| Contents
1. THE SOURCES OF SHARI'AH The primary sources The supplementary sources The rational sources 2.THE QUR'AN: FIRST PRIMARY SOURCE OF SHARI'AH 3. THE SUNNAH: SECOND PRIMARY SOURCE OF SHARI'AH Hadith literature as the exegesis of the Qur'an The obligation of following the Sunnah 4. THE AUTHENTICITY OF HADITH 5. THE SYSTEM OF ISNAD 6. CRITICISM OF HADITH Techniques for the analysis and criticism of the chain of authorities (isnad) Analysis and criticism of the text (matn) CONCLUSION NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY Words: 3, 300. |
| Legal aspects of Hadith R McDowell |
| Islamic Review |
 |
| 1. THE SOURCES OF SHARI'AH.
Derived primarily from the Qur'an and the example of the Prophet Muhammad's life, the Shari'ah or "Way of Islam" is the detailed code of conduct which distinguishes for Muslims the difference between right and wrong actions. The Shari'ah is the general title for the Islamic moral and legal system which covers every aspect of a Muslim's life from the etiquette's of worship to the rules governing everyday living. The sources of the Shari'ah may be divided into three categories: i) the primary sources; ii) the supplementary sources; and iii) the rational sources. The primary sources. The Shari'ah is essentially derived from the Qur'an and the Sunnah of the Prophet. These are considered to be the fundamental or the primary sources which are consulted in order to gain the legal position for the matters of law. The supplementary sources. The supplementary sources are those which are referred to in order to resolve the matters of law which have no specific mention in the Qur'an and the Sunnah of the Prophet. The supplementary sources are as follows: i) the revelations of God, before the Prophet Muhammad, sent to previous prophets and peoples; ii) the consensus of the Prophet's Companions or qualified jurists ('Ijma); and iii) the customary practice of the community ('Urf). The rational sources. The rational sources are employed when no definite legal standpoint can be reached from either the primary or the supplementary sources. The rational sources are: i) analogy (Qiyas); ii) equity (Istihsan); iii) the public interest (Maslahah); iv) legal presumption (Istishab); and v) independent disciplined reasoning (Ijtihad). 2. THE QUR'AN: FIRST PRIMARY SOURCE OF SHARI'AH. The Qur'an is the main source of reference for establishing the fundamental principles and laws of Islam covering basically every aspect of the religion. It provides the basis for a practical code of conduct for everyday living as far as social etiquette and behaviour and human relations are concerned and it also contains the framework for the matters of faith and acts or worship: The Qur'an states: "Verily We have revealed the Book to thee in Truth, for (instructing) mankind".1 3. THE SUNNAH: SECOND PRIMARY SOURCE OF SHARI'AH. Muslims believe that the Sunnah of the Prophet (i.e., his example or practice) did not, in any way, contradict the guidance laid down in the Qur'an but, rather, that he lived his life according to its teachings. The Qur'an states: "Ye have indeed in the Apostle of God a beautiful pattern (of conduct) for any one whose hope is in God and the Final Day, and who engages much in the praise of God".2 For this reason the various collections of ahadith of the Prophet (i.e., his recorded words, deeds and indirect authorisation) are referred to as the second primary source of the Shari'ah.3 As the Qur'an outlines the basic principles and laws of Islam, the ahadith explain and elaborate upon these principles. Both the Qur'an and the Sunnah together form the principle source of Shari'ah. The Prophet said: "Indeed, I have been given the Book and the like of it with it".4 After the Prophet's death, his Companions, in resolving legal questions, used to base their judgement first of all on the Qur'an but if they could not find a solution to the problem there, then they used to refer to the Prophet's Sunnah.5 This practice conformed to the following verse of the Qur'an: "If ye differ in anything among yourselves, refer it to God and His Apostle, if ye do believe in God and the Last Day: that is best, and most suitable for final determination".6 Hadith literature as the exegesis of the Qur'an. The Qur'an states that it was not sent down to the world for men to study and discipher according to their own knowledge and understanding but that the task of explaining its meaning was given to the Prophet: "And We have sent down unto thee (Muhammad) the Message; that thou mayest explain clearly to men what is sent for them, and that they may give thought".7 Furthermore, although the Qur�an provides a framework or guidance for mankind, there are many issues on which the Qur'an is silent and hence it has been necessary to consult the hadith literature in order to discover if the Prophet encountered such an issue and if so what conclusion he reached on the subject. For example, the Qur'an prescribes for believers that they should pray to God but not how they should pray to Him. Similarly, the Qur'an prescribes for believers to perform pilgrimage but is silent regarding its method and formalities. To solve these and similar questions it was necessary to follow what the Prophet himself taught. So the Sunnah is important because it provides further details (a commentary) of the matters raised in the Qur'an and it serves as a practical illustration of how the Qur'an is to be put into practice. The obligation of following the Sunnah. In the same way that it is a religious obligation for Muslims to implement the guidance contained in the Qur'an, they must also follow the direction and practical example of the Prophet's Traditions. The Prophet said: "It is an obligation on you to follow my Sunnah and the Sunnah of the guided and righteous Khulafa,8 hold fast to it (the Sunnah) and adhere strictly to it".9 The Qur'an states: "Obey God, and obey the Apostle".10 "Take what the Apostle assigns to you, and deny yourselves that which he withholds from you".11 4. THE AUTHENTICITY OF HADITH. So, the Sunnah is recognised as the second primary source of reference for establishing the legal standpoint on the various matters of law. However, the traditionists have unanimously conceded the fact that a considerable number of counterfeit ahadith found their way into the body of Traditions. They have classified these falsified Traditions into the following four categories: i. Heretics (zanadiqa). M. Shabbir states: "The Heretics flourished under various garb during the different periods of the history of Islam and caused havoc in the Hadith by their wilful forgery and propagating them among the Muslims".12 ii. Included in the second category are a number of Traditions which praise highly the worthiness of certain persons, tribes, provinces or towns etc. The motive behind such fabrications was clearly to increase the prestige of the people concerned. The rise of party politics also tempted some of the Muslims to fabricate Traditions to further their cause or political aims. iii. Storytellers (Qussas). These were the professional preachers who used to relate stories in public places to the bystanders. Tales of the Prophet were in demand and the Qussas soon realised the monetary potential of such recitations. The problem which faced the later hadith collectors was that these preachers often simply made up what they related in order to please their onlookers. iv. The fourth category of forged ahadith were those written by a number of Muslim traditionists. Their motive was to attract people to Islam or to do good deeds etc. Furthermore, although not classified as forgeries, the traditionists also sometimes made genuine mistakes in their recording of ahadith. Despite the fact that there were many individuals (some of them traditionists themselves) who falsely attributed words and deeds to the Prophet for which he was not responsible, there were, at the same time, many honest and reliable traditionists who regarded such forgery as damnable. M. Z. Siddiqi states: "There existed a core of honest and committed scholars . . . Such men and women dedicated their lives to authentic scholarship, carefully ascertaining what was authentic, preserving its purity and genuineness, and propagating it among the community at large".13 Nevertheless, the above groups of forgers caused much disruption for the collectors of genuine ahadith. The existence of forgeries among the mass stockpile of Traditions meant that each individual hadith had to be investigated and judged according to its considered authenticity. This gave rise to the need for a system which would be able to distinguish the credible Traditions from the counterfeit ones. 5. THE SYSTEM OF ISNAD. Every hadith consists of two parts: i) the text of the report about the Prophet and ii) the chain of narrators who transmitted the report. The first part (text) is called the matn, the latter is known as the isnad. Both of these elements are equally important to the scholars. The matn or the report about what the Prophet said or did is significant as this provides the necessary guidance for determining the matters of religion, law etc.; the isnad is regarded as an indispensable part of the hadith in that it provides the "credentials" or "authority" of the report and an indication as to its genuiness. Indeed, without the isnad it is impossible to tell whether a hadith is genuine or not. Discussing the origins of the isnad system, M. M. Azami states: "Isnad seems to have been used casually in some literatures in the pre-Islamic period, in a vague manner, without attaching any importance to it . . . But it was in the Hadith literature that its importance culminated till it was counted as a part of the religion".14 It is not clear when the isnad system first began to be used in conjunction with the transmission of ahadith. Initially, the reports about what the Prophet had said or done were promulgated by his Companions but later, these reports were passed on from person to person, in this way circulating throughout the entire Muslim world. This being so, the reporters who were relating their information second hand must surely have been asked to declare their sources as well and at some early stage, especially after it became known that some individuals had knowingly attributed words and deeds to the Prophet for which he was not accountable for. Such queries (about were the information came from) gave birth to the isnad system. As the years passed, the chains of authorities for the ahadith grew in number. M. M. Azami states: "It is the common phenomenon of isnad system that as we go further the number of transmitters increases. Sometimes a Tradition transmitted by one Companion acquires ten students in the next generation, in the class of Successors and, in their turn, these ten students have in some cases twenty or thirty students belonging to different countries and provinces".15 As each chain of transmission was treated as a separate hadith, the number of Traditions multiplied dramatically: "The numbers of a few thousand ahadith reached about three quarters of a million in the mid third century".16 The Traditionists were thus forced to devote more and more time to scrutinising the character and trustworthiness of the transmitters named in the isnad in order to test the soundness of each hadith. 6. CRITICISM OF HADITH. After the ahadith had been collected, the traditionists set about to examine each one of them. Certain principles for the criticism of hadith were established chiefly to identify the falsified ones but more generally in order to arrange the rest according to the degree of their authority and authenticity. Because every Tradition comprises of two separable pieces of information (i.e., the text (matn) and the isnad), both of these elements had to be individually dissected and assessed before a comprehensive judgement as to the genuineness of the particular hadith could be determined. Techniques for the analysis and criticism of the chain of authorities (isnad).17 By studying the chain of the narrators of a hadith the scholars were able to ascertain its reliability. M. Z. Siddiqi states18: "Chronology, biography and criticism were applied together in assessing the worth of isnads. Having realised their importance, the traditionists compiled, before the end of the second century, independent works dealing with the narrators in chronological order. 'Such registers of the narrators of tradition', says Otto Loth19, 'as had been chronologically arranged and in which every Muslim traditionist in general received a definite place, had been already in common use among the traditionists as indispensable handbooks in the second century'". Biographical dictionaries. So, the reporters were required to provide the names of the narrators with their chain through whom they obtained the reports. M. Z. Siddiqi states: "Each tradition found in every hadith collection until the third century of the hijrah includes the chain of the narrators who transmitted it - from the Prophet, a Companion, or a Follower, down to the compiler himself".20 The method employed for checking the reliability of the isnad involved a rigorous investigation into the trustworthiness of each one of its transmitters. Consequently, there was a vast amount of literature written on the biographies of the transmitters of ahadith. M. Z. Siddiqi states: "As all the early works on hadith have been lost, it is impossible to determine their general plan and the nature of their contents. But from the later works which were based on them, and which still exist, and also from the general tendencies discernible among the traditionists of that time, it may be inferred that their contents consisted mainly of: (a) short descriptions of the genealogies and dates of birth and death; (b) some biographical matters; and (c) a brief critique of their reliability, backed up with the opinions of important authorities and contempories".21 All the authors of the "Sound Six" collections produced at least one work on the biography of the hadith narrators - Al-Bukhari's Tarikh contains over 42, 000 of them. Criticism of the reporters. For a narrator to be accepted as reliable, he must be able to fulfil the following prerequisites:22 He/she must be adult, of firm faith whose integrity has been established and in possession of a strong memory. The narrator must also be well-versed with the methods of learning and transmitting the Traditions as well as holding a thorough knowledge of the earlier transmitters. The transmitters thus classified the ahadith according to the degree of their reliability. They determined the merit of the chain of the narrators who transmitted the hadith, checked that the text of the report was free from error and thy took into account also the opinion of the first three generations regarding each Tradition. This venture resulted in the setting up of the following classes of ahadith: i) Sound (Sahih); ii) Fair (Hasan); and iii) Weak (Da'if). The weak Traditions were additionally separated into subcategories according to the extent of the defects in the reporters or in the texts themselves. These are: "The mu'allaq ("suspended"), the maqtu' ("interrupted"), the munqati' ("broken"), the mursal ("incomplete"), the musahhaf (containing a mistake either in the isnad or the matn), the shadhdh ("rare": a Tradition with a reliable isnad but whose matn is contrary to another similarly attested Tradition), the mawdu' ("forged"), and so on".23 The ahadith were also classified according to the parallel authentication of isnads. Three such types have been distinguished: i) Mutawatir (transmitted without interruption); ii) Mashur (well-known); and iii) Ahad (one man narrator). To the first group (mutawatir) belong those ahadith which have been handed down by a large number of different narrators belonging to the first three generations of Muslims (i.e., the Companions, the Successors, and the Successors of the Successors).24 The mashur ahadith are those which have been transmitted originally by two, three or four Companions and later by a large number of narrators belonging to the second and third generations.25 Finally, the ahad are those ahadith which have been passed down through the three generations by: "One (or two, three or four) narrators only".26 The four main Sunni schools of law acknowledge the mutawatir and the mashur ahadith as the second source of law, after the Qur'an. The ahad Traditions are considered to have greater legal significance than qiyas (analogical deduction) by all the Sunni schools of law except the Maliki school which gives precedence to qiyas.27 Analysis and criticism of the text (matn). The soundness of the isnad by itself does not constitute definitive proof that the hadith is reliable. The text of the report must fulfil the following requirements28 also before such a conclusion can be reached: The text must not contradict another hadith which has already been accepted as authentic. Nor should it contradict the Qur'an, a mutawatir Tradition, or the fundamental principles of Islam. The text should not be opposed to common sense or reason or the natural laws. The text should not prescribe rewards or punishments disproportionate to the accompanying actions. Traditions which describe the admirable qualities of certain parts of the Qur'an may not be genuine. Traditions which praise (or denounce) the goodness of a certain person, or group of people, or a place should ordinarily be rejected. Traditions prophesying future happenings with the relevant dates should be discarded. Traditions which attribute such words to the Prophet as may not be a part of his prophetic work, or which are unsuitable for him should be rejected. The text should not breach the fundamental rules of Arabic grammar and style. Even if a hadith proves to have a sound isnad, where the text of the report falls short of the aforesaid requirements, then it is rejected and classed as one of the forgeries. CONCLUSION. So, the Qur'an has made it an obligatory duty for Muslims to obey God and the Prophet. Obedience to the Prophet connotes adherence to his sayings and following, as closely as possible, his practice. The Sunnah is regarded as the second major source of Islamic Law, after the Qur'an itself. This being so, the jurists, in order to gain the legal standpoint on the matters of law which have no specific mention in the Qur'an, must consult the Prophet's Sunnah, the details of which are contained within the hadith. In response to the vast amount of fraudulent ahadith which were attributed to the Prophet, the traditionists devised certain techniques for the criticism of hadith whereby each hadith could be analysed and its reliability assessed. The methods of hadith criticism focused on the two elements of hadith: i) the chain of narrators were investigated and judged with regards to their trustworthiness and ii) the text of the report was scrutinised and checked for error. The upshot of this sifting of ahadith was that each one of them was assigned its degree of authoritativeness thus affecting how the jurists treated it for formulating law. NOTES. 1. QUR'AN 39: 41. 2. QUR'AN 33: 21. 3. From the varying collections of ahadith which were assembled, the "Sound Six" as they became known (including those of al- Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Dawud, al-Tirmidhi, al-Nasa'i, and Ibn Majah), are the most authoritative. 4. ABU DAWUD 4587. 5. THE AUTHORITY AND AUTHENTICITY OF HADITH p. 90. 6. QUR'AN 4: 59. 7. QUR'AN 16: 44. 8. Khalifa - (Caliph) successor. 9. ABU DAWUD 4590. 10. THE QUR'AN 5: 92. 11. THE QUR'AN 59: 7. 12. THE AUTHORITY AND AUTHENTICITY OF HADITH p. 56. 13. HADITH LITERATURE p. 36. 14. STUDIES IN EARLY HADITH LITERATURE p. 212. 15. Ibid pp. 222-23. 16. Ibid p. 301. 17. Also known as the science of Asthma al-Rijal. 18. HADITH LITERATURE p. 94. 19. Loth, O. "Ursprung und Bedeutung der Tabakat", (ZDMG XXIII, 593-614), 600. 20. HADITH LITERATURE p. 76. 21. Ibid p. 94. 22. Ibid p. 109. 23. Ibid. 24. "Opinion differs on the number of transmitters necessary for tawatur to be attained during each of the three generations: some authorities fix it at seven, some at forty, some at twenty, and others at still higher numbers" (HADITH LITERATURE p. 110). 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid p. 114. BIBLIOGRAPHY. Ali, Yusuf. THE HOLY QUR'AN (translation and commentary). The Holy Koran Publishing House 1934. Azami, Mohammad Mustafa. STUDIES IN HADITH METHODOLOGY AND LITERATURE. American Trust Publications 1977. Dawud, Imam Abu. SUNAN ABU DAWUD. Kitab Bhavan 1993. Shabbir, Mohammad. THE AUTHORITY AND AUTHENTICITY OF HADITH AS A SOURCE OF LAW. Kitab Bhavan (India) 1982. Siddiqi, Muhammad Zubayr. HADITH LITERATURE: ITS ORIGIN, DEVELOPMENT AND SPECIAL FEATURES. The Islamic Texts Society 1993. |