5 - ‘Accepting traditions means knowing the men’

Summary

Atānī bi-isnādihi mukhbirun

wa-qad bāna lī kadhibu ′n-nāqilī

Abū ′l-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī

Introduction

The following chapter ties in with the preceding ones. In Chapter 3 the phenomenon of mutawātir traditions was discussed using as a prime example the man kadhaba saying. This saying, or better perhaps, slogan, was brought into circulation in an attempt to curb further spreading of mendacity in ḥadīth. Now I should like to deal with the methods devised by devout muḥaddithūn to detect kadhib and to expose the perpetrators of ḥadīth forgery.

One of the most important measures taken by those concerned with ḥadīth was the scrutiny of transmitters, the origins of which were described in Chapter 1. In Chapter 4 the names of these transmitters – as arranged in the earliest biographical lexica with or without accompanying biographical sketches – were studied, and it may have appeared that a great many names might well be taken as referring to non-existent transmitters. It goes without saying, however, that a sizable number of these names did indeed point to historical personalities. How the most important of those ḥadīth personalities fared at the hands of Islam's earliest ḥadīth (i.e. eventually isnād) critics is the main subject of the present chapter.

It is not likely that ḥadīth criticism in Islam began with isnād criticism, as, indeed, ḥadīth may have had its origins in a time when the institution of the isnād had not yet come into existence.