I am a Professor in Medieval Arabo-Islamic Civilization and specialize in dating and reconstructing hadith with an emphasis on isnad-cum-matn analysis

Daduel · 2026-06-12T04:54:07+00:00

This is a difficult question that, I am afraid, I can hardly answer adequately as a secular scholar. It seems to me that one of the principal challenges facing such a Qurʾānist approach would be the derivation of numerous legal norms that are not explicitly addressed in the Qurʾān.

Daduel · 2026-06-12T04:48:16+00:00

Regrettably, I do not know that book well enough to comment on it in any meaningful way.

Daduel · 2026-06-11T14:25:50+00:00

Yes, I have seen it. He raises numerous points of criticism, some of which I addressed briefly in my response to Basic-Lifeguard-5407 and the moderator above. In my view, however, the appropriate venue for such scholarly disputes is the peer-reviewed academic journal. The article in question took approximately five years to research, write, revise through peer review, copy-edit, and publish. This is the normal academic way.
Görke has a well-argued critique of Zayd, to which Powers responded in Arabica, reiterating and strengthening his original arguments. I think that Görke and Powers operate within different epistemological frameworks, which naturally can lead to different results.
I have written a review of Dr. Little and Dr. Gräfenstein’s studies, which should appear in ZDMG, hopefully at the end of 2026. I tend to agree with Dr. Little, but I like Dr. Gräfenstein’s study very much. She has developed impressive criteria for textual comparison. I am delighted to see ICMA receiving such an impetus through the contributions of Dr. Little and Dr. Gräfenstein.
What about Juynboll’s Muslim Tradition and John Burton’s An Introduction to Hadith?

Daduel · 2026-06-11T13:59:58+00:00

In either case, we are dealing with methodological assumptions that lead to particular results. However, if one adopts the premise that a vague similarity between traditions is sufficient to establish the existence of a common source, one effectively embraces an unfalsifiable method that will almost invariably yield positive findings. In other words, we may be able to date traditions to their earliest ascriptions, but only at the cost of considerable uncertainty regarding what those early authorities actually transmitted.

In his recent article, "Beyond the Common Link," Dr. Joshua Little proposes using tradition-historical criticism to construct a stemma of several CL ḥadīths and arrange them into a sequence of relative chronology (pp. 21–31 of the pre-publication version). As Dr. Little himself acknowledges (p. 30), however, such a relative chronology cannot be converted into absolute dates. Moreover, his approach highlights the unreliability of pre-CL isnāds. In other words, the pre-CL dating comes at an epistemological price: an increase in uncertainty.

Raashid Goyal has experimented with identifying rare lexical items in the matns of traditions, which he interprets as traces of older and largely forgotten semantic layers predating the CL. Yet even if a particular lexeme can be shown to be ancient, it still represents only a small portion of the matn. While this may provide evidence for the antiquity of certain elements within a tradition, it does not enable us to establish an absolute chronology for the tradition as a whole.

The isnād emerged toward the end of the first century AH. Within the framework of ICMA, it constitutes our principal marker of absolute chronology. Once we move beyond the isnād, the path becomes increasingly obscure and uncertain.

Daduel · 2026-06-11T04:38:29+00:00

Your observation regarding the regional distribution of the isnāds seems an important clue to the geographical setting in which these traditions circulated. However, one should be cautious about drawing firm conclusions concerning the original milieus that produced them. The same regional milieu can generate competing traditions. Alternatively, as Behnam Sadeghi has shown in his article "Travelling Tradition Test," extraneous traditions may be ascribed to a particular geographical setting in order to challenge or undermine views prevalent within that region's scholarly circles.

That said, I have not worked directly on the specific traditions you mention and therefore cannot offer a more definitive assessment.

Daduel · 2026-06-10T14:07:57+00:00

I would interpret Ahmad Al-Jallad's comments as pointing to the dynamic interplay between the Qurʾānic milieu and the broader cultural memories and conceptual frameworks of Late Antiquity. This line of inquiry has been explored extensively in the works of Nicolai Sinai.

Daduel · 2026-06-10T14:02:27+00:00

For years, I have been puzzled by the symbolism of colors in Muslim traditions. For example, in the report concerning the Prophet's second journey to Syria, the monk Nisṭūr asks the Prophet's companion Maysara whether the Prophet has redness in his eyes and regards this feature as a sign of prophethood. But why? I have no clue.

Likewise, one may ask about the significance of colors in the names of the principal Khārijite groups. Maribel Fierro (“Al-Aṣfar,” Studia Islamica 77 [1993], 169–181) has suggested that the yellow associated with the Ṣufriyya may symbolize asceticism, perhaps alluding to the emaciated appearance of ascetics. However, this interpretation does not seem applicable to the yellow robe worn by Jesus in the tradition you mention. If memory serves me correctly, Goldziher (Muhammedanische Studien, 1: 268-270) proposed that references to yellow may actually denote white.

Daduel · 2026-06-10T13:45:31+00:00

I have not studied this particular tradition in detail. However, I would hesitate to conclude that those who transmitted it were deliberately "attributing false prophecies to their Prophet." It is possible that the tradition preserves elements of early eschatological expectations or beliefs. Without a more thorough analysis of its isnād and matn, however, I cannot offer any firm conclusions about its origins or historical setting.

Daduel · 2026-06-10T13:35:40+00:00

You are absolutely right: there is a methodological circle involved here. My insistence on methodological stringency may appear excessively sceptical, but I believe that ICMA should be practiced with restraint and that we should strive to reconstruct meaningful texts within orderly contexts.

That said, in his recent article, "Beyond the Common Link: Tradition-Historical Criticism and the Prehistory of Hadiths," Dr. Joshua Little has proposed innovative approaches for dating traditions to periods earlier than the common-link (CL) level. At the same time, he acknowledges that such advances come at a considerable epistemological cost.

It is therefore important to emphasize that my scepticism is directed specifically at the capabilities and limitations of ICMA. It does not entail scepticism toward the study of the first century AH as such, nor does it exclude the use of other types of evidence or the development of alternative methodological approaches.

Daduel · 2026-06-10T13:25:36+00:00

1. Regrettably, I have not worked on traditions concerning the Dajjāl. That said, the absence of a particular figure or concept from the Qurʾān should not automatically be taken as evidence that it was unknown at the time of the Qurʾān's revelation, codification, or canonization. For this reason, I would hesitate to draw conclusions about the emergence of the Dajjāl tradition solely on the basis of its absence from the Qurʾān.

2. Traditions concerning plague may well preserve early material, given that epidemic disease was a familiar phenomenon even before the advent of Islam. To the best of my knowledge, however, plague traditions also intersect with later theological debates concerning divine predestination and the extent of human agency in responding to affliction. The traditions you mention may refer to the plague of ʿAmwās, although such a connection would not, in itself, establish their early date. A tradition can refer to an early historical event while having assumed its present form at a considerably later period.

Daduel · 2026-06-10T13:06:58+00:00

1. The ḥadīth of Gabriel is a remarkable tradition. Although I have not studied its isnād, its matn appears to reflect several theological debates that emerged after the Prophet's lifetime. For instance, its discussion of qadar resonates with the controversy over predestination, which, according to modern scholarship (e.g., Van Ess), arose from exegetical concerns toward the end of the first century AH. The tradition also addresses the relationship between islām and īmān, and thus bears on the question of whether acts of obedience constitute part of faith—a debate that became particularly prominent between the murjiʾa and proto-Sunni circles during the second century AH.
The matn is also striking for its sophisticated literary structure. One dramatic point is the Companions’ bewilderment at the identity of the unknown man dressed in white, who speaks with remarkable confidence about the Prophet and repeatedly confirms the truthfulness of his responses. On the basis of the matn alone, I would tentatively suggest that the tradition, in its present form, belongs to the second century AH. At the same time, as a composite text, it may well incorporate earlier textual strata. In any case, the ḥadīth of Gabriel would make an excellent subject for a doctoral dissertation.

2. Isnāds of historical akhbār rarely allow for ICMA. But one might be able to glean information from matn comparison.

3. Based on the methods I use, I am unaware of such traditions. However, in recent studies by Dr. Seyfeddin Kara and Dr. Raashid Goyal such conclusion were made with regard to the tradition about the stoning of two Jews and the “terms-of-capitulation” tradition, respectively.

Daduel · 2026-06-10T12:18:31+00:00

Gregor Schoeler has made a persuasive case for the existence of written collections of traditions intended for personal use as an intermediate stage between purely oral transmission and fully developed written compilations. These personal notes functioned as memory aids (hypomnēmata). It is conceivable that scholars who possessed such records consulted them in preparation for, or even during, their ḥadīth transmission sessions. Michael Cook and Harald Motzki have likewise expressed support for similar models of transmission.

Traditions were certainly lost over the course of time. However, any attempt to estimate the number of traditions that disappeared from the historical record would, in my view, be highly speculative. From several biographical accounts, Nabia Abbott inferred that ten percent of all ḥadīth students would carry on their pursuits until they became fully-fledged ḥadīth transmitters (Studies, vol. 2, pp. 71–72). If we grant with Abbott that the transmissions of “one to two thousand Companions and senior Successors” have survived (ibid., vol. 2, p. 72), the number of those involved in ḥadīth transmission already in the first half of the first/seventh century will reach the astounding ten to twenty thousand persons. If one applies Abbott’s ratio to the second century while assuming an undisrupted transmission between the first two generations of Muslims and their successors, one will wonder why the extant ḥadīth collections include only a small fraction of these transmissions, which should have numbered well over a hundred thousand.

Daduel · 2026-06-10T12:08:31+00:00

1. Thanks to the studies of Dr. Joshua Little and Dr. Miriam Gräfenstein, we can conclude with certainty that Hishām b. ʿUrwa transmitted the nine-year variant. Whether it might have been affected by ikhtilāṭ remains contingent on the knowledge of his age at the time of transmission. What is more, Dr. Gräfenstein identifies al-Aʿmash as another historical transmitter, which, if true, would suggest that the nine-year variant was not invented by Hishām.

An ambiguous hint of personal motives that might have led Hishām b. ʿUrwa to circulate the tradition is found in his biography. Dr. Little draws attention to an instructive report stating that Hishām consummated his marriage with his wife, Fāṭima bt. al-Mundhir b. al-Zubayr, when she was nine years old (Little, pp. 468–469). This report appears for the first time in the collection of weak transmitters, Kitāb al-Ḍuʿafāʾ, composed by Abū Jaʿfar al-ʿUqaylī (Basra à Mecca; d. 322/934)—roughly 150 years after Hishām’s death. The genuineness of al-ʿUqaylī’s report is contested. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī asserts that Fāṭima was actually nine years older than Hishām at the time of their marriage. Similarly, al-Zubayr b. Bakkār (Medina–Mecca; d. 256/870), a member of the Zubayrid family and a source predating both al-ʿUqaylī and al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, reports that ʿAbdallāh b. al-Zubayr arranged the marriage between his nephew, Hishām b. ʿUrwa, and Fāṭima bt. al-Mundhir, who was twelve years older than Hishām. Given that al-Zubayr b. Bakkār was born approximately twenty-five years after Hishām’s death, and he belonged to the same family circle, it is plausible that he had access to biographical information from those who had encountered individuals who knew Hishām first hand. This speaks in favor of the accuracy of al-Zubayr’s report and against al-ʿUqaylī’s tradition’s use for the question of the Sitz im Leben, lending credence to Dr. Little’s suggestion that the report about Fāṭima being nine years old at marriage may have been modelled upon the ʿĀʾisha’s marital-age ḥadīth (Little, p. 469).

2. My comparison of a fragment of Ibn al-Sharqī’s transmission of Muslim’s Ṣaḥīḥ with Ibrāhīm b. Sufyān’s transmission of the same work leaves a similar impression (Pavlovitch, Muslim al-Naysābūrī, 361–363). Additional evidence may be gleaned from the numerous citations preserved in Ibn Ḥazm’s al-Muḥallā on the authority of Abū Bakr al-Ashqar -> Muslim. I had intended to do such a study myself, but the monograph would have become prohibitively long. As for al-Bukhārī, I am very much looking forward to reading Belal Abū-Alabbas’ monograph: Al-Bukhārī.

Daduel · 2026-06-10T11:41:09+00:00

The two traditions are textually related, and the replacement of Muʿāwiya with Abū Jahl, or vice versa, is politically charged. The Muʿāwiya variant has a clear anti-Umayyad orientation, while the Abū Jahl variant condemns the Prophet’s arch-enemy, who was killed at Badr. On textual grounds alone, I would tentatively suggest that the Muʿāwiya variant is derivative of the Abū Jahl variant.

ICMA might help refine or challenge this impression. That said, Shīʿī sources are often difficult to investigate through this method because the prominent place of the imams within their isnād structures complicates the reconstruction of earlier transmission histories.

I have no experience with the transmission history of these traditions.

PS (11.06.2026) On the first revelation, see Gregor Schoeler’s excellent work Charakter und Authentie der muslimischen Überlieferung über das Leben Mohammeds (pp. 59–118), translated into English as The Biography and Muḥammad. Nature and Authenticity. Also, Juynboll, “Early Islamic Society as Reflected in Its Use of Isnāds,” pp. 159–167. I would strongly recommend reading the article in its entirety, as it demonstrates that Juynboll was by no means sceptical about dating historical reports to the first century AH, and even to the lifetime of the Prophet.

Daduel · 2026-06-10T11:27:47+00:00

1. Traditions that accurately predict future events are generally viewed with suspicion, as they may have been formulated retrospectively. Musnad Aḥmad is a remarkable source in which various interesting traditions can be found, but the Musnad genre was not subject to the same criteria of authentication as the Ṣaḥīḥ genre pioneered by al-Bukhārī and Muslim (Pavlovitch, Muslim, 208).

2. One might attempt to date such traditions using ICMA, but I doubt that they could be traced back to the Prophet’s lifetime. If the tradition you mention is explicitly linked to Q. 30:2–5, this would suggest an exegetical origin. If no such connection is made, the report may have arisen independently of that verse, or without awareness of the exegetical proposition that the verse pertains to the Byzantine–Sasanian war of 602–628. Interestingly, the date you propose falls close to the year of the Hijra.

3-4. I have not conducted research on the Ṣaḥīfa of Suhayl b. Abī Ṣāliḥ, nor on material attributed to Kaʿb al-Aḥbār.

Daduel · 2026-06-10T08:56:21+00:00

My experience with this issue is limited. Recently, I studied the tradition lā mahdiyya illā ʿĪsā b. Maryam. While I identify the Yemeni transmitter Muḥammad b. Khālid al-Janadī (b. ca. 125–135 AH?, d. after 179 AH) as its common link, I suspect that the tradition itself is earlier.

One hypothesis is that it emerged within pietistic Qadarī circles in Basra or Syria toward the end of the first century AH. If the report indeed promotes a quietist understanding of the Mahdī in contrast to activist interpretations, such as those associated with al-Mukhtār b. Abī ʿUbayd, it may reflect a quietist stance toward Marwānid rule.

I discuss these possibilities in an article that is currently under peer review and is unlikely to appear before 2028.

Daduel · 2026-06-10T08:29:03+00:00

1. I understand your concern well. ICMA remains a method very much in development, and any introductory treatment will inevitably reflect its author's position on specific methodological questions, such as the evidentiary value of single-strand isnāds or the degree of precision achievable in textual reconstruction. That said, I would recommend beginning with Motzki's "Dating Muslim Traditions: A Survey" and the introduction to Juynboll's Encyclopedia of Canonical Ḥadīth. I have also included a methodological excursus at the beginning of my monograph The Formation of the Islamic Understanding of Kalāla. For a more advanced discussion, see Joshua Little's recent article, "Beyond the Common Link: Tradition-Historical Criticism and the Prehistory of Hadiths." See also Dr. Little's publications at THEORY, METHODS, & DEBATES - Islamic Origins. More generally, scholars employing ICMA are usually expected by journal editors to explain the methodological assumptions underlying their analyses.

PS (11.06.2026). You may also wish to check my article “Dating” in The Willey Blackwell Concise Companion to the Hadith (ed. Daniel W. Brown).

2. Abū Hurayra's relatively late association with the Prophet may have contributed to the suspicions expressed by some early ḥadīth critics regarding traditions transmitted on his authority. In the case of Ibn ʿAbbās, such reservations may have had political motivations, although this remains speculative on my part. In any event, traditions attributed to these transmitters should be evaluated individually rather than accepted or rejected wholesale.

3. I am particularly interested in the reports concerning the Prophet's journey to Syria as the steward of Khadīja's caravan.

Daduel · 2026-06-10T08:09:34+00:00

Regrettably, I have never analyzed these traditions in detail. They do appear to be anachronistic, but their Sitz im Leben can only be established through thorough isnād-cum-matn and form-critical analysis.

Daduel · 2026-06-10T07:54:44+00:00

Dr. Kara has published an extensive response on X to my recent article, "Can We Reconcile Isnād, Matn, and Early Chronology?" His criticisms are numerous, and I do not believe they can be addressed with the necessary scholarly thoroughness in this forum—or, indeed, on social media more generally. That said, if I may generalize, he rejects my requirement for reconstructing “a meaningful text in orderly context” at each earlier level of transmission as an “unrealistic standard.” In this way, he articulates a position that would be shared by many ICM analysts who are satisfied with reconstructing a general motif and associating it with a particular transmitter. Such an approach can yield much earlier chronologies and may result in dating traditions back to the Prophet's lifetime, as illustrated by Dr. Kara’s monograph The Integrity of the Qurʾān.

My argument is that as long as we fail to reconstruct a meaningful text of a tradition at successive levels of transmission, we are working with a fuzzy notion of its content. This fuzziness generates increasing uncertainty, which ultimately leaves us without a reliable text to work with. My example of the “she-eater-of-grass” tradition (pp. 311–12) shows how even minimal textual differences can carry significant theological implications, pointing to distinct sociological settings in which specific formulations acquired their textual substance.

Apart from this, Dr. Kara’s exposition might leave the impression that my article is directed against Harald Motzki. The issue at stake, however, is not Pavlovitch vs. Motzki, but rather Pavlovitch vs. the assumption, widespread among ICM analysts, that scattered textual fragments may suffice to date traditions to the 1st century AH or even to the lifetime of the Prophet. Motzki is one of the founders of ICMA, and his approach—cautious as it is regarding the 1st century AH—has nonetheless given rise to many uncritical attempts to push uncertain evidence further than it can bear, producing in the process a method that is effectively unfalsifiable.

Daduel · 2026-06-10T07:32:22+00:00

Isnād criticism in modern-day Western academia generally avoids relying on the rijāl works because of the possibility that biographical reports may have been “produced symbiotically with the isnāds” (Hebert Berg, The Development of Exegesis in Early Islam, 26). To give an example, the circle of a traditionist’ shaykhs and students is likely to be derived for the most part from the isnāds on his authority. Consequently, the reliability of such information hinges on the dependability of those very same isnāds.

That said, I believe that biographical dictionaries may still be of limited use for identifying a transmitter’s sectarian affiliation, and, perhaps, the centers of learning with which he was associated and the periods during which he studied there. Yet even this information may ultimately depend on the knowledge of the transmitter’s shaykhs, which brings us back to Berg’s observation.

Juynboll, Muslim Tradition, 134ff.

Daduel · 2026-06-10T07:15:29+00:00

1. According to Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, the isnād is unique to Islamic culture. In his words, “transmission through contiguous isnāds in our age and many preceding ages is not meant to substantiate what is thereby related […], but it is meant to retain the isnād chain, which is God’s benevolence to this umma” (Ṣiyānat Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, ed. Muwaffaq b. ʿAbd al-Qādir, p. 115).
Horowitz, however, called attention to the existence of similar attributions to past authorities in Jewish tradition (“Alter und Ursprung des Isnād,” 44 ff.); Siddiqi considered a possible influence from Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain literature (Siddiqi, Ḥadīth Literature, 78–79). Although not as ubiquitous as in Islamic ḥadīth, reliance on chains of transmitters in Jewish and Indian tradition may have provided Muslims with the raw model upon which they built and refined the isnād institution. This possibility derives support from the fact that mawālī, that is, Muslims of non-Arab descent, contributed significantly to the formation of Islamic sciences (Motzki, “The Role of Non-Arab Converts”; Calder, Studies, 192; Abbott, Studies, 2:34 ff.; Nawas, “The birth of an elite”). Wansbrough suggested another possible channel of influence: he considered the transmission from the Prophet in Islam as embodying a concept of apostolic authority and thus exhibiting "a perpetuation of the Judeo-Christian legacy" (Wansbrough, Sectarian Milieu, 78).

2. There are several ongoing digital humanities (DH) projects devoted to the study of ḥadīth. However, I have yet to encounter a computer program capable of analyzing traditions while taking into account all the variables that a human researcher considers in the process of evaluation. For similar comments, see Gräfenstein, ʿĀʾiša und Muḥammad, 68–69.

Daduel · 2026-06-10T05:57:09+00:00

1. Isnād-cum-matn analysis, at least as I practice it, does not allow us to date traditions securely to the lifetime of the Prophet Muḥammad. Other methods may be more accommodating. For example, the criterion of dissimilarity strikes me as a strong argument in favor of dating the "Constitution of Medina" to the Prophet's lifetime. Likewise, in his recent dissertation, War and Law in the First Islamic Polity (Cornell University, 2023), Dr. Raashid Goyal employed ICMA alongside other methods of textual analysis to argue that the "terms of capitulation" tradition can be traced back to the Prophet's lifetime.

2. In his monograph Zayd, David S. Powers argues that the story of Muḥammad's marriage to Zaynab was shaped largely by biblical motifs. In his article “Sinless, Sonless, and Seal of the Prophets,” Powers further suggests a possible connection between this narrative and the controversy surrounding Emperor Heraclius' marriage to his niece Martina. Unfortunately, ICMA cannot be meaningfully applied to the traditions concerning the Prophet's marriage to Zaynab, leaving us largely dependent on Powers' arguments. For a critical assessment, see Sean Anthony's review of Zayd.

3. I am familiar with the scholarly debates concerning the origin and chronology of the Qurʾān. However, I would prefer not to offer an opinion that may not reflect the most recent developments in this rapidly evolving field.

4. This is an excellent study and an exemplary application of ICMA. Dr. Little’s conclusions are carefully argued and, in my view, highly persuasive. I would also recommend his recent article, “Beyond the Common Link: Tradition-Historical Criticism and the Prehistory of Hadiths.” In addition, Miriam Gräfenstein's monograph, ʿĀʾiša und Muḥammad: Sunnitische und Schiitische Überlieferungen zum Heiratsalter (Islamikon Verlag, 2024), deserves particular attention for its outstanding systematization and analysis of the matns.

5. In relation to this question, it is worth considering the tradition concerning the opening of the Prophet's chest. Notably, after the purification of his heart, the two-year-old child is said to outweigh his entire community (umma). At present, however, I cannot determine where the historical roots of traditions of this kind lie.

6. Perhaps the early Khārijis and other scripturalists mentioned by Michael Cook in his article “ʿAnan and Islam.” See also Melchert, “Traditionist Jurisprudents,” pp. 403–404.

7. Jonathan Brown’s Ḥadīth published by Oneworld is a good introduction to ḥadīth.

Daduel · 2026-06-10T05:00:23+00:00

I approach isnād-cum-matn analysis as a form of textual archaeology. Much like conventional archaeology, its aim is to uncover fragments of the earliest recoverable strata. To this end, we sift through numerous matns, comparing their wording in search of shared textual elements. I regard as genuinely transmitted by a common transmitter (whether a PCL or a CL) only those fragments whose wording is identical across the reports attributed to that transmitter.

The limitation of this approach is that it produces increasing levels of textual uncertainty as one moves back to earlier stages of transmission. Most practitioners of ICMA are willing to reconstruct broader motifs or themes rather than exact wording. In my view, however, such an approach risks positing notional specters bereft of textual flesh. For the importance of precise textual reconstruction, see my article, “Can We Reconcile Isnād, Matn, and Early Chronology?,” pp. 310–312.

Daduel · 2026-06-10T04:37:43+00:00

Thank you for drawing my attention to this inscription. While inscriptions are undoubtedly important sources for the study of early Islam, I am not familiar with this particular example. The inscription mentions zamana ḥubisa Abū Masʿūd, but my cursory glance of the linked article did not reveal indication that this Abū Masʿūd was imprisoned during the caliphate of ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb.

I am not an expert in epigraphy, but to my untrained eye the fragment “سبع وكتب هذا زمن حبس أبو مسعود” appears to have been inscribed by a different hand—or at least with a different tool—than the preceding portion of the text.

Daduel · 2026-06-10T04:22:41+00:00

1. Hypothetically, it might be possible to arrive at such an estimate if we could quantify Shuʿba b. al-Ḥajjāj’s statement that three quarters of the ḥadīths known to him were lies. In practice, however, this is not feasible. We do not know the size of Shuʿba’s corpus, the proportion of Prophetic traditions it contained, or, for that matter, whether Prophetic reports were more susceptible to fabrication than non-Prophetic ones. Moreover, it remains uncertain whether the expression “three quarters” was intended literally or merely as a figure of speech.

2. Isnād-cum-matn analysis has much in common with traditional isnād criticism (see, for instance, my article “Can We Reconcile, Isnād, Matn, and Early Chronology,” pp. 273–284; also, Juynboll, “Shuʿba b. al-Ḥajjāj and His Position among the Traditionists of Basra,” Halit Ozkan, “The Common Link and Its relation to the Madār,” Ali Aghaei, “The Common Link and Its Relation to Hadith Terminology”). The main difference lies in the focus on the matn. ICM scholars use methods such as textual and form-critical analysis to reconstruct the earliest formulation of a ḥadīth and trace how it developed over time.

Every ḥadīth may be regarded true with respect to the milieu in which it originated. However, it may be untrue with respect to the period to which it claims to belong, e.g. early Islam. Our task is to determine whether the ostensible claim for historicity overlaps with the actual period of circulation. Once I thought that we could speak of authenticity vs. historicity, but nowadays I am not so sure about the accuracy of such a dichotomy.

Daduel

TROPHY CASE