant verse to the discussion yet you are silent.
As far as the criteria of ibn Jauzi, undoubtedly there is nothing more
rigorous than the pursuit of truth.
> > Aisha rejected the claim that the Prophet saw God Almighty on the
> > Miraaj. It may be argued that she was not informed of the narration,
> > but this is simply untrue for Aisha did not reject the claim based
> > upon being uninformed, she rejected it on a clear and unambiguous
> > verse of the Quran.
>
> If the dilala of the verse was as clear and unambiguous as you claim,
> then it would have been kufr not to follow the position of `A'isha!
Notice the argument was that Aisha rejected a narration despite its
narrators based upon an unambiguous verse of the Quran. That is the
dilala and no objection you can come up with can deny this basic fact.
Whether you want to propound the issue of kufr or not is merely
sidetracking the point.
> Yet the massive majority of the Companions thought otherwise. This
> is a basic proof that her position (ra) was based on ijtihad and
> was an isolated interpretation of the verse.
>
Massive majority one can only know what constitutes it. Exxageration
I must say. Aisha, the epitome of learning wh spent her life with the
Prophet (S) would not know that the dead can hear?
> The hadith that the Prophet (saws) spoke to the dead to the great
> surprise of `Umar is sound and authentic even according to those
> that hold that the dead cannot hear! As for Abu Hurayra's `illa,
> it is not marfu` but patent ijtihad in explanation of the marfu`
> hadith that the Prophet (saws) used to make wudu' in such cases.
> He (saws) later abrogated this ruling.
>
Notice that this is just a presumption on GF Haddad's part. As stated
before, ibn Abbass did not reject the narration based upon isnad, he
rejected it based upon matn. Notice that the issue of wudhu and
eating is something very observable to anyone who notices. Sound
reasoning I might add by Brother Haddad. The intellect is a very
precious gift and one should make use of it even if it contradicts the
tradition of many people of past.
As a side note, and I know Br Haddad will not come up with the
narration becase there is none, Where is the ruling that claims the
Prophet abrogated it.
GF Haddad
asimm...@yahoo.com wrote in message news:<acfe29$r6r$1...@samba.rahul.net>...
> Qas...@ziplip.com (GF Haddad) wrote in message news:<acdvaq$gcf$1...@samba.rahul.net>...
...
> > The terms used by al-Dhahabi in the Mizan are: "tanaaqasa hifzuhu"
> > i.e. his memory diminished. Is this the same as "his memory suffered quite badly"?!
> >
>
> Whether you want to dispute the linguistics or not is irrelevant to
> the fact that Dhahabi cited his memory as being deficient, badly or
> whatever else you want to call it, and that type of judgment is not
> made because Hisham forgot a few words.
Al-Dhahabi is precisely saying that Hisham only forgot a few words.
In fact al-Dhahabi rails against those who would over-emphasize this
forgetfulness. He said, "his memory diminished in old age, so what?"
You continue to deny the obvious because you refuse to go back to
the original words of al-Dhahabi in the Mizan. To do so, in your
view, would be "disputing the linguistics." Of course, for someone
ignorant of Arabic, every correction sounds like "disputing the linguistics."
> > Your reading of al-Dhahabi leaves quite much to be desired. Perhaps
> > you are lifting this mistake from a secondary source?
> >
>
> Yes I am, but the point still stands. I take it from an authority on
> Arabic.
Your authority on Arabic misled you and I advise you to seek a second
opinion if you must probe what you do not know!
There is nothing unreasobale int he
> assertion and you need to give some better evidence than merely
> asserting that his objections are not retained by scholars.
There is a more than reasonable difference between a scholarly method
based upon the collective research of qualified people and a
rereading by ignoramus amateurs trying to reinvent the wheel.
> 1. Hisham claimed something with respect to Aisha's age which
> contradicts other well-known information regarding her age.
What bogus "other well-known information"?
This he
> only reported when in Iraq. They are not even reported by people of
> Medina where Aisha lived all her life.
That is not true, al-Zuhri reported it from Urwa, from `A'isha,
and so did `Abd Allah ibn Dhakwan, and they are both major Madanis.
So is the Tabi`i Yahya al-Lakhmi who reports it from her in the
Musnad and in Ibn Sa`d's Tabaqat.
So is Abu Ishaq Sa`d ibn Ibrahim who reports from Imam al-Qasim
ibn Muhammad one of the seven Imams of Madina, from `A'isha!
You ought not to speak if you have no idea. This was not reported
only in Iraq nor only by Iraqis, nor was it reported only by `Urwa
but also by `Abd al-Malik ibn `Umayr, al-Aswad, Ibn Abi Mulayka,
and others of the great Tabi`i Imams all from `A'isha!
> "the wrongdoers say you are following nothing but magic." (Bani
> Israil -47) This is a clear an unambiguous statement that rejects any
> notion of the Prophet being affected by magic.
Even in English ! The "clear and unambiguous statement" would be:
"You can never be affected by spells." Do you understand the difference??
> To even claim that the Prophet, God
> forbid, was affected by magic for well over a year
On what planet is there any such report? It seems you do not
even know what you are discussing.
Hajj Gibril
Jeremiah McAuliffe
>There is a more than reasonable difference between a scholarly method
>based upon the collective research of qualified people
Yeah. They've really done a good job.
What are the illiteracy rates in countries with a Muslim majority?
Jeremiah McAuliffe ali...@city-net.com
http://speed.city-net.com/~alimhaq/mcauliffe/
Heavy Music
http://www.ampcast.com/jeremiah
asimm...@yahoo.com
> Al-Dhahabi is precisely saying that Hisham only forgot a few words.
This is not precisely what Dhahabi was saying.
> In fact al-Dhahabi rails against those who would over-emphasize this
> forgetfulness. He said, "his memory diminished in old age, so what?"
Memory normally dimishes in old age. Thus a criticism such as this
would mean absoluteluy nothing if it affected Hisham's reporting.
If his memory diminishes in old age and he relates ahadeeth in Iraq
which he never related in Medina, and at the same time these ahadeeth
are not mentioned by people of Medina than it leaves a big question
mark on his reporting in Iraq. You fail to see the reason and
rationale behind it. Dhahabi is not criticizing the fact that Hisham
forgot a few words in his reporting as ibn Hajar related,
it was because of this basic fact. The statement of Imam Malik can
mean either two things:
1. He did not trust the people of Iraq.
2. He did not report from Hisham when he moved to Iraq.
Either way, the argument has rational foundations and it is not what
ibn Hajr suggested. And Imam Malik was a student of Hisham.
It was interesting to note, in one of your criticisms of the Salafi
position regarding a scholar, you very well used the argument of Anas
reporting in old age.
>
> Your authority on Arabic misled you and I advise you to seek a second
> opinion if you must probe what you do not know!
>
And you are an authority?
>
> There is a more than reasonable difference between a scholarly method
> based upon the collective research of qualified people and a
> rereading by ignoramus amateurs trying to reinvent the wheel.
>
This is the same poor excuse for challenging the tradition of others.
They throw away anythign that challenged thjeir blind following
"under the guise of scholarly method based upon the collective
research of qualified people." These criticisms are being levelled by
very authoritative people and Br Haddads ignorance of these people
does not justify him to say
the wheel is being reinvented. The pursuit of truth has always been
ongoing and will continue despite what they say.
> > 1. Hisham claimed something with respect to Aisha's age which
> > contradicts other well-known information regarding her age.
>
> What bogus "other well-known information"?
>
Bogus?
Bukhari reports that Aisha was a young girl at the revelation of surah
Qamar. This surah is reported to have been revealed 9 years before
hijra.
The word used is jariyah and not sibyah or infant.
Aisha (R) is reported to have accompanied the Muslims at the Battle of
Badr and Uhud, and it is well known that 15 year old men was the age
limit stipulated
for men, let alone nine year old girls.
It is well-known that Asma (r) was around 10 years older than Aisha
(R). According to ibn Katheer, Asma (R) died in the 73rd year of
hijrah at the age of 100.
Asma would have been 27 or 28 at the time of hijra, and Aisha would
have been almost 18 years old.
Tabari mentions that Abu Bakr (R) had 4 children and all of them were
born before Islam. She could not have been at least 14 years old by
the time of hijra.
ibn Hisham says Aisha accepted Islam before Umar (R). If the
narrations that say Aisha was married at 7 then Aisha would not even
been born in the first year of Islam.
Tabari relates that Abu Bakr, when he decided to migrate to ETHIOPIA,
went to Mutam with whom Aisha (R) was engaged to his son at the time
and requested him to take her as his wife. Mutam refused because of
thier Islam and
Mutam's son divorced Aisha because of this. If she was seven, she
would not have even been born at the time.
ibn Hanbal reports that after the death of Khadija, the suggestion
came to the Prophet to marry a BIKR or a thayyib. Bikr is never used
for a jariyah.
ibn Hajar reports Aisha was 5 years younger than Fatima and Fatima was
born when the Prophet (S) was 35 years old.
If this info. is correct Aisha could have been at least 14 to 15 when
she was married.
So what is obvious is that the information is not bogus and there is
very good reason to question the narratives of Hisham in Iraq.
> This he
> > only reported when in Iraq. They are not even reported by people of
> > Medina where Aisha lived all her life.
>
> That is not true, al-Zuhri reported it from Urwa, from `A'isha,
> and so did `Abd Allah ibn Dhakwan, and they are both major Madanis.
What I meant to say is that all chains of narrators that claim to
report Aisha's age go through people of Iraq.
All of the narratos that are reported through Urwa, which are reported
by Hisham are the one's considered reliable.
This is actually the case of the majority of narratives. Urwa is the
common link but Hisham reports on the authority of
his father.
The following narrations GF Haddad quotes do not even fulfill the
conditions of being beyond criticism.
There are five chains that report a similar statement below. The one
attributed to Abdullah ibn Safwan mentions 'a person of Quraysh', i.e.
an unknown.
The one with Yahya ibn Abdur Rahman ibn Habib has Muhammad bin Amr who
has been critcized as unreliable.
The same is the case for the other chains.
> So is the Tabi`i Yahya al-Lakhmi who reports it from her in the
> Musnad and in Ibn Sa`d's Tabaqat.
> So is Abu Ishaq Sa`d ibn Ibrahim who reports from Imam al-Qasim
> ibn Muhammad one of the seven Imams of Madina, from `A'isha!
> You ought not to speak if you have no idea.
This was not reported
> only in Iraq nor only by Iraqis, nor was it reported only by `Urwa
> but also by `Abd al-Malik ibn `Umayr, al-Aswad, Ibn Abi Mulayka,
> and others of the great Tabi`i Imams all from `A'isha!
>
See above. When I say it has not been reported by people of Medina,
it is meant that there does not
exist a report with an ALL Medinan chain.
The fact of the matter is there is no case in which the Arab tradition
where nine year old marraiges were common,
and it would be highly unusual for such an act to occur, meaning it
would have stood out and been reported by a number
of people. Even all the narrations which allege Aisha (R) playing with
dolls are reported from Hisham through his father.
> > "the wrongdoers say you are following nothing but magic." (Bani
> > Israil -47) This is a clear an unambiguous statement that rejects any
> > notion of the Prophet being affected by magic.
>
> Even in English ! The "clear and unambiguous statement" would be:
> "You can never be affected by spells." Do you understand the difference??
>
Notice your play on words? The Quraysh were arguing that Muhammad was
affected by magic. This was simply to put aside the argument that the
Quran was the word of God.
Now if it is claimed that Muhammad was affected by magic, yet did not
know he was affected by magic, the whole argument of the Quran would
be tantamounbt to rejection.
The play on the sentences is quite amusing and like I said before
Jassas' argument stands upon the Quran, the furqan.
> > To even claim that the Prophet, God
> > forbid, was affected by magic for well over a year
>
> On what planet is there any such report? It seems you do not
> even know what you are discussing.
>
Please Haddad. The point is clear. The narration is rejected by the
Quran and authorities have always rejected hadeeth despite their isnad
if it rejected the Quran. They have also rejected it based upon
common sense and this is undisputed. So you can run around the issue
all you want but the fact still stands.
Now the point is this:
It has been established that authorities in scholarship reject hadeeth
despite their isnad. Factors include such things
as the Quran, the infallibility of the Prophets, and common sense.
Now if you deny this, you are merely being hypocritical to
those people you claim to uphold. Using one's mind keeps the
intellect fresh.
GF Haddad
> > Al-Dhahabi is precisely saying that Hisham only forgot a few words.
>
> This is not precisely what Dhahabi was saying.
>
> > In fact al-Dhahabi rails against those who would over-emphasize this
> > forgetfulness. He said, "his memory diminished in old age, so what?"
>
>
> Memory normally dimishes in old age. Thus a criticism such as this
> would mean absoluteluy nothing if it affected Hisham's reporting.
Once more: precisely.
> If his memory diminishes in old age and he relates ahadeeth in Iraq
> which he never related in Medina, and at the same time these ahadeeth
> are not mentioned by people of Medina than it leaves a big question
> mark on his reporting in Iraq. You fail to see the reason and
> rationale behind it. Dhahabi is not criticizing the fact that Hisham
> forgot a few words in his reporting as ibn Hajar related,
> it was because of this basic fact.
So much speculation and bad faith, all to gloss over simple ignorance
of what al-Dhahabi actually said?
"Hisham ibn `Urwa. One of the eminences. The Proof, the Imam, but in
his old age his memory diminished - while he never became senile at all!
No attention is paid to the claim of Abu al-Hasan ibn al-Qattaan that
he [Hisham] and Suhayl ibn Abi Salih became senile (ikhtalataa) and
changed (taghayyaraa). Praised is the man who changes a little bit
because his memory is not what it used to be in his youth, so that he
forgets some of what he had memorized or commits a lapse, so what!
Is he immune (ma`sum) to forgetfulness?
"When he came to Iraq at the end of his life he narrated a very great
deal of knowledge. In the course of this there were a few hadiths
which he did not treat meticulously (lam yujawwid-haa). The like of
this occurs with Malik, Shu`ba, Wakee`, and the major trustworthy
narrators! So quit your clumsy groping about and stay away from
trying to mix the firm Imams with the weak and senile narrators! [sic]
"Hisham is Shaykh al-Islam. But may Allah console us from you, Ibn
al-Qattan! And also from the claim of `Abd al-Rahman ibn Kharash
that Malik did not hold him [Hisham] in great esteem and that he
criticized his hadiths to the people of Iraq!
"He [Hisham] came to Kufa three times. One time he would say:
'My father narrated to me saying, I heard `A'isha.' A second
time he would say: 'My father narrated to me, from `A'isha.'
He came the third time and said: 'My father, from `A'isha.'
Meaning he would make irsaal from his father [omitting his own
link to him].
"Muhammad ibn `Ali al-Bahili narrated from a Shaykh from Quraysh:
Hisham ibn `Urwa bowed to kiss the hand of al-Mansur but the
latter prevented him, saying: 'Ibn `Urwa, we hold you dearer
than [to have to kiss] it, and we hold it dearer than [to have
to be kissed by] others.'
"It was said that Hisham reached eighty-seven years of age."
End of al-Dhahabi's notice on Hisham ibn `Urwa in Mizan al-I`tidal.
The statement of Imam Malik can
> mean either two things:
>
> 1. He did not trust the people of Iraq.
> 2. He did not report from Hisham when he moved to Iraq.
Please stop your helpless musings and read what an actual hadith
Master makes of Malik's statement. Al-Dhahabi said clearly what
he thinks of Malik's supposed objection.
> Either way, the argument has rational foundations and it is not what
> ibn Hajr suggested. And Imam Malik was a student of Hisham.
In hadith the agreement of Ibn Hajar with al-Dhahabi is a hujja.
Should we leave that hujja for every rude apprentice who
cannot count to ten in Arabic?
> It was interesting to note, in one of your criticisms of the Salafi
> position regarding a scholar, you very well used the argument of Anas
> reporting in old age.
It was a criticism of al-Kawthari who claimed that a narration of
Anas in the Sahih should be rejected because he lived over 90 years,
which I referred to a rule mentioned by al-Khatib in his book on
the ethics of narration (al-Jami` fi Adab al-Rawi). I explained
the rationale behind al-Kawthari's claim. This does not mean he
was correct.
> the wheel is being reinvented. The pursuit of truth has always been
> ongoing and will continue despite what they say.
... says the ostrich, head deep in the sand.
> > > 1. Hisham claimed something with respect to Aisha's age which
> > > contradicts other well-known information regarding her age.
> >
> > What bogus "other well-known information"?
> >
>
> Bogus?
>
> Bukhari reports that Aisha was a young girl at the revelation of surah
> Qamar. This surah is reported to have been revealed 9 years before
> hijra.
> The word used is jariyah and not sibyah or infant.
The claim that Surat al-Qamar was revealed 9 years before the Hijra
is without basis. As for jaariya it may mean newborn girl or infant,
while sabiyya can also be used for an adolescent.
Since the splitting of the moon took place five years before the
Holy Prophet's (saws) Hijra to Madina, as reported in Bukhari, Muslim,
the Sunan and Musnad Ahmad from several Companions, it is confirmed
that `A'isha was born between seven and eight years before the Hijra
and the words that she was a jaariya five years before the Hijra
match the fact that her age at the time Surat al-Qamar was revealed
was around 2.
> Aisha (R) is reported to have accompanied the Muslims at the Battle of
> Badr and Uhud, and it is well known that 15 year old men was the age
> limit stipulated
> for men, let alone nine year old girls.
Who told you that `A'isha was present at the battle of Badr and Uhud?
> It is well-known that Asma (r) was around 10 years older than Aisha
> (R).
No it is not. `A'isha was nineteen to twenty years younger than her
sister Asma' (27 before Hijra-74) and about five years to eight years
Fatima's junior.
According to ibn Katheer, Asma (R) died in the 73rd year of
> hijrah at the age of 100.
> Asma would have been 27 or 28 at the time of hijra, and Aisha would
> have been almost 18 years old.
The last clause is your invention. It seems that in maths also you
practice indiscriminate imitation of your English sources then impute
others with it.
> Tabari mentions that Abu Bakr (R) had 4 children and all of them were
> born before Islam. She could not have been at least 14 years old by
> the time of hijra.
Tabari mentions no such thing. He mentions that Abu Bakr married
two women in Jahiliyya who bore him four children, one of them `A'isha,
and two women in Islam who bore him two more children. He never said
that the first four were "all born before Islam" as you claim. Must I
spoonfeed you every text to stop you from misquoting and mirespresenting?
> ibn Hisham says Aisha accepted Islam before Umar (R). If the
> narrations that say Aisha was married at 7 then Aisha would not even
> been born in the first year of Islam.
Who said she embraced Islam in the first year of Islam? `Umar embraced
Islam in the year 6 of the Prophethood at age twenty-seven. Moreover,
read what Ibn Hisham says more carefully. He said `A'isha was small
at the time, and includes her among those who embraced Islam
because of Abu Bakr.
> Tabari relates that Abu Bakr, when he decided to migrate to ETHIOPIA,
> went to Mutam with whom Aisha (R) was engaged to his son at the time
> and requested him to take her as his wife. Mutam refused because of
> thier Islam and
> Mutam's son divorced Aisha because of this. If she was seven, she
> would not have even been born at the time.
Another myth fostered by Indian writers who possess little knowledge
of Arabic. The reasoning that a betrothal to Jubayr ibn Mut`im would
suggest anything about age is faulty and shows ignorance of the fact
that betrothal can take place from the cradle or even before birth.
> ibn Hanbal reports that after the death of Khadija, the suggestion
> came to the Prophet to marry a BIKR or a thayyib. Bikr is never used
> for a jariyah.
Ma shaa' Allah. For your information, bikr means a virgin who has
never been married before. It is very much used for a jaariya.
> ibn Hajar reports Aisha was 5 years younger than Fatima and Fatima was
> born when the Prophet (S) was 35 years old.
> If this info. is correct Aisha could have been at least 14 to 15 when
> she was married.
More wonderfully selective misquoting. Ibn Hajar never reports only
one, but TWO possible dates for the birth of Fatima al-Zahra' (ra):
(i) The year the Ka'ba was rebuilt, five years before Prophethood,
when the Prophet (saws) was 35. This is reported by al-Waqidi ALONE
who is discarded as a hadith narrator. (ii) The forty-first year of
the Prophet (saws). This is reported by al-Hakim in al-Mustadrak
through two chains, Ibn `Abd al-Barr in al-Isti`ab, and al-Mizzi
in Tahdhib al-Kamal. BOTH dates are cited in the Isaba which adds
that Fatima was five years older than `A'isha. By the first date,
therefore, the age of `A'isha the year the marriage was consummated
(2H) would be 15; by the second date, 9 - the age confirmed by the
totality of the reports in the Sahihs and Sunan.
> So what is obvious is that the information is not bogus and there is
> very good reason to question the narratives of Hisham in Iraq.
The information is bogus, your knowledge lacking, and your method dishonest.
> > This he
> > > only reported when in Iraq. They are not even reported by people of
> > > Medina where Aisha lived all her life.
> >
> > That is not true, al-Zuhri reported it from Urwa, from `A'isha,
> > and so did `Abd Allah ibn Dhakwan, and they are both major Madanis.
>
> What I meant to say is that all chains of narrators that claim to
> report Aisha's age go through people of Iraq.
More nonsense. Among the chains I have cited are several that have
no Iraqis in them for reports on `A'isha's age confirming the Iraqis.
That was the point of bringing them up. But I have to explain everything
twice while you continue to put your foot in your mouth. As for
mumbling that those chains are inauthentic, it is enough to say that
the chain of `Abd al-Razzaq through al-Zuhri meets the criterion
of the Sahihayn, as does the chain of Abu Ishaq from al-Qasim ibn
Muhammad. The others are also authentic but beneath that criterion.
> > > "the wrongdoers say you are following nothing but magic." (Bani
> > > Israil -47) This is a clear an unambiguous statement that rejects any
> > > notion of the Prophet being affected by magic.
> >
> > Even in English ! The "clear and unambiguous statement" would be:
> > "You can never be affected by spells." Do you understand the difference??
> >
>
> Notice your play on words? The Quraysh were arguing that Muhammad was
> affected by magic. This was simply to put aside the argument that the
> Quran was the word of God.
Your misunderstanding of what wordplay means in English is in line
with your confusion of a general import with a clear and unambiguous
statement. It is a pattern in your replies, like your dismissing
basic corrections in translation as "disputing the linguistics".
The general import of the verse is the disbelievers' claim that the
Prophetic revelation is all an act of magic. The specific
unambiguous statement would have been what I described above,
which is not the case since the Prophet (saws) is human and
therefore CAN be affected by magic. However, Allah protected him
from being affected in matters related to the revelation. What
is the difficulty in this?
> Now if it is claimed that Muhammad was affected by magic, yet did not
> know he was affected by magic, the whole argument of the Quran would
> be tantamounbt to rejection.
Wrong reasoning. He was never affected by magic in the matter of
revelation but in a worldly matter. The Prophet (saws) himself
said, "In worldly matters, I may err like anyone among you."
The Qur'an is not like a newspaper one picks up and reads. Do not
flatter yourself and recast your lack of grounding and fantasies as
"the pursuit of truth." May the truth be saved from such defenders!
Your objections, in fact, are the soul of misguided imitation,
as are the nincompoop remarks of another respondent on Isra' that
"Confirmation of the trip to the heavens are sketchy at best.
As to what happened during it, it is even more sketchy." This,
when the ascension to heaven is narrated from no less than 45 Companions.
> The play on the sentences is quite amusing and like I said before
> Jassas' argument stands upon the Quran, the furqan.
Then you should find hilarious your ignorance that not only the totality
of the hadith Masters but Fakhr al-Din al-Razi himself reject al-Jassas'
argument and accept the fact that the Prophet (saws) was the temporary
victim of a spell. But the ostrich instinct in some is irresistible.
> > > To even claim that the Prophet, God
> > > forbid, was affected by magic for well over a year
> >
> > On what planet is there any such report? It seems you do not
> > even know what you are discussing.
> >
>
>
> Please Haddad. The point is clear. [long talk deleted]
Just answer the question. Or else explain where you get off making up
hadiths to badmouth Sahih al-Bukhari.
Hajj Gibril
asimm...@yahoo.com
> asimm...@yahoo.com wrote in message news:<ad0sdb$apj$1...@samba.rahul.net>...
>
> > > Al-Dhahabi is precisely saying that Hisham only forgot a few words.
> >
> > This is not precisely what Dhahabi was saying.
> >
I acknowledge my error in this matter regarding the opinion Dhahabi.
The actual reference I have says that Yaqub ibn Shaibah reports that
Hisham reporting through Iraq is unreliable and that Imam Malik does
not accept reports of Hisham through Iraq.
> So much speculation and bad faith, all to gloss over simple ignorance
> of what al-Dhahabi actually said?
>
Notice that even if I held this as Dhahabi's opinion and was proven to
be wrong, it still does not negate the opinion of those that held
Hisham's reporting in Iraq as invalid. Instead the argument should
read Yaqub ibn Shaibah is not saying this because Hisham forgot a few
words. either way, the argument remains.
>
> "When he came to Iraq at the end of his life he narrated a very great
> deal of knowledge. In the course of this there were a few hadiths
> which he did not treat meticulously (lam yujawwid-haa). The like of
> this occurs with Malik, Shu`ba, Wakee`, and the major trustworthy
> narrators! So quit your clumsy groping about and stay away from
> trying to mix the firm Imams with the weak and senile narrators! [sic]
>
Notice that Imam Malik was a student of Hisham, and his rejection of
narrations of Hisham in Iraq is not because he forgot a few words.
Malik very well knew his teacher and to not report from him when he
went to Iraq proves the point.
So you can play nit-picky all you want, as you do down below, avoiding
the plain and simple argument that scholars including RAZI have
rejected hadeeth despite their isnad, or you can simply accept the
fact. You very well know that Darqutuni has rejected hadeeth in
Bukhari and Muslim and your claims to their being a consensus that it
is wholly authentic is nothing but absurd.
>
> "Muhammad ibn `Ali al-Bahili narrated from a Shaykh from Quraysh:
> Hisham ibn `Urwa bowed to kiss the hand of al-Mansur but the
> latter prevented him, saying: 'Ibn `Urwa, we hold you dearer
> than [to have to kiss] it, and we hold it dearer than [to have
> to be kissed by] others.'
>
And none of this proves the claim that Malik did not take hadeeth from
Hisham when he reported from Iraq. And who is a 'Shaykh from
quraysh"? And none of this proves that Hisham did not narrate strange
hadeeth in Iraq?
> Please stop your helpless musings and read what an actual hadith
> Master makes of Malik's statement. Al-Dhahabi said clearly what
> he thinks of Malik's supposed objection.
>
And how do quotes that are irrelevant to Imam Malik prove his
objections to Hisham in Iraq?
>
> It was a criticism of al-Kawthari who claimed that a narration of
> Anas in the Sahih should be rejected because he lived over 90 years,
> which I referred to a rule mentioned by al-Khatib in his book on
> the ethics of narration (al-Jami` fi Adab al-Rawi). I explained
> the rationale behind al-Kawthari's claim. This does not mean he
> was correct.
>
Whether or not he was correct is you defended Kawtharis' argument
because of the age of Anas (R). So a Sahabah's age in the criticism
of a narrator can be used, and you can justify him because those
making the arguments are Salafi, but when it comes to Hisham ibn Urwa,
then it cannot?
Man, I am become more and more impressed by your standards. Notice
that you explained the rationale by Kawtharis' claim, similar to me
explainig the rationale of not accepting the narrations of Hisham when
he settled in Iraq.
asimm...@yahoo.com
> Another myth fostered by Indian writers who possess little knowledge
> of Arabic. The reasoning that a betrothal to Jubayr ibn Mut`im would
> suggest anything about age is faulty and shows ignorance of the fact
> that betrothal can take place from the cradle or even before birth.
>
Is that ethnic banterings that I smell? I hope you are not attempting
to establish the superiority of Arab scholarship through such
reasoning. One can only wonder how Aisha could be taken as Jubayr if
she was not born, for how to we determine sex during those times while
still in the belly. And one can only wonder the necessity of taking a
baby as a wife by Jubayr ibn Mutim to raise and foster her also, even
though she is the wife?
Wow.
asimm...@yahoo.com
> The claim that Surat al-Qamar was revealed 9 years before the Hijra
> is without basis. As for jaariya it may mean newborn girl or infant,
> while sabiyya can also be used for an adolescent.
>
Under what basis does GF Haddad claim so? Maybe he will use the
argument
that because Aisha (R) was allegedly 9 when she was married, than it
proves
jariya is used for an infant and sabiyya is used for an adolescent.
> Since the splitting of the moon took place five years before the
> Holy Prophet's (saws) Hijra to Madina, as reported in Bukhari, Muslim,
> the Sunan and Musnad Ahmad from several Companions, it is confirmed
> that `A'isha was born between seven and eight years before the Hijra
> and the words that she was a jaariya five years before the Hijra
> match the fact that her age at the time Surat al-Qamar was revealed
> was around 2.
>
ibn Hajar HOLDS the opinion that the moon split five years prior to
hijrah. Notice that the narration says that Aisha was a child when
the
42nd verse of the surah was alleged to have been revealed. According
to
ibn Shihaab, Suyuti, and Zarkashi, the
revelation of surah Qamar was around the same time as Balad, Qaaf,
Humazah, Tariq, Jinn, and Saad. All of these surahs are generally
held to have been revealed in the first period of prophethood. So
tell us once again Haddad, please inform us of what material you
choose to elevate and which you choose to downplay? The above
statement regarding the splitting of the moon is not established and
it does not find total agreement among the commentators.
> > Aisha (R) is reported to have accompanied the Muslims at the Battle of
> > Badr and Uhud, and it is well known that 15 year old men was the age
> > limit stipulated
> > for men, let alone nine year old girls.
>
> Who told you that `A'isha was present at the battle of Badr and Uhud?
>
Bukhari, Kitaab al-jihaad wa al-siyar
"Anas reports that On the day of Uhud, people could not stand their
ground around the Prophet (pbuh). [On that day,] I saw Ayesha (ra)
and Umm-e-Sulaim (ra), they had pulled their dress up from their feet
[to save them from any hindrance in their movement]."
Muslim, Kitaab al-jihaad wa al-siyar
In the narration of Ayesha regarding Badr, she explicitly mentions her
and the army reaching shajarah. "When we reached shajrah".
Obviously Bukhari and Muslim told us Haddad. Now what is becoming
clearer
is that the information regarding Ayesha's age, whether in Bukhari,
Muslim,
or Tabari contradict each other within themselves. Now the issue
becomes on
what basis should anyone prefer the fact that Ayesha (r) was 9 years
old when
she was married to the Prophet (S).
> > It is well-known that Asma (r) was around 10 years older than Aisha
> > (R).
>
> No it is not. `A'isha was nineteen to twenty years younger than her
> sister Asma' (27 before Hijra-74) and about five years to eight years
> Fatima's junior.
>
According to Abd al-Rahman ibn abi zannaad:
Asma (ra) was ten years older than Ayesha. (Siyar A`la'ma'l-nubala',
Al-Zahabi, Vol. 2, pg. 289, Arabic, Mu'assasatu'l-risala'h, Beirut,
1992)
She [i.e. Asma] was ten years elder to her sister [i.e. Ayesha].
(Al-Bidaayah wa al-Nihaayah, Ibn Kathir, Vol. 8, pg. 371, Arabic, Dar
al-fikr al-`arabiy, Al-jizah, 1933)
So we have two quotes telling us otherwise. So once again Haddad
which information is bogus? Now once again, to make it clear, there
is
contradictory information regarding the age of Ayesha (R). On what
basis
does Haddad elevate one report over another. Blind tradition I might
say, but
that is my opinion and I could be wrong.
> According to ibn Katheer, Asma (R) died in the 73rd year of
> > hijrah at the age of 100.
> > Asma would have been 27 or 28 at the time of hijra, and Aisha would
> > have been almost 18 years old.
>
> The last clause is your invention. It seems that in maths also you
> practice indiscriminate imitation of your English sources then impute
> others with it.
>
Notice that the information is to prove the contradictory information
regarding Ayesha'a age. Notice that I am not establishing Ayesha's
(R)
age, I am establishing the fact that there is plenty of information
which
contradicts the claims that Ayesha was 9 when she got married. The
throwing
in of the words english sources is irrelevant to the argument and
sidetracking
the issue.
> > Tabari mentions that Abu Bakr (R) had 4 children and all of them were
> > born before Islam. She could not have been at least 14 years old by
> > the time of hijra.
>
> Tabari mentions no such thing. He mentions that Abu Bakr married
> two women in Jahiliyya who bore him four children, one of them `A'isha,
> and two women in Islam who bore him two more children. He never said
> that the first four were "all born before Islam" as you claim. Must I
> spoonfeed you every text to stop you from misquoting and mirespresenting?
>
All four of his [i.e. Abu Bakr's] children were born of his two wives
- the names of whom we have already mentioned - during the pre-Islamic
period. (Tarikh al-umam wa al-mamloo'k, Al-Tabari, Vol. 4, Pg. 50,
Arabic, Dar al-fikr, Beirut, 1979)
Who is misquoting Haddad? It is quite clear that Abu Bakr's children
were
>from two wives and they were all born, whome Tabari already mentioned,
during
the pre-Islamic period. It is very clear that Tabari himself quoted
contradictory
information regarding Ayesha' (R) age.
> > ibn Hisham says Aisha accepted Islam before Umar (R). If the
> > narrations that say Aisha was married at 7 then Aisha would not even
> > been born in the first year of Islam.
>
> Who said she embraced Islam in the first year of Islam? `Umar embraced
> Islam in the year 6 of the Prophethood at age twenty-seven. Moreover,
> read what Ibn Hisham says more carefully. He said `A'isha was small
> at the time, and includes her among those who embraced Islam
> because of Abu Bakr.
>
According to Ibn Hisham, Ayesha (ra) was the 20th or the 21st person
to enter into the folds of Islam (Al-Sirah al-Nabawiyyah, Ibn Hisham,
Vol. 1, Pg. 227 - 234, Arabic, Maktabah al-Riyadh al-hadithah,
Al-Riyadh) While `umar ibn al-khattab was preceded by forty
individuals (Al-Sirah al-Nabawiyyah, Ibn Hisham, Vol. 1, Pg. 295,
Arabic, Maktabah al-Riyadh al-hadithah, Al-Riyadh).
> > Tabari relates that Abu Bakr, when he decided to migrate to ETHIOPIA,
> > went to Mutam with whom Aisha (R) was engaged to his son at the time
> > and requested him to take her as his wife. Mutam refused because of
> > thier Islam and
> > Mutam's son divorced Aisha because of this. If she was seven, she
> > would not have even been born at the time.
>
> Another myth fostered by Indian writers who possess little knowledge
> of Arabic. The reasoning that a betrothal to Jubayr ibn Mut`im would
> suggest anything about age is faulty and shows ignorance of the fact
> that betrothal can take place from the cradle or even before birth.
>
One can only laugh at such reasoning. And son's can divorce these
infants also? One can only imagine the lack of common sense among the
people of Arabia or the common sense of the people of 'traditional'
scholarship. The point is this Haddad:
The request, according to Tabari was said to happen at the time of the
migration
to Abyssinia. That hijrah was 8 years before the migration to Medina.
Tabari
reports the request of marrying Ayesha after Abu Bakr proceeds to
Mutim's house
to seek what later "God had removed the problem he had in his mind".
This happened
allegedly after the Prophet (S) proposed to her. Then Tabari states
that she was 6 years
old at the time. Now if that is the case, by the time the hirjrah to
Medina
started Aisha would have been around 14 years old.
> > ibn Hanbal reports that after the death of Khadija, the suggestion
> > came to the Prophet to marry a BIKR or a thayyib. Bikr is never used
> > for a jariyah.
>
> Ma shaa' Allah. For your information, bikr means a virgin who has
> never been married before. It is very much used for a jaariya.
>
Sorry. You have not given any support and I acknowledge those
well-versed in classical arabic and pre-islamic poetry. Notice how
absurd the claims of Haddad would be in the narration. If one even
examines
the context of narration it becomes clear what is being established:
According to a narrative reported by Ahmad ibn Hanbal, after the death
of Khadijah (ra),
when Khaulah (ra) came to the Prophet (pbuh) advising him to marry
again, the Prophet (pbuh)
asked her regarding the choices she had in her mind. Khaulah said:
"You can marry a virgin (bikr)
or a woman who has already been married (thayyib)".
As is clear Khaulah was referring to the issue of widow verses one who
has never
been married before, and that in no way refers to a little child, i.e.
infant.
> > ibn Hajar reports Aisha was 5 years younger than Fatima and Fatima was
> > born when the Prophet (S) was 35 years old.
> > If this info. is correct Aisha could have been at least 14 to 15 when
> > she was married.
>
> More wonderfully selective misquoting. Ibn Hajar never reports only
> one, but TWO possible dates for the birth of Fatima al-Zahra' (ra):
> (i) The year the Ka'ba was rebuilt, five years before Prophethood,
> when the Prophet (saws) was 35. This is reported by al-Waqidi ALONE
> who is discarded as a hadith narrator. (ii) The forty-first year of
> the Prophet (saws). This is reported by al-Hakim in al-Mustadrak
> through two chains, Ibn `Abd al-Barr in al-Isti`ab, and al-Mizzi
> in Tahdhib al-Kamal. BOTH dates are cited in the Isaba which adds
> that Fatima was five years older than `A'isha. By the first date,
> therefore, the age of `A'isha the year the marriage was consummated
> (2H) would be 15; by the second date, 9 - the age confirmed by the
> totality of the reports in the Sahihs and Sunan.
>
First of all, Waqidi is not discarded as a historian and the
information
of Ayesha's age is historical. Second, the point is not to establish
the age
of Ayesha, the point is to demonstrate the contradictory information.
As
established above, it is not the totality of reports which is
establish
Ayesha's age as 9.
> > So what is obvious is that the information is not bogus and there is
> > very good reason to question the narratives of Hisham in Iraq.
>
> The information is bogus, your knowledge lacking, and your method dishonest.
>
Answer the above and keep your personal snide comments to yourself.
> More nonsense. Among the chains I have cited are several that have
> no Iraqis in them for reports on `A'isha's age confirming the Iraqis.
> That was the point of bringing them up. But I have to explain everything
> twice while you continue to put your foot in your mouth. As for
> mumbling that those chains are inauthentic, it is enough to say that
> the chain of `Abd al-Razzaq through al-Zuhri meets the criterion
> of the Sahihayn, as does the chain of Abu Ishaq from al-Qasim ibn
> Muhammad. The others are also authentic but beneath that criterion.
>
Contrary to Haddad I did clarify that there do exist narrations that
exist,
but I made clear mention of the fact that they are not considered
reliable.
I quoted 2 cases of this fact. Haddad obviously recognized this
because of
his statements "mumbling that those chains are inauthentic.' Instead
of giving
considerable weight to those arguments, he merely gives another chain.
1. First of all, you only quoted the first member in the chain. When
one refers to chains containg Iraqis,
it does not imply that Iraqis have to be in the first generation. You
brought up narrators
>from the first chain, and that is all.
2. The narrators that mention Urwa are the ones considered generally
reliable. Those that
you brought up, I specifically acknowledged and said that they are not
consider reliable.
They are not saheeh as stated before and no amount of side-stepping
can
make them so. That is why you merely mentioned the chain going
through
Abd al Razzak, of which I have material on at home and hopefully will
quote later on.
As far as Zuhri is concerned, even though he is generally considered
reliable,
has been accused of mudrij and mudallis. I will expect Haddad to come
with another personal remark:
Zuhri used to explain various Ahadith a lot and many a time he would
not mention the particle [of speech] from which would be known whether
the words were from the Prophet (sws) or from Zuhri. So some of his
contemporaries would always ask him to separate his words from those
of the Prophet (sws). (Sakhawi, Fathu'l-Mughis, vol. 1, [Beirut:
Daru'l Kutub al-‘Ilmiyyah, 1996], p. 267-8)
Rabi‘ah would say to Ibn Shihab: My situation is totally different
>from you. Whatever I say, I say it from my own self and you say it on
the authority of the Prophet (sws) and so you must be careful, and it
is not befitting for a person to waste himself [like this]. (Bukhari,
Tacrikhu'l-Kabir, vol. 3, [Beirut: Daru'l-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyyah], pp.
286-7)
Rabi‘ah would say to Ibn Shihab: When you narrate something according
to your own opinion, always inform the people that this is your own
view. And when you narrate something from the Prophet (sws), always
inform them that it is from the Prophet (sws) so that they do not
consider it to be your opinion. (Khatib Baghdadi, Al-Faqih wa
Al-Mutafaqqih, vol. 1, [Lahore: Daru'l-Ahya al-Sunnah], p. 148)
Zuhri would narrate Ahadith and on most occasions would insert
sentences from his own self. Some of these would be Mursal and some of
them would be his own. (Ibn Rajab, Fathu'l-Bari, 1st ed., vol. 5,
[Jaddah: Dar Ibn al-Jawzi, 1996], p. 286)
Sometimes, a group of people would present a Hadith to him to
corroborate something. So, at times, he would narrate from the whole
group and sometimes from one person of that group. This would be
according to the way he felt during the narration. Sometimes, he would
insert the Hadith narrated by one into that narrated by someone else
as he has done so in the Hadith of Ifk besides others. When he would
feel lazy, he would narrate Mursal Ahadith, and when he would be
feeling fresh, he would narrate Muttasil ones. It is because of this
that his companions differ a lot about him. (Zarqani, Sharah Mu'atta,
vol. 3, [Beirut, Daru'l-Fikr], p. 377)
When we would meet Ibn Shihab, there would arise a difference of
opinion in many issues. When any one of us would ask him in writing
about some issue, he, in spite of being so learned, would give three
very different answers, and he would not even be aware of what he had
already said. It is because of this that I have left him – something
which you did not like. (Ibn Qayyim, I'lamu'l Muwaqqi‘in, vol. 3,
[Beirut: Daru'l-Jayl], p. 85)
And it is also not strange that it is the chains of Zuhri which single
out Umar during the event of the last will, and it is also not strange
> The general import of the verse is the disbelievers' claim that the
> Prophetic revelation is all an act of magic. The specific
> unambiguous statement would have been what I described above,
> which is not the case since the Prophet (saws) is human and
> therefore CAN be affected by magic. However, Allah protected him
> from being affected in matters related to the revelation. What
> is the difficulty in this?
>
The general import is that the Prophet started speaking revelation
because he was affected by magic. There is absolutely NO DISTINCTION
between the act of revelation and normal self. "You are following
a man possessed." It is as simple as that.
Notice that the argument of magic is claimed by the DISBELIEVERS. It
is
being stated by the disbelievers that ok, yes we know Muhammad's
character is
impeccable and he does not lie, but we also know good people who have
been
affected by magic. So we will claim Muhammad is possessed. the issue
is not one
of revelation but the personality that is speaking the revelation.
As if the disbelievers made any distinction between revelation and
the Prophet's normal self and Like I said before, a mere play on
words.
Allah protected the Prophet from many things, and he absolutely did
not allow anything to affect that Prophet that could lend any credence
to the notion that the revelation was not from God, or that Muhammad
was
under the affect of something which affected his intellect. It is
enough
to note that one of the arguments to establish the credibility of the
Prophet (S)
>from the Quran
was his sound and decisive character, INTELLECTUALLY that is.
> Wrong reasoning. He was never affected by magic in the matter of
> revelation but in a worldly matter. The Prophet (saws) himself
> said, "In worldly matters, I may err like anyone among you."
>
One
can only wonder how Haddad likes to try and jump around with totally
irrelevant hadeeth.
> The Qur'an is not like a newspaper one picks up and reads. Do not
> flatter yourself and recast your lack of grounding and fantasies as
> "the pursuit of truth." May the truth be saved from such defenders!
> Your objections, in fact, are the soul of misguided imitation,
May God guide us all to the truth. I prefer to hold fast to the
Quran, and
the Quran says quite clearly that Muhammad was not affected by magic,
plain and
simple. The Quran is clear and it is much clearer than any newpaper
one picks up
and reads.
> as are the nincompoop remarks of another respondent on Isra' that
> "Confirmation of the trip to the heavens are sketchy at best.
> As to what happened during it, it is even more sketchy." This,
> when the ascension to heaven is narrated from no less than 45 Companions.
>
The Isra has absolutely no relevance to the topic at hand.
As far as the narrations of miraaj in HADEETH they are sketchy and
many fabricated, but as far as the Quran is concerned it is not.
In fact, those narrations priamrily take away from the significant
import
of the experience.
The primary prupose of recounting the miraaj, especially in surah
Najm,
is to prove the authoritativeness of the Prophetic experience and
there
being absolutely no chance the Prophet mistaking this for something
in his mind, i.e. sub-conscience. Thus, the Quran speaks very
eloquently
about Gabriel's figure and how he approached the Prophet to two bows
length
, ney even less, and the description
of the further limits of creation represented by the Lote tree.
The Quran then goes onto recount the
disbelievers and what they worship as nothing but a clear example of
the perverted
nature of their minds, for they make angels daughters and their idols
are females,
and naked, similar to the idols one finds in India. They represent
more of
a sexual perversion than they do the truth.
The Quran also tells us miraaj was a prelude to the hijrah and
demonstrates the
universal mission of Muhammad, i.e. it was a prepartion for the
establishment
of the Muslim state. Thus God Almighty ties the mission of Muhammad
with the
Farthest masjid, i.e. Jeruslame. It is no coincidence that hijrah
marked
the birth of the Jewish state, just as hijrah marked the birth of the
Islamic state.
> > The play on the sentences is quite amusing and like I said before
> > Jassas' argument stands upon the Quran, the furqan.
>
> Then you should find hilarious your ignorance that not only the totality
> of the hadith Masters but Fakhr al-Din al-Razi himself reject al-Jassas'
> argument and accept the fact that the Prophet (saws) was the temporary
> victim of a spell. But the ostrich instinct in some is irresistible.
>
Notice that this falls nothing short of an attack on character. The
argument is that scholars have rejected hadeeth despite their isnad
and Razi himself has done it. You can run around this all you want
and whether
Razi rejected Jassas' argument does not negate the fact that like
Jassas,
Razi has rejected hadeeth despite the isnad.
> > Please Haddad. The point is clear. [long talk deleted]
>
> Just answer the question. Or else explain where you get off making up
> hadiths to badmouth Sahih al-Bukhari.
>
This was never the issue in the first place. The whole point of
bringing
up the issue of Hisham was to merely illustrate the fact that hadeeth
are
not accepted by isnad alone. People can allege that a certain hadeeth
was
narrated to an individual, when in reality those two never even met.
Thus,
isnad is a starting point. In the same manner, I brought up the issue
that
hadeeth have been rejected merely on the fact that they contradicted
the Quran,
and this was done even by the Sahabah. I then quoted how hadeeth are
rejected
by common sense, and gave evidence to support this.
And no Haddad ends with nothing, but silence on all these points, thus
he very conveniently snips them away and then tries
to stain the person in anyway possible.
chollanam...@mindspring.com
shared with usenet this thought:
>What are the illiteracy rates in countries with a Muslim majority?
Try here:
http://www.factmonster.com/countries.html
and here:
Bear in mind that international statistics may be very detailed but
not very true.
--
bruce
The dignified don't even enter in the game.
--The Jam
asimm...@yahoo.com
1. The narrations of magic, as I briefly went through a discussion on
them, are reported ONLY through Hisham through his father. They are
NOT reported even by Imam Malik, though he was obviously an
outstanding pupil of the scholar. This is another clear example which
gives considerable evidence to the fact that Hisham reported unusual
hadeeth in Medina, or the opinion of Habibur Rehman Kandhalawi is that
hadeeth were attributed to Hisham through his father by liars to give
it credence.
2. The narration is alleged to have been reported ONLY through Aisha
(R). Where are the other wives? Such an event where the Prophet (S)
had no clue of the worldly matters, some even claiming he did not know
if he slept with his wives, yet only one wife reported it?
3. The narration is ahad for the first three generations, i.e. nobody
new about it except the first few people.
4. Some later scholars have said surah falaq and surah nas were
revealed because of this and there is no mention of this in the
hadeeth attributed to Hisham. It is obviously nothing but an
intepretation by these scholars to give weight to the claim of magic
by saying these 2 surahs were revealed in Medina because of this
incident. But we very well know that even there own sources
contradict them, because the 2 surahs are acknowledged as Makki by
them.
5. I also came across the fact that according to Habibur Rehman, the
narration that Hisham's memory suffered was also the view of Uqaili.
asimm...@yahoo.com
> Bukhari, Kitaab al-jihaad wa al-siyar
>
> "Anas reports that On the day of Uhud, people could not stand their
> ground around the Prophet (pbuh). [On that day,] I saw Ayesha (ra)
> and Umm-e-Sulaim (ra), they had pulled their dress up from their feet
> [to save them from any hindrance in their movement]."
>
> Muslim, Kitaab al-jihaad wa al-siyar
>
> In the narration of Ayesha regarding Badr, she explicitly mentions her
> and the army reaching shajarah. "When we reached shajrah".
>
There is also a narration in Bukhari that relates the story of the
Prophet coming to the house of Abu Bakr (R) at noon before the hijrah
to Medina.
First, this is related by Aisha herself, and she explains that by then
she was of sensible age, and age where a she fully understand what is
going on and the importance of the event.
Second, the Prophet asked Abu Bakr (R) to tell those in the house to
leave. Abu Bakr (R) did not say that the Prophet's wife was there and
Asma, but said His two daughters were present.
Third, it is very clear that not only did Asma (R) make the
preparations, but Aisha (R) was heavily involved. It is this incident
that Asma (R) tore a piece of her cloth so that the food could be
packed and she was given a nickname for this.
Foruth, this hadeeth is a direct contradiction to ibn Ishaque's
reporting of Ali (R) sleeping in the bed of the Prophet. Besides ibn
Ishaque's narration is being unacceptable on isnad grounds, it
contradicts many authoritative reports proving otherwise. The
narration of the incident of Ali (R) is nothing but a fabrication of
the Rafidhis to try and counteract the greatness of Abu Bakr (R) and
his close association with the Prophet (S).
asimm...@yahoo.com
> and whether
> Razi rejected Jassas' argument does not negate the fact that like
> Jassas,
> Razi has rejected hadeeth despite the isnad.
As a note, it is well-established that Razi said something to the
effect that either a Prophet can lie or the narrators themselves are
liars. The choice is obvious. Razi has rejected the hadeeth that
Ibraheem allegedly lied on 3 occasions on this basic premise and isnad
had absolutely NOTHING to do with his opinion.
As I said before, whether people remain true to their own standards is
a totally different issue.
GF Haddad
> 1. The narrations of magic, as I briefly went through a discussion on
> them, are reported ONLY through Hisham through his father.
Wrong. The narration of magic is also reported through other chains
>from Zayd ibn Arqam per the criterion of Muslim in more than a dozen
primary sources. Those chains do NOT mention Hisham nor his father.
They are
> NOT reported even by Imam Malik, though he was obviously an
> outstanding pupil of the scholar.
They are reported by Malik's colleague al-Layth ibn Sa`d, whom some
considered greater than Malik. Anyway, it is the weakest of arguments
to try to derive a proof from the absence of a report in the Muwatta.
This is another clear example which
> gives considerable evidence to the fact that Hisham reported unusual
> hadeeth in Medina, or the opinion of Habibur Rehman Kandhalawi is that
> hadeeth were attributed to Hisham through his father by liars to give
> it credence.
This is gibberish.
> 2. The narration is alleged to have been reported ONLY through Aisha
> (R). Where are the other wives? Such an event where the Prophet (S)
> had no clue of the worldly matters, some even claiming he did not know
> if he slept with his wives, yet only one wife reported it?
Ignorance of the Sira typically results in misjudgments.
There is a whole volume compiled on the matters and positions which
`A'isha alone knew or held, or in which she corrected other Sahaba.
It is not just "only one wife" but the woman about whom al-Zuhri said
that her science outweighed those of all other women in creation.
And, once more, arguments ab absentia are non-proofs.
Take the narration about ghusl being required for mere penetration
even without ejaculation. When the Sahaba went to Hafsa for confirmation,
she said: "I have no knowledge of this." WHen they came to `A'isha,
she confirmed it for them.
> 3. The narration is ahad for the first three generations, i.e. nobody
> new about it except the first few people.
First, Ibn Sa`d alone narrates it from several Tabi`in other than
`Urwa, including al-Zuhri, which suggests tawatur from the second
layer. Second, if a narration had to be mutawatir to be considered
true, much of the Shari`a would be invalid.
> 4. Some later scholars have said surah falaq and surah nas were
> revealed because of this and there is no mention of this in the
> hadeeth attributed to Hisham. It is obviously nothing but an
> intepretation by these scholars to give weight to the claim of magic
> by saying these 2 surahs were revealed in Medina because of this
> incident. But we very well know that even there own sources
> contradict them, because the 2 surahs are acknowledged as Makki by
> them.
This is moot in light of the fact that the hadith of magic is
unanimously considered authentic. The disagreement of one or two
minor scholars leaves this unanimity intact.
> 5. I also came across the fact that according to Habibur Rehman, the
> narration that Hisham's memory suffered was also the view of Uqaili.
Uncross your facts already. Al-`Uqayli expressed no such view
and he does not even have a chapter on Hisham in his compendium.
The reality of witchcraft is mentioned in the Qur'an. It can be learned, it
has material effects such as separating husband and wife, and practicing
it causes disbelief. The Prophet Musa (AS) was its victim at the hands of
Pharaoh's magicians but he quickly recovered through the firming of Allah
Most High and defeated them.
The effect of witchcraft on the Prophet (SAWS) was in a worldly matter,
not Divine revelation nor lawgiving, and it was temporary - a couple of
days. Whoever claims that it lasted one year is a shameless liar.
In no way does it affect his status as Prophet or his immunity from
error and sin, which are solidly established by innumerable proofs.
The wisdom of this incident is to show us (1) another of the marks of
Prophetship, namely his (SAWS) being told by the angel of the harm done to
him; (2) the reality of witchcraft and its place within Divinely-ordained
material causes and effects; (3) the protection against it afforded by
du`a; (4) the ultimate immunity of the believers against it although they
may be tried by it; (5) the need to take precautions against it through
certain daily recitations - as revealed in other narrations - such as
Surat al-Baqara, or Ayat al-Kursi, or its last two verses; (6) the
forgiving character of the Prophet (SAWS), who did not seek any revenge
against the Jew nor even spoke to him; (7) the most effective cure against
a spell is the physical removal of the object with which it was cast as
shown by other narrations of the above which state that "the Prophet
(SAWS) seemed as if to arise from somnolence when it was brought to him."
Hajj Gibril
GF Haddad
> > > Aisha (R) is reported to have accompanied the Muslims at the Battle of
> > > Badr and Uhud, and it is well known that 15 year old men was the age
...
> "Anas reports that On the day of Uhud, people could not stand their
> ground around the Prophet (pbuh). [On that day,] I saw Ayesha (ra)
> and Umm-e-Sulaim (ra), they had pulled their dress up from their feet
> [to save them from any hindrance in their movement]."
So it is Anas who told you. And you claim that "it is well known
that 15 year old men was the age limit stipulated for men, let
alone nine year old girls." But how old Anas was at the time of
the battle of Uhud?! [Note: he was two-three years older than `A'isha.]
> In the narration of Ayesha regarding Badr, she explicitly mentions her
> and the army reaching shajarah. "When we reached shajrah".
The meaning here is either that she was among those who were greeting
farewell, or that she meant by "We" the Muslim army. Al-Nawawi.
The strong narrations do not contradict each other one bit. On the
contrary, a review of the narrations and chains confirm the age
of 9 beyond doubt.
> According to Abd al-Rahman ibn abi zannaad:
> Asma (ra) was ten years older than Ayesha. (Siyar A`la'ma'l-nubala',
> Al-Zahabi, Vol. 2, pg. 289, Arabic, Mu'assasatu'l-risala'h, Beirut,
> 1992)
A few lines before, al-Dhahabi himself states Asma' was between
eleven and nineteen years older than `A'isha.
By the way: Ibn Abi al-Zinad is among those who report the hadith
of sihr AND the hadith of nine year-old.
> She [i.e. Asma] was ten years elder to her sister [i.e. Ayesha].
> (Al-Bidaayah wa al-Nihaayah, Ibn Kathir, Vol. 8, pg. 371, Arabic, Dar
> al-fikr al-`arabiy, Al-jizah, 1933)
Ibn Kathir provides no authority for this and he probably takes
it from Ibn Abi al-Zinad.
Ibn Hajar is more reliable than both of them in this matter, but
al-Dhahabi happens to agree with him.
> So we have two quotes telling us otherwise. So once again Haddad
> which information is bogus?
We do not have two quotes telling us otherwise. We have a single
report unendorsed by Ibn Hajar and al-Dhahabi, who apparently
relied on other evidence that was stronger in their view.
> > > Tabari mentions that Abu Bakr (R) had 4 children and all of them were
> > > born before Islam. She could not have been at least 14 years old by
> > > the time of hijra.
> > Tabari mentions no such thing. He mentions that Abu Bakr married
> > two women in Jahiliyya who bore him four children, one of them `A'isha,
> > and two women in Islam who bore him two more children. He never said
> > that the first four were "all born before Islam" as you claim. Must I
> > spoonfeed you every text to stop you from misquoting and mirespresenting?
> All four of his [i.e. Abu Bakr's] children were born of his two wives
> - the names of whom we have already mentioned - during the pre-Islamic
> period. (Tarikh al-umam wa al-mamloo'k, Al-Tabari, Vol. 4, Pg. 50,
> Arabic, Dar al-fikr, Beirut, 1979)
Incorrect translation. The text of al-Tabari means:
All four of those children were born of his two wives whom we just
named, [married] in the pre-Islamic period, and he married, in Islam,
Asma' bint `Umays... etc.
> 2. The narrators that mention Urwa are the ones considered generally
> reliable. Those that
> you brought up, I specifically acknowledged and said that they are not
> consider reliable.
> They are not saheeh as stated before and no amount of side-stepping
> can
> make them so.
It is no problem for someone who confuses correction with "linguisitic
disputation" to confuse refutation with side-stepping. I would have
preferred to side-step this entire ignorant and rude discussion.
However, its falsehoods bordering on lies about the Sira needed to be
refuted. The above is one such falsehood concerning the narrations.
I already mentioned the reply in passing. There are authentic
narrations in Ibn Sa`d, `Abd al-Razzaq, Ibn Abi Shayba, and others.
I will not go into them here but may post a detailed study of these
narrations in the future, insha Allah. Salam.
Hajj Gibril
GF Haddad
Qas...@ziplip.com
asimm...@yahoo.com
proofs that GF Haddad provided. The issue of magic and its effects
are not disputed and it is totally irrelevant to the validity that the
Prophet was unaffacted by magic.
There are differences of opinion of what magic really does, for
example Abu Hanifa holds it only as affecting the psyche and it is
similar to the opinion of the Mutazliah in the matter.
> The Prophet Musa (AS) was its victim at the hands of
> Pharaoh's magicians but he quickly recovered through the firming of Allah
> Most High and defeated them.
>
Musa was not a 'victim' of the spell. First of all, Moses was sent to
compete against the magicians and to nullify, by the will of God
Almighty, the magic feats. It is incumbent to see the trick of the
enmy to diffuse the trick of the enemy. Second, Moses was fully in
his SENSES. This is in absolutely no comparison to the claim that
Muhammad was affected by magic and did NOT KNOW he was affected by
magic. Third, to liken a mere instant where Moses saw the work of
magic to Muhammad (S) being affected by magic for whatever length of
time, and was not in a proper state of mind is absolutely absurd.
> The effect of witchcraft on the Prophet (SAWS) was in a worldly matter,
> not Divine revelation nor lawgiving, and it was temporary - a couple of
> days. Whoever claims that it lasted one year is a shameless liar.
First, whether it lasted one year, three months, or two days it is
absolutely bogus. Second, as stated before, it was the disbelievers
who claimed that revelation was a product of magic. They did not
recognize that it came from God Almighty, and the distinction between
wordly affairs and revelational affairs is non-existent for their
argument. Third, with such a a crass distinction one can only wonder
how our friends can draw the line between worldy affairs and
revelational affairs for s Prophet. Fourth, it is quite clear that
Islam is a deen of the intellect and to claim that magic affected the
noble being who is the worthyy example of intellect is bogus.
> The wisdom of this incident is to show us (1) another of the marks of
> Prophetship, namely his (SAWS) being told by the angel of the harm done to
> him;
This is bogus. Angels have sent for many purposes, and to claim this
as a wisdom that is delineated in the act of magic is absurd. This is
established without such a narration.
(2) the reality of witchcraft and its place within Divinely-ordained
> material causes and effects;
The Quran already recognizes the effects of magic and that is not the
issue. The issue is whether a Prophet can be affected by magic and the
Quran quite clearly says it cannot.
(3) the protection against it afforded by
> du`a;
Like I said before, the claim that surah nas and surah falaq were
revealed for magic is not even substantiated. It again is bogus. The
protection of seeking refuge in dua from magic does not need any
establishment from such an incident.
(4) the ultimate immunity of the believers against it although they
> may be tried by it;
This is irrelevant to the incident. This in no way establishes
loigically the incident of a Prophet being affected by magic as none
of your examples do.
(5) the need to take precautions against it through
> certain daily recitations - as revealed in other narrations - such as
> Surat al-Baqara, or Ayat al-Kursi, or its last two verses;
Like I said before, these narrations are provided by different hadeeth
and none of them are related to this incident.
(6) the
> forgiving character of the Prophet (SAWS), who did not seek any revenge
> against the Jew nor even spoke to him;
It did not happen.
(7) the most effective cure against
> a spell is the physical removal of the object with which it was cast as
> shown by other narrations of the above which state that "the Prophet
> (SAWS) seemed as if to arise from somnolence when it was brought to him."
>
even the narrations contradict themselves about how the magic was
removed. Some say the magic was invalidated before he even went to
the well. But that is a different story. It never happened.
"And the say He is a man possessed." These people are nothing but
liars.
asimm...@yahoo.com
> Ignorance of the Sira typically results in misjudgments.
The rationalality GF Haddad is using to attempt to demonstrate such a
bogus event is nothing short of absurd.
> There is a whole volume compiled on the matters and positions which
> `A'isha alone knew or held, or in which she corrected other Sahaba.
> It is not just "only one wife" but the woman about whom al-Zuhri said
> that her science outweighed those of all other women in creation.
> And, once more, arguments ab absentia are non-proofs.
>
> Take the narration about ghusl being required for mere penetration
> even without ejaculation. When the Sahaba went to Hafsa for confirmation,
> she said: "I have no knowledge of this." WHen they came to `A'isha,
> she confirmed it for them.
>
First, notice how the claim of an event such as magic affecting the
intellect of the Prophet as being similar to an issue of fiqh, and
that same event states the Prophet as not being right in his 'worldly
matters' as Haddad likes to describe it. Now any wife who is
observant of her husband would know that her husband is not in the
proper state of mind. To claim that only Aisha knew of such an event
is nothing but a mockery of those who possess the least bit of comon
sense.
Second, there are clear stipulations by many of the hadeeth masters
that those types of events that are extraordinary and should have been
reported by a number of individuals but are not, are unacceptable.
Among these are hadeeth that claim the sun turned back in the incident
of Hadhrat Ali and the missing gof Asr prayers. The evnt of magic and
the event of fiqh are not alike.
Third, the affects of magic as stated before can stain the credibility
of revelation and infallibility of the Prophets (AS). It is just as
similar to the claim that Satan caused the Prophet to insert
revelation and the Quran itself rejects such an absurd notion. In
fact, the Quran vehemenlty condemns such a notion and narrations such
as these are nothing but fabrications of apostates.
Fourth, this narration is quite incredible itself for it says Hafsa
was unaware of the issue of ejeculation and ghusl though it was
obvious that she was the wife of the Prophet (S).
> > 3. The narration is ahad for the first three generations, i.e. nobody
> > new about it except the first few people.
>
> First, Ibn Sa`d alone narrates it from several Tabi`in other than
> `Urwa, including al-Zuhri, which suggests tawatur from the second
> layer. Second, if a narration had to be mutawatir to be considered
> true, much of the Shari`a would be invalid.
>
First, it does not matter if it was tawtur from the second layer. It
is not mutawatir to the Companions.
Second, we have a differnec of opinion on what constitutes shareeah
and what does not constitue it. Just as a quick note, there was a
clear distinction between sunnah and hadeeth in the early days and
this is evdient in the debates between Awzai and Abu Yusuf. We do not
proay because of Bukari or Muslim, we pray because of the practical
perpetuation of the ummah.
Third, this is not an issue of what you term shareeah but an issue
where it is claimed an event of unimaginable proportions is only
reported through one chain.
> This is moot in light of the fact that the hadith of magic is
> unanimously considered authentic. The disagreement of one or two
> minor scholars leaves this unanimity intact.
>
Facts are moot that claim reciting certain surahs was demonstrated to
ward off the effects of magic which you later on say that is one of
the wisdoms of the incident.
asimm...@yahoo.com
> asimm...@yahoo.com wrote in message news:<adl40n$f80$1...@samba.rahul.net>...
>
> > > > Aisha (R) is reported to have accompanied the Muslims at the Battle of
> > > > Badr and Uhud, and it is well known that 15 year old men was the age
> ...
>
> > "Anas reports that On the day of Uhud, people could not stand their
> > ground around the Prophet (pbuh). [On that day,] I saw Ayesha (ra)
> > and Umm-e-Sulaim (ra), they had pulled their dress up from their feet
> > [to save them from any hindrance in their movement]."
>
> So it is Anas who told you. And you claim that "it is well known
> that 15 year old men was the age limit stipulated for men, let
> alone nine year old girls." But how old Anas was at the time of
> the battle of Uhud?! [Note: he was two-three years older than `A'isha.]
>
What is obvious is that from the narrations it is explicit that Ayesha
(R) was heavily involved in the incident of Uhud and to claim that she
was a mere child is nothing short of an absurdity. I do not even know
Haddad attempts to prove age when these woman were pulling up their
dresses from their feet to prevent any hindrance of movement. Now
Uhud, and Badr were 1 year (?) apart and it makes no difference about
Badr, but to proceed with Badr:
What Haddad is failing to get through his mind is that the narrations
within themselves contradict each other. Whetehr any scholar holds
the opinion otherwise is irrelevant to the point. ibn Hajar or
Dhahabi could hold the opinion that Ayesha was nine years old, but
that is from their intepretation of the narrations. But what is clear
is that the narrations contradict themselves.
> > In the narration of Ayesha regarding Badr, she explicitly mentions her
> > and the army reaching shajarah. "When we reached shajrah".
>
> The meaning here is either that she was among those who were greeting
> farewell, or that she meant by "We" the Muslim army. Al-Nawawi.
>
First, the incident is quite clearly the words of Ayesha who is
narrating the events taking place. There is absolutely nothing of the
sort to even prove such an opinion that it refers to the We of the
Muslim army.
Second, There is nothing to support that Ayesha was greeting the
people off and it again is another case of inserting what is not
present.
Third, it is merely an opinion of Nawawi, which in no way establishes
the age of Ayesha.
> The strong narrations do not contradict each other one bit. On the
> contrary, a review of the narrations and chains confirm the age
> of 9 beyond doubt.
>
We have seen Hadda's review of them.
> > According to Abd al-Rahman ibn abi zannaad:
>
> > Asma (ra) was ten years older than Ayesha. (Siyar A`la'ma'l-nubala',
> > Al-Zahabi, Vol. 2, pg. 289, Arabic, Mu'assasatu'l-risala'h, Beirut,
> > 1992)
>
> A few lines before, al-Dhahabi himself states Asma' was between
> eleven and nineteen years older than `A'isha.
>
So what! That is Dhahabi's opinion, and he could have given that age
>from an estimate related to the narrations of Ayesha' being nine years
old. But as stated before, there is absolutely no reason to elevate
one narration over the other.
> By the way: Ibn Abi al-Zinad is among those who report the hadith
> of sihr AND the hadith of nine year-old.
>
And it proves that the narrations contradict each other, which further
substantiuate the point. Internally, the hadeeth contradict each other
and the claim that Ayesha is nine is not even established.
> > She [i.e. Asma] was ten years elder to her sister [i.e. Ayesha].
> > (Al-Bidaayah wa al-Nihaayah, Ibn Kathir, Vol. 8, pg. 371, Arabic, Dar
> > al-fikr al-`arabiy, Al-jizah, 1933)
>
> Ibn Kathir provides no authority for this and he probably takes
> it from Ibn Abi al-Zinad.
>
And notice his following argument.
> Ibn Hajar is more reliable than both of them in this matter, but
> al-Dhahabi happens to agree with him.
>
Wow. ibn Hajar is more reliable in this matter, God only knows why ibn
Hajar is more authoritative in determing the age of Ayesha than these
others.
> > So we have two quotes telling us otherwise. So once again Haddad
> > which information is bogus?
>
> We do not have two quotes telling us otherwise. We have a single
> report unendorsed by Ibn Hajar and al-Dhahabi, who apparently
> relied on other evidence that was stronger in their view.
>
What is this evidence but a mere claim.
>
> > All four of his [i.e. Abu Bakr's] children were born of his two wives
> > - the names of whom we have already mentioned - during the pre-Islamic
> > period. (Tarikh al-umam wa al-mamloo'k, Al-Tabari, Vol. 4, Pg. 50,
> > Arabic, Dar al-fikr, Beirut, 1979)
>
> Incorrect translation. The text of al-Tabari means:
> All four of those children were born of his two wives whom we just
> named, [married] in the pre-Islamic period, and he married, in Islam,
> Asma' bint `Umays... etc.
>
No, you are incorrectly translating. It is:
All four of his [i.e. Abu Bakr's] children were born of his two wives
- the names of whom we have already mentioned - during the pre-Islamic
period.
As is clear the words are referring to the children and the wives were
the ones mentioned previously before. Tabari is saying and it is
clear from the context that these wives that we just married had
children who were born in the pre-Islamic period. The sentence has
already shifted from the wives being the subject to the childrne being
the subject.
> It is no problem for someone who confuses correction with "linguisitic
> disputation" to confuse refutation with side-stepping. I would have
> preferred to side-step this entire ignorant and rude discussion.
The claim of ignorant and rude is another falsehood, because it is
clear who throwed the names around first and who accused me of mocking
Bukhari and Muslim, and claiming things such as consensus where there
is none and then claiming me as ignorant and shameless liar and other
false labels, and the superiority of Arab scholarship. You claimed I
threw in bogus information and that Ayesha was not present at Badr and
Uhud, but then it was shown to you that they existed. You can throw
in words such as "linguistic disputation" but you know for a clear
fact that ahadeeth have been rejected despite the isand and God
Almighty himself in the Quran blamed those that passed on the
information in respect to the incident of Ayesha without even
examining the report through reason. God Almighty himself said you
were passing it on from tongue to tongue. Isnad is not the sole
fruits my friend and reason is the final arbitrer. The great Shibli
Numaani brought this out in the beginning of his compil;ation to
seerah. But that is from an Indian writer, and you obviously cannot
learn from them?
> However, its falsehoods bordering on lies about the Sira needed to be
> refuted. The above is one such falsehood concerning the narrations.
> I already mentioned the reply in passing. There are authentic
> narrations in Ibn Sa`d, `Abd al-Razzaq, Ibn Abi Shayba, and others.
> I will not go into them here but may post a detailed study of these
> narrations in the future, insha Allah. Salam.
>
We have seen you go into them and provide nothing except this schoalr
said such and this schoalr said such, and these scholars base their
opinions on narrations that have not been established. There are
contradictory narrations and no amount of side-stepping can change
this basic fact. As stated before, what makes GF Haddad elevate one
report over another? My opinion is that a blind claim to tradition,
but that is my opinion.
asimm...@yahoo.com
> Wrong. The narration of magic is also reported through other chains
> >from Zayd ibn Arqam per the criterion of Muslim in more than a dozen
> primary sources. Those chains do NOT mention Hisham nor his father.
>
It is nice to know that he does not even reference where he takes his
rpoofs from. He argues about hadeeth specialists than quotes texts
>from ibn Saad, which are nothing but seerah. The issue of magic is
related in the seerah books and this is not disputed. The issue is
who is it narrated from.
> They are
> > NOT reported even by Imam Malik, though he was obviously an
> > outstanding pupil of the scholar.
>
> They are reported by Malik's colleague al-Layth ibn Sa`d, whom some
> considered greater than Malik. Anyway, it is the weakest of arguments
> to try to derive a proof from the absence of a report in the Muwatta.
>
We have seen what is reported by whom and the clear fact of the matter
is that it is ahad and they all go through Urwa. Sayyid Qutb even
realized this in his commentary and explicitly mentioned regarding the
hadeeth of magic that narrations reported through a single chain in
matters of faith are unacceptable.
third, it is quite clear that ibn Katheer has said that the mere fact
that the six saheeh books do not contain the event of the sun being
called back for Ali (R) is proof enough of it sfabrication, so to
claim that narrations arenot present in certain books as a weak
argument is in itself a weak argument, especially considering that the
book is compiled by one the PUPILS of Hisham and not just a simple
pupil but an outstanding pupil by the name of Imam Malik. Whether
Layth is greater or not is irrelevant to an established fact.
> This is another clear example which
> > gives considerable evidence to the fact that Hisham reported unusual
> > hadeeth in Medina, or the opinion of Habibur Rehman Kandhalawi is that
> > hadeeth were attributed to Hisham through his father by liars to give
> > it credence.
>
> This is gibberish.
>
I meant to say Iraq and even ibn Hajar reports that there is the view
that some scholars do not take Hisham's reporting in Iraq. Whether
ibn Hajar accepts it or not is his opinion, but by the mere fact that
even the narrations are self-contradictory gives sufficient reason to
be suspicious of Hisham's reporting in Iraq. But in regards to
Habibur Rehman, not only does he say hadeeth were fabricated, but he
demonstrated the contradictory information within the narrations
themselves through Hisham giving more weight to the argument regarding
Hisham not being accepted as a reporter through Iraqis.
>
> > 3. The narration is ahad for the first three generations, i.e. nobody
> > new about it except the first few people.
>
> First, Ibn Sa`d alone narrates it from several Tabi`in other than
> `Urwa, including al-Zuhri, which suggests tawatur from the second
> layer. Second, if a narration had to be mutawatir to be considered
> true, much of the Shari`a would be invalid.
>
ibn Saad is a 'hadeeth specialist' or a 'seerah specialist' and none
of these narrations are credible. And the last sentence is enough to
argue the point that Haddad is lost in what he brings to the table,
and it is a stark example of pulling references together without even
understanding the primary basis on which the argument is rejected.
Besides the point that we disagree on what constitutes shareeah, it is
quite evident that the narration of magic has been rejected because it
contradicts the infallibility of the Prophets and the Quran. The
issue of shareeah is absolutely irrelevant to it, and its rejection is
primarily a rejection of matn which the weakness is further exposed to
the doubts in the transmission. It is also rejected based upon the
event being extraordinary and only being ahad through the first few
generations and this is even admitted. That is why I totally
originated the argument that hadeeth are not accepted by isnad alone.
This is even explicit in the Quran when God Almighty blames those who
pass information from tongue to tongue without even analysing the
information. The information takes precedence over the narrator, but
even then the narrator requirements are to be stringent. Not only
that, God Almighty for business contracts has recommended the use of
two male witnesses and when it comes to shareeah they want us to rely
on one narrator alone? The principle of the Hanafis are very clear in
this regard and from my understanding even Haddad's teacher claims to
be the primary Hanafi scholar, that single narrations are not even
considered because universal principles are not going to be
transmitted by one narrator alone.
asimm...@yahoo.com
> from being affected in matters related to the revelation. What
> is the difficulty in this?
>
Something also came to my mind regarding such a distinction. besides
the fact that there is nothing in the narrations which make such a
distinction between worldly affairs and 'revelational' affairs, let us
give our brother the benefit of the doubt. Now it is clearly
stipulated in such stories that the Prophet did not realize if he
slept with his wives or not. When I argued that how would there be
any distinction, take the following case:
If the Prophet did not realize if he slept with his wives or not, when
does the issue of ghusl come into play? Why would his wives not ask
him if he performed ghusl or not? Under what basis would those who
were observing him not ask? How can one who possesses any common
sense try and justify such a distinction?