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Carrying of knowledge of ahadith
After the prophet’s death, when his companions scattered throughout the new provinces, many of them,
and many of the Successors, undertook lengthy and difficult journeys, courting poverty and various
hazards, in order to learn and collect as many hadiths as they could.14
Prophet Muhammad, (pbuh) then has probably been the most influential single figure of world history.
With his spiritual charisma, his straightforward honesty, the eloquence of the book which he brought, and
the revolutionary effects of his activities, the eyes of friend and enemy alike were riveted upon him, noting
his every act and statement. According John Burton, “to his enemies, he was a revolutionary bent upon
destroying the whole fabric of their society, whose activities had to be keenly watched if the progress of
his mission was to be suppressed. His words must have been the focus for endless reflection”.15
A vast corpus of individual narratives, consisting of supposed eye-witness account of Muhammad’s every
act, his orders, prohibition, recommendations, approval or disapproval, covers every conceivable aspect of
personal, private, domestic, public, political, commercial, military, fiscal and administrative, as well as
strictly religious, activity undertaken hour by hour, day by day, week in, week out, year after year of the
twenty-three years of his public ministry. All that he had ever been seen to do, or heard to say, or to reply
when questioned had, it was clamed, been reported by one or other of his inner circle and immediately
taken up, talked about, analysed, checked, stored memorized and preserved and then handed on to any who
had been absent by those who had been present to see, hear and record. 16
So much veneration and respect did the Companions have the Prophet that one of them collected some of
his perspiration, which was said to have been ‘sweeter than musk, and stipulated in his will that it should
be sprinkled on his body before it was put into the grave. Others preserved anything that had been touched
by him, and used it as a miraculous cure for disease. Still others presented their children to him for his
blessing.17 It is said to have been a common practice among the friends of the Prophet that whenever any
two of them met, one would enquire from the other whether there was any hadith (i.e. news of the
Prophet’s acts and speech), and would tell him what he knew. The Prophet himself, ‘was conscious of his
mortality attached a good deal of importance to the Knowledge of his own hadith. He used to ask his
Companions to make them as widely as possible, and take care than nothing should be falsely attributed to
him’. 18
He encouraged his followers to acquire knowledge (i.e., of the Qur’an and Sunnah ), and teach it to others
. The course of study which he prescribed for people of the Porch (ashab al-suffa,), those ascetics who
lived at a porch attached to his house, included the Qur’an, the Sunnah, and the art of writing19 Appointing
state official i.e. “Qadis, judges, Imams, and other prominent dignitaries, he prefer those who have the
knowledge”.20 In this way, the hadith literature originated in the early life of the Prophet of Islam,
developed largely through his life, and spread simultaneously with the spread of Islam through out the new
Muslim dominions. The Muslim armies, which conquered Syria, Palestine, Persia and Egypt, ‘included a
large number of the Companions of the Prophet, who carried his hadith with them wherever they went’.21
A unique contribution from Fazul Rahman is his theory of the “silent”22 transmission of Prophetic sunna.
That is, many early Muslims simply lived out the words and acts of Muhammad. And this silent, living
tradition, the tradition of what Muslims actually did, is the Sunna. And so Rahman states, “ that the sunna
14 Khatib, Sunna, 124-26
15. Bourtn, J. Introduction to Hadith. p.2
16 ibid. p .46
17 Bukhari, Sahih, 1v. 62
18 Al-Tabrizi, Mishkat al –Masabih (1326), Ilm 32
19 Hammam ibn Munabbih, Sahifa, ed. Hamiduallah, M. (Paris,1380),9.
20 For detail see Bukahri pp35,6,7
21 See Azami, Schacht’s Origns, 109-11
22 . See. Rahman, F. Islam 2nd edition. Cp three.
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and Hadith were coeval and consubstantial in the earliest phase after Muhammad and that both were
directed towards and drew their normatively from him”23
Collection & the Early Continuous Written Tradition
It is said that at the time of the advent of Islam, there were no more than 17 persons in the city of Mecca
who knew how to read or write, and as regards the city of Medinah the number of those who knew the art
was even smaller. 24 After the migration to Medinah, Muslims laid there the foundations of New
Government and a City-State. The Prophet called for consultation all the inhabitants of the place, Meccan
immigrants, Medinan converts, Jews and the Arabs who had not yet embraced Islam and Promulgated a
State constitution. This is the first written-constitution of any state in the history of the history of the
world, according Dr Hamidullah ‘This is a writing of the prophet Muhammad, messenger of God, which is
(effective) between the Believers and the Muslims of the Quraishite origin and of Yathrib town and those
who follow them( the Muslims), come and join them and partake with them in war’…The word “ this is a
writing (Kitab)” 25used here, can apply to a written document only. In the course of the 47 section of this
constitutional law, the words “ the people of this document (sahifah)” are repeated five times.
Nabia Abbott tries to argue that there was an early and continuous practice of writing hadiths in Islam. By
"early" she means that the Companions of the Prophet themselves kept written records of hadiths and by
"continuous" that most hadiths were transmitted in written form (alongside the oral transmission) until the
time they were compiled in the canonical collections. For her, then, it is this written transmission of
hadiths that serves as the guarantee of their authenticity.26 The problem for Abbott, given this suggestion,
is the obvious lack of any early attempt to standardize all these reports about Muhammad and, more
tacitly, the lack of extant manuscripts from this period. Her solution to this conundrum is to lay the blame
squarely on the shoulders of the second caliph, `Umar I (d. 23/644). Because of the lack of familiarity with
the Qur'an in the newly conquered lands outside Arabia, the caliph feared "a development in Islam, parallel
to that in Judaism and Christianity,.
" So he destroyed the manuscripts of hadiths he discovered and punished those who had possessed them.
Many Companions avoided (at least publicly) the use of written and even oral hadiths lest they incur the
caliph’s wrath 27 even though they did not necessarily concur with him on this issue. There were many
contradictory statements made regarding the writing down of Hadith. Abu Sa’id al-Khudri transmitted a
Hadith on the authority of the Prophet (pbuh) that he said, “ Do not write from me anything except the
Qur’an and whoever has written anything from me other than the Qur’an should erase it”28 This was
challenged by many scholars, who deduced that it meant that nothing should be written with the Qur’an on
the same sheet. There is ample evidence that the Prophet (pbuh) allowed it. Abu Huraira reports that one of
the Ansar told the Prophet (pbuh) of his inability to remember what the Prophet (pbuh) said. The Prophet
(pbuh) is reported to have said, “ Call your right hand to your aid,” i.e. write it down. It is apparent that the
Prophet’s sayings would not have survived if they were confined to oral transmission only. However, the
real basis for the later collections of hadiths was the relatively few Companions, such as `Abd Allah ibn
`Amr (d. 65/684), Abu Hurayra (d. 58/678), Ibn `Abbas (d. 67–8/686–8), and Anas ibn Malik (d.
94/712),(may God pleased with them all) who continued to collect, record, and transmit them. The fact is
that the Prophet had asked the companions to refrain from recording his words suggest that the practices
were widespread.
The first professional transmitters were Muhammad’s illiterate follower Abu Hurayrah and his client Anas
b. Malik al-Ansari (d.94/712). When questioned about his numerous traditions, Abu Hurareah explained
that he was poor, had been long with Muhammad, and had devoted his life to memorizing his hadith, while
23 . Islam 2nd edition. Chapter Three. Pp 43 -53
24 Hmaidullah, S. Sahifah Hammam ibn Munabbih.pp8)
25. ibid
26 Nabia,Abbott,Studies 11, pp. 6-7.Her arguments are much more tersely summarized in her “Hadith Literauter- pp.289-98. See Also the Summary of her
position by Siddiqi, Hadith Literature, pp.131-2
27 See Abbott Studies 11,7 and note 24.
28 . Ibn Majah, p.20