Hadith Notes

A brief discussion of the debate among hadith scholars concerning the use of qāla in a sanad before ḥaddathanā.

Here's something from the paper I've been working on:

When comparing the Mu’tazila's approach to hadith with that of the muhaddithun, two things should be remembered: 1. early hadith scholars were not ignorant of the varying epistemological concerns surrounding khabar al-wāḥid 2. they often had recourse to considerations outside sanad criticism when it came to practice The point is that one needs to distinguish the process of verifying a historical occurrence from the second step of how to implement that information.

I’m working on a brief comparison between the hadith tradition and the Muʿtazila in their respective approaches to hadith. I came across this interesting comment from Jāḥiẓ (d. 255 AH)

Shaykh Mujir al-Khatib says that the study of Mustalah after Suyuti became like the study of Nahw without poetry and Adab, i.e., highly abstract.

Mawlana ʿAbdul Malik on how most books of muṣṭalaḥ studied in madrasah are primarily helpful for developing “familiarity” (uns) with the field, rather than fostering a deeper understanding of the underlying principles themselves.

In a recent study, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Shāmī examines a dismissive remark about the Companion Abu Hurayrah (r) attributed to the Ḥanafi Imam Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Shaybānī. I translated the relevant section of his book and added a brief introduction to provide some context. I examine this issue in greater detail in my forthcoming book on the Ḥanafī approach to hadith.

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The Yemeni hadith scholar ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Muʿallimī (d. 1966) spent over two decades in the Deccan as a manuscript editor and proofreader (muṣaḥḥiḥ) at the Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif press in Hyderabad. In his private journal, al-Muʿallimī records some amusing encounters with his fellow proofreaders, like this one, where he corrects a colleague who, even after being proven wrong, gave in gracelessly “not out of agreement, but merely to end the dispute.” As a side note, elsewhere in the journal he discusses the rules for forming plurals in Urdu. I hadn’t realized he knew Urdu; then again, he did spend some 25 years in India.