Hadith studies

[17]) Al Shafi'is advocacy played a decisive role in elevating the status of hadith[18][19] although some skepticism along that of earlier lines would continue.

[20] Once (authentic) hadith had attained their elevated status among the group inspired by al-Shafi'i who sought to establish Islamic practice on the basis of the Sunnah (Muhammad's deeds and sayings), the focus shifted amongst advocates of this group (who were called the ahl al-sunnah, or the "People of the Sunnah") to delineating between reliable or "sound" (ṣaḥīḥ) with unreliable hadith.

The field that arose to meet this need came to be known as the hadith sciences (ʻilm al-ḥadīth), and this practice had entered into a mature stage by the 3rd century of Islam.

[29][Note 3] The criteria for establishing the authenticity (sihha) of hadith came down to corroboration of the same report but from different transmitters,[30] assessing the reliability and character of the transmitters listed in the chain[31] (although Muhammad's companions, the sahaba, were excluded from this as their association with Muhammad immediately guaranteed their character and competence[32]), and the lack of gaps in the chain.

[36] Also throwing doubt on the doctrine that common use of hadith of Muhammad goes back to the generations immediately following the death of the prophet is historian Robert G. Hoyland, who quotes acolytes of two of the earliest Islamic scholars:

Historian Robert G. Hoyland, states during Umayyad times only the central government was allowed to make laws, religious scholars began to challenge this by claiming they had been transmitted hadith by the Prophet.

Even in the present day, and in the buildup to the first Gulf War, a "tradition" was published in the Palestinian daily newspaper Al-Nahar on December 15, 1990, reading: "and described as `currently in wide circulation`", and it quotes the Prophet as predicting that "the Greeks and Franks will join with Egypt in the desert against a man named Sadim, and not one of them will return".

[54] Another criticism of isnads was of the efficacy of the traditional Hadith studies field known as biographical evaluations (ʿilm al-rijāl)—evaluating the moral and mental capacity of transmitters/narrators.

In his 1950 book The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence, Schact introduced the concept of the "Common Link" (CL) to refer to the earliest point at which multiple chains of transmission (isnads) intersect.

In reality, several isnads may have been fabricated and, in this case, a particular transmitter only turns up as a common link because several later figures falsely attributed the same tradition back to them.

It is up to the investigator to determine if a CL or PCL is authentic, and Juynboll argued that the historical plausibility of a common-link is raised the more PCLs converge on it.

Another term Juynboll introduced into common-link theory was a "spider"; this refers to single strands of transmission that completely bypass the CL of many other versions of a report in finding their way to the original figure believed to have conveyed the tradition.

[59] Direct forerunners to the ICMA approach, involving the combined study of the isnad and matn, included Jan Kramers' 1953 article "Une tradition à tendance manichéenne"[60] and Josef van Ess in his 1975 volume Zwischen Ḥadīṯ und Theologie.

[65] The primary advocate of ICMA in the initial stages of the development and application of the method was Motkzi; Motzki believed that the oral transmission of hadith would result in a progressive divergence of multiple versions of the same original report along different lines of transmitters.

By comparing them to pinpoint shared wording, motifs and plots, the original version of a hadith that existed prior to the accrual of variants among different transmitters may be reconstructed.

[70] This includes the body of legal hadith, which was hard to trace back to a time before the end of the first century after the death of Muhammad.

Three camps of scholars may be identified: one attempting to reconfirm his conclusions, and at times going beyond them; another endeavoring to refute them and a third seeking to create a middle, perhaps synthesized, position between the two.

[Note 8] In his Muslim Studies, Goldziher states: "it is not surprising that, among the hotly debated controversial issues of Islam, whether political or doctrinal, there is not one in which the champions of the various views are unable to cite a number of traditions, all equipped with imposing isnads".

[77] Al-Shafi'i himself, the founder of the proposition that "sunna" should be made up exclusively of specific precedents set by Muhammad passed down as hadith, argued that "having commanded believers to obey the Prophet" (citing Quran 33: 21),[78] "God must certainly have provided the means to do so.

[81] Today, the main camps can be divided into "Istanbul-based traditionalists; Ankara-based modernists; and finally Kur’ancılar (Ahl al-Qurʾān)" where the primary points of contention are the Sunnah (and its relevance to modern times) and the authenticity of hadith.

The primary issue voiced by traditionalists is that rejections of the authority of the historicity of hadith will cause future generations to abandon the Sunnah; modernists rebut that this concern stems from a misunderstanding of the mission of Muhammad leading to an acceptance of statements attributed to him that could not be true.

The tradition says: ‘The Messenger of God said: "The Banu al-Asfar [white people], the Byzantines and the Franks [Christian groups] will gather together in the wasteland with Egypt[ians] against a man whose name is Sadim [i.e., Saddam]-- none of them will return.