The Role of Isnad in the Preservation of the Islamic Civilisation
(PART 1)
The Islamic ideology derives from the Qur'an and Sunnah. Legislation in Islam is also derived from these two sources. Therefore if any one of these sources is lost or distorted then the risk is to the ideology as a whole. The Isnad is the chain of narrators through which the Sunnah reaches us. In this respect the study of Isnad is not a peripheral discipline in Islam but fundamental to the preservation of the ideology itself. Here follows an article in two parts that will attempt to the address this important issue. Part one will look at the history and challenges involved in preserving the Sunnah and part two will describe the techniques used to guarantee the correctness of narrations.
Without Isnad, the Sunnah as a source of ahkam (rules) would cease to exist. Without Isnad, we would lose the ability to elaborate, specify and restrict the ambivalent, general and absolute import of the Quranic text since the role of the Sunnah is to clarify the Qur'an. Without Isnad, extraction of Shar'iah rules for new realities from the Sunnah would cease to exist. Without Isnad, foreign elements could have been incorporated within the ideology due to their false attribution to the Prophet r. Thus, Isnad is crucial for the purity, clarity and crystallization of the Islamic ideology and its ability to solve new problems from its legislative source.
That is why 'Abdullah b. Mubarak the teacher of Imam al-Bukhari did not exaggerate when he said:
"The Isnad is part of the Deen: had it not been for the Isnad, whoever wished to would have said whatever he liked.'
It is also precisely for this reason that the Orientalists have sought to create doubt in the efficacy of the Isnad. The wholesale rejection of hadith as a historical source was first argued by an Orientalist named Ignaz Goldziher in volume 2 of his book: ‘Muslim Studies’. Goldziger was then followed by Joseph Schact who developed his ideas and tried to present a substantial body of proof to this effect in his work: 'The origins of Muhammadan jurisprudence' which was published in 1950. Also more recently Gautier Juynboll in his, 'Muslim Tradition. Studies in chronology, provenance and authorship of early hadith' has developed further techniques to prove the false nature of the hadith literature. The general thrust of Orientalism since Goldziher has tended to impute doubt, in various degrees, on the corpus of hadith literature. For them the elaborate Isnad which the Muslims adduce as proof of authenticity have either been doctored or embellished such that the hadith literature is more a reflection of the time in which they were fabricated, i.e. the political and sectarian milieu of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, than the time they are supposed to go back to which is the time of the Prophet (salAllahu alaihi wasallam) and his noble companions (ra). This is one of the more serious and fundamental attacks by Orientalists on the Islamic ideology. By throwing doubt on these sources it would be possible to demolish the whole edifice, which rests upon them. It was in this vein that attempts were made to discredit the historical authenticity of the hadith literature.
In addition we see the influence of this thought on modernism and modernist thinking where Sunnah as a source of legislation is markedly absent in the political field. Hence we see amongst some Muslims an attitude which considers the Sunnah of lesser importance than the Qur'an simply because the hadith requires further study and scrutiny as compared to the Qur'an. This has led to people either disregarding or neglecting ahkam simply because it is not found explicitly in the Qur'an. Hadith discussing the unity of the Muslims, the obligation to appoint a Khaleefah, or the ruling that a woman cannot be ruler to name but a few are brushed aside or not given their due weight because they are 'hadith' and not an ayah of the Qur'an.
Dr Asghar Ali Engineer in his book ‘The Islamic State’ says: 'There is no fixed concept of an Islamic state - much less a divinely ordained one to be treated immutable. The Koran, as pointed out, elucidates a concept of society, not of a state. The theory of Islamic state, as we have seen in the preceding chapters, changed and conformed more to the concrete situations than to any a priori concept.' [1] The hadith discussing the Khilafah were fabricated by the rulers to justify their rule. He says: 'In the metamorphosed state set-up there was nothing more Islamic than the fact that the ruler professed Islam and enforced certain provisions of the Shari'ah in personal and criminal matters. It was the result of such circumstances that a number of traditions were coined justifying any regime which did as little as enforcing the Islamic way of prayer.' He then proceeds to quote the rigorously authenticated hadith in Sahih Muslim as example of such fabrication. The text of that hadith is:
'In the near future there will be Amirs and you will like their good deeds and dislike their bad deeds. One who sees through their bad deeds (and tries to prevent their repetition by his hand or through his speech) is absolved from blame, but one who hates their bad deeds (in the heart of his heart, being unable to prevent their recurrence by his hand or his tongue), is (also) safe (so far as God"s wrath is concerned). But one who approves of their bad deeds and imitates them is spiritually ruined. People asked (the Prophet): Shouldn't we fight against them? He replied: No, as long as they establish their prayers.'
This is exactly the view held by Goldziher who claimed that the political hadith literature was a product of the political and sectarian background of the Umayyad caliphate. Recently Dr Engineer gave a presentation in which he sought to prove gender equality and his approach was solely his own personal interpretation of the Qur'an without any recourse to the hadith. His reason for this is that hadith were recorded a hundred years after the event, they are contradictory or contradict his own reading of the Qur'an and therefore not a reliable source for Tafseer of the Qur'an.
This attitude is dangerous as it is tantamount to disregarding the revelation of Allah (subhanahu wa ta'aala) and the reason for this reverts back to the pragmatic view of the Shar'iah and a sense that hadith is somehow of lesser worth due to the difficulties posed in establishing its authenticity.
Therefore, it is crucial to demonstrate the firm conviction in Sunnah as a source of legislation by demonstrating the sophistication and success of the hadith methodology in preserving the Sunnah. However, the way I will be discussing this topic is not to present it as discipline of Musatalah al-Hadith as has been traditionally done but to take relevant aspects of the discipline to give an outline and conception of the methodology and system itself. As for a detailed refutation of Orientalist arguments and proofs, this will not be possible here due to lack of space but it is thoroughly dealt with in my forthcoming work: 'The Role of Isnad in the Preservation of the Islamic Civilisation'
Historical background and the Birth of Isnad
Before we discuss the hadith methodology, I wish to recount the historical background of Isnad so that we can appreciate the context in which the Isnad was born and the problems and challenges Muslims faced in protecting the ideology from the pernicious activities of fabricators.
If we start with the time of the Messenger (salAllahu alaihi wasallam) we find that authenticity was not an issue since the Prophet (salAllahu alaihi wasallam) was with the Sahabah (ra) and they were able to correct each other if any mistakes were made in narration. So for example 'Umar (ra) once narrated that the Messenger (salAllahu alaihi wasallam) said: 'The deceased is punished due to the weeping of his family'
But 'Aisha (ra) corrected him by saying: 'The Prophet (salAllahu alaihi wasallam) said this regarding a Jewess that she was punished whilst her family were crying for her' meaning that she was punished due to dying upon kufr while the family wept and not because the family was weeping for her [2]. At this time Isnad was at its rudimentary stage because of the proximity to the Prophet (salAllahu alaihi wasallam) but this did not stop the Sahabah (ra) from checking strange attributions or corroborating reports when in doubt.
The earliest record of fabrication of hadith started after the first civil war between Ali (ra) and Mu'awiya (ra) from 35 A.H following the murder of Uthman (ra). According to Ibn Sirin who died in the year 110 AH: 'They did not ask about the Isnad but when civil war (fitna) arose they said: Name to us your men; those who belong to Ahl al-Sunnah, their traditions were accepted and those who were innovators their traditions were neglected.' After this time the fabrications increased with varying motivations. Initially the false attributions reflected political differences. According to Ibn Abi al-Hadid: 'Lies were introduced in Hadith on merits originally by Shi'ah. They in the beginning fabricated many hadith in favour of their man motivated by enmity towards their opponents. When Bakriyya (ie supporters of Abu Bakr) found out what the Shi'ah had done they fabricated on their part hadith in favour of their man.'
Disagreements in 'Aqaa`id (aspects of belief) also led the unscrupulous to fabricate hadith in support of their sectarian positions.
Some fabricated hadith to support the founder of their own school like the report which says:'There will be among my Ummah a man named Abu Haneefah who will be the Suraj (light) of my Ummah.'
Or the fabrication referring to ash-Shafi'i which says: 'There will be among my Ummah a man named Muhammad b. Idrees who will be more harmful to my Ummah than Iblees.' Other categories of people who fabricated hadith were well-intentioned pious people who wanted encourage Ta'aat or the story tellers (Qussas) who wanted to entertain the people with their wild and amazing stories.
Another faction which fabricated hadith were the Zindeeqs i.e. people who outwardly manifested Islam but hated it and wanted to destroy it by giving a ridiculous and irrational impression of Islam through their fabrications.
The Challenges faced by the Muslims:
Revival is intellectual elevation. When society is elevated in thoughts it looks at problems in an enlightened manner and derives solutions on an enlightened basis directed by its viewpoint about life and hence that society progresses and solves its problems effectively and thereby achieves revival. One of the best examples of revival or elevation in thought is the way Muslims dealt with the problem of hadith authenticity and fabrication. From the brief account of history given above the enormous task faced by the Muslims is clear. There were thousands of transmitters scattered throughout the Islamic lands and an even greater number of reports to sift through. From these they managed to select the sound narrations from the weak and compile them along with their chains of transmitters in such an effective manner that it is unparalleled by any form of historical verification known at the time and beyond. And this was done in the days when the best form of data storage was the human memory or parchment and messengers on horses were the quickest form of communication.
To appreciate how challenging this was, let us look at the difficulties the Muslims had to resolve in order to safeguard the hadith. The first hurdle to overcome was to establish continuity of the chain i.e. that there were no gaps in the chain. This required that the birth and death dates of narrators had to be catalogued as well as the cities form which they came in order to establish the possibility that they had met and hence were able to transmit the hadith. The second issue that had to be ascertained was the probity and mendacity of transmitters. It is not enough to have an unbroken chain if one of the transmitters is of unsound character. Like any chain, all that is necessary for the whole thing to collapse is one weak link, which would allow it to fall apart easily. So one liar in the chain will weaken the report even if the rest of the chain is littered with illustrious and trustworthy personalities. In fact it was the names of illustrious and respected people that were used by fabricators to pass off their dishonest material. For this reason the Muslims needed to gather information about the narrators, which if one thinks about it is not an easy accomplishment, since it involved assessing the character and state of mind of thousands upon thousands of transmitters. This repository of biographical material then would be used to identify each and every transmitter in the chain. Now having amassed this information there needs to be some criteria as to what would constitute a reliable narrator whose report could be believed. So is it enough for the narrator to be trustworthy before we take his report or should we impose extra safeguards? What about memory? Some people are trustworthy but prone to forget or make significant mistakes or get their reports muddled up. How do we deal with these problems?
Also, as we know, usually there is more than one chain for a single hadith; how can we classify these to indicate the various levels of strength and authenticity since the Shari'ah has imposed different criteria in respect to actions and belief? As with all human dependencies, mistakes will be made so how can we avert mistakes and maintain accuracy in transmission? What about the ostensibly sincere fabricators of hadith who are of sound memory but concoct reports for what they believe to be well- intentioned and noble aims? How do we catch them out? What kind of techniques and approaches can be developed to detect forgery and deception? And finally, at times we find two reports both of which are authentic according to the stringent criteria laid out but they contain an apparent contradiction. This is not surprising when you are dealing with reports describing sayings and actions taking place in diverse circumstances in their generic and specific contexts spanning the prophetic lifetime of the Messenger r. Coupled with this is the possibility of a mistake that has gone undetected due to forgetfulness or misunderstanding the intent of a statement or action. Since the Wahy (revelation), as we know, in principle does not contradict itself, how do we reconcile such seemingly apparent contradictions?
These are just a glimpse of the key issues the Muslims had to answer if the Sunnah was to be protected from loss and corruption from foreign elements. The result was the development of four distinct sciences to combat fabrication, namely:
1.
'ilm tareekh rowaah, which dealt with the crucial issue of the dates of birth and death of transmitters.
'ilm jarh wat ta'deel, consisting of the manners of disqualification and authenti cation of transmitters.
ilm ghareeb al-hadith, which is study of the irregular aspects of matn and Isnad.
2.
'ilm mukhtalafil hadith, which discusses the techniques of reconciling and outweighing seemingly contradictory hadith.
In the ensuing discussion I will highlight the key features of the above sciences to show how the problems posed above were tackled.
The Biographical (rijal) Literature
The first step in verifying a report is to know the reality of the person reporting a piece of news. That is why Allah (subhanahu wa ta'aala) says:
'O you who believe! If a Fasiq comes to you with a news, verify it, lest you harm people in ignorance, and afterwards you become regretful to what you have done.' [49:6]
Here the 'illah (divine reason) for verifying or scrutinizing a report is the potential harm that will be caused by accepting a false report. It is on the basis of this ayah that the Muhadditheen began to seek out information about narrators in order to verify their narrations. But what about recording and publicizing the defects of such narrators, what is the Shar'iah justification for doing this? Al-Bukhari reported on the authority of 'Aisha (ra) said that:
'A man asked permission to enter upon Allah's Apostle. The Prophet said, "Admit him. What an evil brother of his people or a son of his people." But when the man entered, the Prophet spoke to him in a very polite manner. (And when that person left) I said, "O Allah's Apostle! You had said what you had said, yet you spoke to him in a very polite manner?" The Prophet said, "O 'Aisha! The worst people are those whom the people desert or leave in order to save themselves from their dirty language or from their transgression.'[3]
This hadith teaches us that in warning the Muslims from a harm it is allowed to backbite because the man Rasulullah (salAllahu alaihi wasallam) was warning about is one man named 'Uyaynah b. Hisn who outwardly showed that he was a Muslim though in reality he was not a Muslim. Rasulullah (salAllahu alaihi wasallam) wanted to warn the people about this man so he said what an evil man he is. This is indicated by the Prophet's (salAllahu alaihi wasallam) answer to A'isha (ra) when she asked him why he used bad language, he (salAllahu alaihi wasallam) replied that the one who used bad language is the worst of people yet he (salAllahu alaihi wasallam) used bad language to describe this man. Therefore the reason must be that he wanted to warn the people and not to abuse the man and hence when he (salAllahu alaihi wasallam) met him he (salAllahu alaihi wasallam) was very polite to him. Imam al-Qurtubi commenting on this hadith said: 'The Hadith contains the permission to backbite the one who publicly shows his Fisq or Fahsh and the like from unjust rulers or those who call to innovation though it is allowed to do it in a polite manner as long as it does not lead to compromising the Deen of Allah Ta'aala.'[3] Thus, when we come to narrators of hadith it is clear that unscrupulous hadith narrators are not only harmful to Muslims but to Islam itself and therefore their faults must be recorded so that no hadith will be accepted from them.
The endeavour to verify the reports gave rise to the science of Rijal (i.e. the knowledge and collation of the biography of narrators) and the Science of Jarh (disparagement) and Ta'deel (attestation). Information regarding the probity and precision of narrators were recorded whether the information was disparaging or confirmed the reliability. The honest defamation or Ta'n was considered part of the Deen since it was necessary to protect the Deen. In collecting this material, the rijal critics spared no one to the extent that even the son would criticize his father. It is reported that 'Some people asked 'Ali b. al-Madeeni, the great Rijal scholar, about his father. He said: Ask somebody else. They repeated the question. He fell silent and then lifted his head and said: This (is part) of the Deen. He (my father) is weak (da'eef).' It is for this reason that people like the great Tabi'I 'Ata b. as-Saa`ib and well-known Seerah writer Ibn Ishaq were not spared from criticism. Yayha b. Ma'een said: 'We disparaged people who had already been admitted to Jannah more than a hundred years ago.' Their prime motivation for doing this was fear of Allah (subhanahu wa ta'aala) and not the fear of the people. It is reported that Yahya b. Sa'eed al-Qattan was asked: 'Do you not fear that those people whose hadith you have rejected will dispute against you before Allah?' He said: 'No, that these people should dispute with me is better than the Messenger of Allah (salAllahu alaihi wasallam) disputing with me by saying: Why did you narrate a hadith, which you thought was a lie?'
Kamal Hussain
Part II will appear in next month's issue
References
[1] Dr Asghar Ali Engineer-The Islamic State p.199
[2] Sahih Zarkashi's al-Ijaabah li-iraad maa istadrakatahu 'aisha' alas Sahaba p.76
[3] See Fathul Bari and section on Ibn Hajar's discussion of Aisha's (ra) hadith
