Total Rejection and Its Implications

A school of thought among modern historians, like Koren and Nevo, outright rejects early Islamic sources.   They believe that the discrepancies in early Muslim resources, both noted by early Muslim historians and observed by modern historians, are so extensive that they can only be believed if they match with a non-Islamic source.¹  Patricia Crone joins the chorus. She is of the view that one can either adopt early Islamic traditions in total without criticism or reject them in total after critical analysis, but one can’t work with them.²  Problem is, there are no contemporary non-Islamic historical sources or any archaeological sources available to cross-check the reports of early Islamic sources about the Prophetic times.  If we strictly follow Koren and Nevo’s advice, we have to declare that nothing is known about the advent of Islam.  Wansbrough adopts exactly this position.³  Haleem is at the same viewpoint when he declares, “We can never know exactly what historic Muhammad was.”⁴

Alternate Approach

Shoemaker, who himself holds this extreme position of total rejection of early Islamic traditions, laments, “Yet despite this widely held recognition (that Sirah and Hadith literature is not a trustworthy historical source), it is peculiar that so many modern scholars have continued to write as if nothing has changed.”⁵  Shoemaker is right in his observation.  Many researchers, students, producers, and consumers of the history of early Islam are not convinced that all early Islamic traditions have absolutely no historical value.  Gorke, for example, declares, “Nevertheless, some literary sources, such as the traditions on the life of the Prophet, have been demonstrated to be consistent and ‘have an authentic kernel’ ”.⁶  Such historians are not convinced that after writing events of pre-Islam, a historian should leave a few pages blank under the heading of ‘advent of Islam’ and then proceed to what happened after the advent.  All modern historians of the advent of Islam acknowledge the limitations of early Islamic traditions but still use them to create a history of that period.⁷  In doing so, modern historians tacitly admit that despite flaws, there is substance in early Islamic sources.  They can’t be taken at face value, but the truth can be dug out of them.  Hypotheses can be extracted from them after cautious scrutiny.  Watt was the pioneer of this approach.⁸  Others followed suit.  Before we proceed to what techniques can be used to extract truth from early Islamic sources, let’s first acquaint ourselves with what is available.

Further Reading

https://historyofislam.org/sources-of-advent-of-islam

https://islamichistory.com/advent-of-islam/historical-methodology-of-early-islam

Endnotes

The post Critical Analysis of Early Islamic Sources appeared first on Islamic History.

Kodex Wezstein II 1913 is a Qur’an manuscript kept at Staatsbibliothek, Berlin.  It is from the early eighth century CE.  Its radiocarbon dating has established it to be from 662 CE to 765 CE with 95.4% probability.  Its preserved 210 folios contain 85% of the Uthmanic text.¹⁰

So, the Quran has been in written form since the 7^th century CE and has been a fairly stable text since then.

Further Reading

https://islamichistory.com/advent-of-islam/earliest-quran-manuscript

https://historyofislam.org/sources-of-advent-of-islam

Endnotes

The post Transmission of the Qur’an appeared first on Islamic History.

The period when Prophet Muhammad preached Islam.

Absence of primary sources

Not a single inscription has come to light from the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad.¹¹  Neither is there any other archaeological material available, like coins, manuscripts, ruins, etc.  Even non-Islamic extant writings are absent for this period.

Availability of secondary sources

The only secondary sources available to reconstruct the history of the advent of Islam are secondary sources, mainly extant accounts of Sirah (sīrah سيرة) traditions and Hadith (ḥadīth حديث) traditions written by early Muslim scholars.  Sirah traditions are recordings of events in the life of the Prophet Muhammad, and Hadith traditions are recordings of sayings and practices of the Prophet Muhammad.

Both these traditions remained oral for about a century or so after the death of the Prophet before being preserved in written form.¹²  One reason for them circulating only orally during the early period of Islam was a public belief that an Islamic scholar should be capable of memorising the traditions.¹³  The earliest written accounts were personal notes of the scholars rather than published books.

Further Reading

https://historyofislam.org/sources-of-advent-of-islam

End notes

The post Historic Sources of Advent of Islam appeared first on Islamic History.

Among modern historians, Goldziher was the first to raise serious concerns about Hadith traditions being an authentic source of history.¹⁴  Many others, especially Western scholars, were convinced by Goldziher.¹⁵  Later on, Lammens added Sirah literature into the same category of doubtful historical sources.¹⁶

Flaws in Early Islamic Sources

1:  They are not contemporary to the events.  Sirah and Hadith are not primary sources of the history of the advent of Islam.  Secondary sources of history are always inferior to the primary ones.

2:  Both Sirah and Hadith had a long period of oral transmission before being written down.  The very process of their oral transmission for a long period raises doubts about their trustworthiness.  Consensus is that the written form of literature is more stable when being transmitted as compared to the oral form.  The longer a historical event remained oral before being subject to writing, the more doubtful its credibility is.¹⁷

3:  The genuineness of the list of successive persons credited with the transmission of an oral tradition (chain of authorities, Isnād اسناد) before being written is in question.¹⁸  Watt conceives the process of transmission somewhat as follows: “To begin with, the stories would be handed down informally in families and clans, and from older men and women to younger acquaintances.  Before the end of the first Islamic century, however, a few persons had begun to collect all the information they could about the life and campaigns of the Prophet Muhammad, and some at least wrote down what they had collected.  These earliest collectors of information, however, though they seem to have scrutinized their sources carefully and sometimes stated who they were, did not in every case give a complete chain of authorities going back to an eyewitness of the events.  It was only gradually that noting the complete chain of authorities became regular.  Ibn Ishaq, working in the second quarter of the second Islamic century, usually gives his authorities, but not always a complete chain, and he does not always repeat the words of the authority verbatim.  Waqidi, half a century later, is similar in method, but his secretary and follower, Ibn Sa’d, some twenty years later, always attempts to quote exactly and to give a complete chain of authorities.  The insistence on complete chains is to be associated with the teaching of Shafi’i, who was roughly a contemporary of Waqidi.  Once it became fashionable to find a complete chain of authority, scholars might have been tempted to extend their chains backwards to contemporaries of the Prophet Muhammad.  Even when they thus added to the chains, however, their additions might have been sound, since they probably knew in a general way where their predecessors had obtained information from.  Still, this means even when the whole chain of authority is given, we cannot rely so fully on the early links of a chain as on the later ones.”¹⁹  If this is the case, some of the traditions, if not all, could be concocted at later times and then attributed to a reputed transmitter.

4:  The recording process of the Sirah and Hadith literature is biased.  Earliest recorders deliberately omitted material from recordings that did not ‘suit’ them.  Hence material that has reached us is selected, and important data has been deleted from it in a systematic way – a typical example of scientific bias.

Ibn Hisham (Ibn Hishām اِبنِ هِشَام) is one of the earliest Sirah writers whose work has survived.  His main source was Ibn Ishaq, who belonged to an earlier generation of Sirah writers.  In preface of his book, Ibn Hisham admits, “For the sake of brevity, confining myself to the Prophet’s biography and omitting some of the  things which Ibn Ishaq has recorded in this book in which there is no mention of the apostle and about which the Qurʾān says nothing and which are not relevant to anything in this book or an explanation of it or evidence for it; things which it is disgraceful to discuss; matters which would distress certain people; and such reports as Al-Bakkā’ī told me he could not accept as trustworthy – all these things I have omitted.”²⁰  Here we get a classic example of deleting data.  Not only this, we get reasons for doing this – ‘things that are disgraceful to discuss’ (i.e., in the eyes of the public of that time) and ‘matters which would distress certain people’ (i.e., rulers).  Guillaume has worked meticulously to retrieve data deleted by Ibn Hisham and has demonstrated that some censored traditions were not politically acceptable to the rulers of the time, and some others were not religiously acceptable to the people of the time.²¹  For example, Ibn Ishaq includes Abbas bin Abdul Muttalib in the list of prisoners of war at the Battle of Badr. Ibn Hisham omitted his name.²²  Similarly, Ibn Ishaq mentions abrogated āyah; Ibn Hisham omitted it.²³

Early traditionalists were aware that material had been censored during the oral transmission phase due to political reasons.  For example, regarding the distribution of booty of the battle of Badr, Waqidi writes at one place, “ ‘Abd al-‘Azīz bin Muḥammad related to me from Ja’far bin Muḥammad from his father that the Prophet apportioned a portion to Ja’far bin Abī Ṭālib as his reward.  But our companions do not mention it, and his name is not in the sources.”²⁴

5:  Some of the traditions are simply forged.  Early Islamic sources were aware that forgery was being committed.  For example, discussing the scribe of the Hudaybiyah Peace Treaty, Ma’mar writes on the authority of Abdur Razzaq (‘Abd al-Razzāq عَبدَالرَزاق), “I asked al-Zuhrī about this, and he laughed and said, ‘The scribe was ‘Ali ibn Abī Ṭālib, but were you to ask them” – by whom he meant the Umayyads – “they would say it was ‘Uthmān.” ”²⁵

Unlike admitted account of Ibn Hisham of censoring the material in Sirah literature or Zuhri’s acknowledgement that forgery was going on in the recording of Sirah literature, no admitted account of forgery is documented for the Hadith literature.  However, circumstantial evidence to prove later forgery is abundant.  For example, Muslim bin Hajjaj (Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj مُسلِم ابن حَجّاج) (d. 875 CE), one of the Hadith collectors, writes down in his Sahih (Ṣaḥīḥ صَحِيج) that Salama bin Yazīd asked the Prophet three times what he thought of future rulers who would demand from the public to discharge their responsibilities towards a ruler but themselves would not discharge their duties towards the public.  The Prophet didn’t answer.  Then Ash’ath bin Qays pulled Salama aside and said, ‘Listen to them and obey them, for on them shall be their burden and on you shall be your burden’.²⁶  This kind of stuff is concocted at the instigation of later rulers in Islam who were accused of not fulfilling their duties towards the public.  Two points are worth noting.  The narrator of this Hadith claims that he heard it from his father and does not give any further chain of transmission.  Second, the advice does not come directly from the tongue of the Prophet but from a Companion, and his words found place in Hadith literature because they are claimed to have been uttered in the presence of the Prophet.

6:  The traditions underwent distortion during transmission.  Early Muslim historians were aware of modifications in the content of traditions during passage through the chain.  For example, Ibn Hisham did not record one poem in the text he was writing because, according to him, there was a line in the poem that was a later invention.²⁷  Modifications were done either by the addition of substance to the tradition or the combination of two different approaches into a single one.  Researchers have identified general trends that governed modification in traditions.  One was, quite naturally, the glorification of the Prophet Muhammad.  The other was the glorification of the forefathers of the transmitter himself.  Blackening of political opponents of the Prophet Muhammad and political opponents of the tradition transmitter was also practiced.²⁸

7:  Some traditions are mutually contradictory.  Sirah or Hadith literature, which has reached us, is mutually contradictory even among the earliest sources.  Ibn Ishaq gives timing of murder of Asmaʾ bint Marwan and Abu ‘Afak after battle of Uhud but Waqidi gives dates of these killings in the week immediately after battle of Badr.²⁹  Not only do different recorders disagree with each other on a particular matter, but the same recorder pens down contradicting reports and leaves the judgment of the correct version to the reader.  For example, at one place Waqidi notes about the expedition of Nakhla, “Ma’mar related to me from al-Zuhrī from ‘Urwa saying: The Messenger of Allah paid the blood money for ‘Amr bin al-Ḥaḍramī (عَمرو بِن الحَضَرمِى). He observed the protected month as it was until Allah revealed barā’a (بَرَاءَه).”  At another place he notes, “Abū Bakr bin Abī Sabrah (اَبُو بَكر بِن اَبِى سَبرَه) related to me from ‘Abd al-Majīd bin Sahl (عَبدَ المَجَيد بِن سَهل) from Kurayb, who said: I asked Ibn ‘Abbās (اِبن العبّاس), “Did the Messenger of Allah pay the blood money for Ibn al- Ḥaḍramī?”  He replied, “No.” Ibn Wāqid (واقِد) said: We are agreed that he did not pay the blood money.”³⁰  Actually, entirely variant stories were circulating among Muslims during the second half of the eighth century CE about the events that took place during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad.  It is confirmed by two entirely contradicting traditions noted by Ibn Ishaq, who was active at that time, regarding the conversion of Umar bin Khattab.  In one version, he notes that he converted after listening to the Qurʾan recited by his sister Fatima.  In another version, Ibn Ishaq notes that Umar converted after listening to the Qurʾan being recited by the Prophet Muhammad.  Ibn Ishaq himself is so confused with this situation that at the end of his reports, he writes, “But Allah knows what the truth was”.³¹  Contradicting reports about historical events had bothered the earliest historians of Islam, who were using traditions recorded by earlier scholars.  Tabari admits that he has to note down conflicting reports of the events, which don’t make sense to Tabari himself.³²  Which of the conflicting reports about an event to choose and which to reject is a dilemma for modern historians.

8:  The Sirah literature is not a verbatim transcription of eyewitnesses.  It has been altered to sound convincing to the reader of the time.  Describing events of Hunayn, Ma’mar narrates, “Al-‘Abbās said: I was the one holding fast to the reins of the Messenger of God’s she mule, trying to turn her away, and Abu Sufyān held fast to his leather stirrup.”³³  Scholars doubt that the stirrup was available to the Arabs of Prophetic times.  They insist that the use of the stirrup started as late as the Umayyad period.³⁴  It means Zuhri, who is a link in the chain of transmitters of this tradition, glamorized it to impress his audience.

9:  Total reliance on written material came very late.  It is known that Sirah and Hadith literature was already in written form by the end of the first Islamic century, but later historians did not rely solely on the written materials.³⁵  They were still recording stories that were circulating orally.  Waqidi talks about one of his authorities, that he had read something in an old transcript of Urwah bin Zubayr.³⁶  It shows that Urwah bin Zubayr had written something which Waqidi included in his monograph, but other parts of the same tradition were still gathered from circulating oral accounts.

So, where do we stand?

All traditions in the Sirah and Hadith literature cannot be taken on face value to reconstruct the history.  Their critical analysis is necessary to use them.

Further Reading

https://historyofislam.org/sources-of-advent-of-islam

Endnotes

The post Limitations of Early Islamic Sources appeared first on Islamic History.

Aban bin Uthman

One of the earliest known Muslim Sirah recorders was Aban bin Uthman (Abān bin ‘Uthmān اّبان بِن عُثمان), the son of caliph Uthman.³⁰  Being the son of the caliph, he might be aware of some inside stories not known to the general public.³⁷  We would not have been aware of Aban’s writing activities had Zubayr bin Bakkar (d. 870) (Bakkār بَكّار), an Abbasid era historian, not written about him.  According to Ibn Bakkar, Aban compiled his work in 702 CE at the behest of Umayyad prince (later caliph) Sulayman bin Abdul Malik (Sulaymān bin ‘Abd al Malik سُلَيمان بِن عَبدُالمَلِك), who also provided Aban with ten scribes (Kuttāb) and the parchments needed to write the book.  It was soon burned on orders of caliph ‘Abd al Malik, father of Sulayman, because it was brief on the virtues of Umayyad ancestors from Mecca and was full of praises for the Prophet Muhammad’s Medinan Companions.³⁸  Aban’s work is lost forever.  Later Islamic sources don’t quote a single tradition from Aban.  Mention of Aban is necessary just to underscore a fact that his was a Sirah literature in written form as early as 702 CE.   

Urwa bin Zubayr

Another early Muslim historian was Urwa bin Zubayr (‘Urwah bin Zubayr bin Awwām عُروَه بِن زُبَير بِن عَوّام).  Waqidi gives credit to Urwah bin Zubayr’s written material in his Kitab al Maghazi.³⁹  Urwah remained known to medieval historians.  For example, Turkish literary historian Haji Khalifa (d. 1657) (Ḥājjī Khalīfah حاجِى خَلِيفَه) identifies Urwah ibn Zubayr as earliest gatherer of Sirah literature.⁴⁰  Being a nephew of Aisha, he had access to her.   His original work is lost, but few traditions have survived through citations in Ibn Ishaq, Waqidi, and others.  Urwah died in 712 CE.⁴¹  In this context, he appears to be among the first published historians of Islam.  Umayyad caliph Abdul Malik considered him an expert on Islamic history, and modern historians consider him the founder of the history of Islam.⁴²  All attempts to excavate Urwa’s material have been futile up to now.⁴³

Second Generation Sirah Traditionalists

Wahb bin Munabbih

Wahb bin Munabbih (وَهْب بِن مُنَبِّه) (654 CE – 728 CE), a Yemenite of Persian origin, belongs to the second generation of historians.   Few pages of his book on Maghazi have survived on a papyrus (Heidelberger Papyrus), and it is the earliest extant writing of Sirah literature.  This papyrus was written in 844 CE.⁴⁴  Though this manuscript does not give us any new insight into the life of the Prophet, it proves beyond doubt that verbal traditions about the Prophet were already written down by the time Wahb was active, i.e., end of the first Islamic century. Further, the analysis of the papyrus shows, like all other early Sirah writings, that giving a full line of isnad was still not popular.⁴⁵.  By the way, there is another folio of Wahb bin Munabbih which Kister has identified lately.  It is kept at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.⁴⁶  Interestingly, Wahb’s another work, ‘kitab al-Mubtada’, recorded biographies of prophets and other biblical stories and serves basis of all later biographies of prophets (qasas al anbia) written by Muslims.⁴⁷

Musa bin Uqba

One interesting case of second-generation Islamic historians is that of Musa bin Uqba (Mūsā bin ‘Uqbah مُوسىٌ بِن عُقبَه) (c. 675 – 758 CE), a freedman of the family of Zubayr bin Awwam.  A fragment of his work (Berlin manuscript) has survived and was published by Sachau in 1904.⁴⁸  Goldziher has proved that Musa’s work existed up to the end of the 9^th century of the Islamic era before becoming extinct.⁴⁹

Third Generation Sirah Traditionalists

Ibn Ishaq

Muhammad bin Ishaq (Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq مُحَمَّد بِن اِسحاق), commonly known as Ibn Ishaq, is one of the earliest biographers of the Prophet Muhammad whose seminal work has reached us almost intact.  His Sirat Rasul Allah (Sīrat Rasūl Allah سِيرَت رَسُول اللَّه) has a reputation of being the first hagiography of Prophet Muhammad.  Nabia Abbott has studied a papyrus fragment preserved in the Oriental Institute of Chicago University.  She identifies it to be from Ibn Ishaq’s Tarikh al Khulafa (Tārīkh al-Khulafā تارِيخ الخُلَفاء).⁵⁰  The discovery shows that Ibn Ishaq’s recension proceeded later than the death of the Prophet.  That portion of his writings is lost forever.⁵¹  He was born in Medina (c. 704 CE) and died in Baghdad (c. 761 CE).⁵²  In this sense, he was active during the first half of the second Muslim century and was in contact with the second generation of traditionalists.  As he was young when the Abbasid revolution took place (750 CE), and it is known that he presented his works to the Abbasid caliph Mansur, it can be assumed that his writings might have been twisted to Abbasid favour.[For Ibn Ishaq’s presentation of his work to Mansur, see: Muhammad Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad.  Ed. and Trans. Alfred Guillaume.  Alfred Guillaume (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2013) xvi, xiv.[/note]  His original book did not survive, but later historians quoted it extensively.  Thanks to Guillaume, who collected all his quotations from the books of later historians and published them in the form of a book.  In doing so, Guillaume invented a technique for future historians of Islam to regenerate lost literature.

Waqidi

Abu Abdullah Muhammad bin Umar al Waqidi (Abū ‘Abdullāh Muḥammad bin ‘Umar al Wāqidī اَبُو عَبداللَّه بِن عُمَر الواقِدى) appeared almost half a century after Ibn Ishaq.  Commonly known as Waqidi, he was born in Medina (c. 747 CE) and died in Baghdad (c. 823 CE).⁵³  Originally a wheat trader interested in history, he acted as a tour guide to Abbasid Caliph Harun ur Rashid during his visit to Medina, and it was he who took Waqidi to Baghdad and appointed him a judge.⁵⁴  His book Kitab al Maghazi (kitāb al Maghāzi كِتاب اَلمَغازِى), which appeared a few decades later than Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah, is the earliest Sirah tradition that has reached us directly in its entirety.⁵⁵  Its original manuscript, dated 1169 CE, is preserved in the British Library.⁵⁶  As Waqidi took up a government job and as the government provided him with a scribe (Ibn Sa’d), one can fairly assume that his writings might be skewed towards Abbasid favour.

Ma’mar bin Rashid

Ma’mar bin Rashid (Ma’mar bin Rāshid مَعمَر بِن راشِد) also belongs to the third generation of historians.  He was a disciple of Zuhri and wrote whatever Zuhri told him.  His principal source, Zuhri, was attached to the Umayyad court.  Zuhri’s contemporary Makḥūl (d. 731) reportedly once exclaimed, “What a great man al-Zuhri would have been if only he had not allowed himself to be corrupted by associating with kings!”⁵⁷  So the reader can safely assume that traditions recorded by Ma’mar are biased in favour of the Umayyads.  Ma’mar did not note down Sirah traditions specifically.  He collected and noted Hadith.  Even those Hadiths, like any other third-generation traditionalist’s work, are lost.  Sean has tried to trace in later Islamic sources only those Hadiths narrated by Ma’mar, which contain pure political content, and has published them in a book form.

Further Reading

https://islamichistory.com/advent-of-islam/introduction-of-early-hadith-literature

https://historyofislam.org/sources-of-advent-of-islam

Endnotes

The post Introduction of Early Sirah Sources appeared first on Islamic History.

It is known that the process of Hadith narration and preservation had started immediately after the death of the Prophet Muhammad.  Abdullah bin Abbas (‘Abdallah bin ‘Abbās عِبدَاللَه بِن عَبَاس) and Abdullah bin Umar (‘Abdallah bin ‘Umar عِبدَاللَه بِن عُمَر) are two Companions who particularly devoted themselves to this work.  Their work has not survived except in traditions recorded by later Hadith narrators.   Both the earliest Hadith collectors and narrators were themselves Companions.  On the other hand, the earliest Sirah collectors and writers were sons of Companions.  Hence, we can assume that Hadith gathering started earlier than the Sirah gathering.

Second Generation Hadith Scholars

Ata ibn Abi Rabah

After the pioneers in the field comes the next generation of Hadith collectors and narrators.  Most qualified among them is Ata ibn Abi Rabah (‘Aṭaʾ Ibn Abī Rabaḥ عَطأ اِبنِ ابِى رَبَّاح) (653 – 732 CE), who lived in Mecca.⁴⁷  He had been in contact with Abdullah bin Abbas and Abdullah bin Umar.  None of his work has survived.

Al-Zuhri

Contemporary to Ata ibn Abi Rabah, and equally qualified, was Muhammad bin Muslim al-Zuhri (Muhammad bin Muslim bin ‘Ubaydallah bin Shihāb al-Zuhri مُحَمَّد بِن مُسلِم بِن عُبَيد اللَّه بِن شِهاب الزُهرِى), commonly known as Ibn Shihāb al-Zuhri.  Born in 671 CE, Zuhri died in 742 CE.⁵⁸  Zuhri also had been in contact with Abdullah bin Umar and Abdullah bin Abbas.  He earned a reputation as a scholar among Muslims.  Using his reputation, he attached himself to the court of Caliph Abdul Malik and remained attached to the succeeding caliphs until his death.⁵⁹  Zuhri was one of the earliest Muslim religious scholars to get gravy from a government.

Third Generation Hadith Scholars

Ibn Rabah and Zuhri were followed by a genre of Hadith narrators, including Ibn Jurayj (اِبْنِ جُرَيج) (c. 699 CE – 768 CE) and Ma’mar bin Rashid (714 – 770).⁶⁰  The latter was a teacher of Abdul Razzaq (‘Abd al-Razzāq عَبدُالرَزَّاق).  Abdul Razzaq preserved works of both Ibn Jurayj and Ma’mar in his Musannaf (Muṣannaf ‘Abd al-Razzāq مُصَنَّف عَبدُالرَزّاق).⁶¹

Sahifah (Ṣaḥīfah صَحِيفَه) of Hammam bin Munabbih (Hammām bin Munabbih هَمَّام بِن مُنَبِّه) (d. 719 CE) is another collection of Hadith from that genre that has been edited by Hamidullah, a scholar from India/Pakistan.⁶²  However, critics argue that the manuscripts Hamidullah saw at Berlin and Damascus, which he claims to be original from Hammam, are transmitted through many hands and are the same as those of Abd al-Razzaq.

Abdul Razzaq bin Hammam al Sana’ni (‘Abd al-Razzāq ibn Hammām al- Ṣan’āni عَبدُالرَزَّاق بِن هَمّام اَلصَنَعانى) (c. 763 –826 CE) was from Sana’a.  He traveled to Mecca, Medina, Syria, and Iraq.  He is credited with arranging Hadith according to the categories of jurisprudence (fiqh).  This collection of Hadith was lost but quoted in other books.  Indian scholar Maulana Habib al-Rahman al-Azmi collected them again and published them from Beirut.  These are called Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq.⁶³  Motzki has studied this Hadith collection and thinks that it could be of some historical value.⁶⁴  Just like Guillaume’s Ibn Ishaq being the earliest Sirah available to us almost intact, Azmi’s Abdul Razzaq is the earliest Hadith collection available to us almost intact.

Further Reading

https://islamichistory.com/advent-of-islam/earliest-quran-manuscript

https://islamichistory.com/advent-of-islam/earliest-written-hadith

https://historyofislam.org/sources-of-advent-of-islam

Endnotes

The post Introduction of Early Hadith literature appeared first on Islamic History.

Pick earlier over later sources.

As we know, the longer the temporal distance between a source from the event, the higher the chances of it being distorted; historians pick earlier secondary sources over later ones.  Haleem considers anything written within two hundred years of the death of the Prophet Muhammad to be an early Islamic source.⁶⁶  Actually, nobody has composed a satisfactory history of the advent of Islam without using sources that late.  Historical traditions written down within two hundred years of the death of the Prophet Muhammad can be considered Early Islamic Sources.  Historical traditions written after that would be considered Late Islamic Sources.  Late Islamic Sources will simply fall under the category of a tertiary historical source.

Pick Sirah Literature Over Hadith Literature

Those historians who don’t mind using early Islamic sources hold a general belief that the historical material that is blended with legal material might have been distorted by later theologians to fit it into their views.  On the other hand, the material that contained purely historical events was less prone to distortion.⁶⁷  Further, it is known that Sirah literature was present in written form earlier than Hadith literature.⁶⁸  So Sirah gets precedence over Hadith for the reconstruction of the political developments of early Islam.

Use Triangulation

Social scientists have developed a reasonable tool to overcome the observer’s bias in social science research.  It is ‘Triangulation.’⁶⁹  It simply means if two or more observers examine the same object from different points of view and come to the same conclusion, the conclusion is valid.  If two or more historians from entirely different backgrounds, for example, Islamist and Western, use a historical tradition and draw hypotheses from it, the historical value of that tradition is valid.  Only a discovery of a contradicting primary source would invalidate that tradition.

Use the Jigsaw Puzzle Method

Establish the events before and after a particular period.  If a tradition for this particular period fits very well with the events before and after, its validity is the least doubtful.

Survey All Available Material Before Committing

Avoiding some pieces of historical material, without any valid reason, just for the sake of convenience, will be biased in historical research.

Critically Analyse the Historical Sources

Any tradition that has an internal contradiction in it or where ‘tendential shaping’ is suspected is not valid for developing a historical narrative.⁷⁰

Avoid Researcher’s Bias

Never enter into the venture of writing history with pre-formed opinions.  The result will be invalid.

Further Reading

https://islamichistory.com/advent-of-islam/historic-sources-of-advent-of-islam

https://islamichistory.com/advent-of-islam/limitations-of-early-islamic-sources

https://historyofislam.org/sources-of-advent-of-islam

Endnotes

The post Historical Methodology of Early Islam appeared first on Islamic History.

A papyrus fragment is preserved in the Oriental Institute of Chicago.  The content of the papyrus is some Hadith traditions, which are part of Mawtta of Malik (d. c. 795 CE) (Muwaṭṭā’ lil Mālik bin ‘Anas مَوطاء لِلمالِك بِن ءانَس).  As the writing is on both sides of the papyrus, it is evident that the page was part of a scroll or a bound book.  Abbott, who has studied the papyrus in detail, dates it to the second half of the 8^th century CE.⁶⁷  This piece of paper confirms that Hadith literature was written down in book form during the early Abbasid period.  This is one of the earliest known pieces of hadith literature in written form.

Another small fragment of papyrus preserved in the Vienna National Library, Vienna, contains a portion of Hadith ascribed to Umar bin Khattab.  The papyrus originated in Egypt, and the Hadith noted on it is, again, part of Mawtta of Malik.  The writing has been guessed to be from the 8^th century CE, the early Abbasid period.⁷¹   Interestingly, the Hadith is written on the back of a papyrus, which was originally used for some kind of official document.  It means it was simply a personal note of a Hadith narrator, who still had to memorise it to narrate it.    As this papyrus is contemporary to the one mentioned above, evidently, Hadith literature was being transmitted in oral form, side by side with written form, during the early Abbasid years.

Literary sources mention preservation of Hadith literature in written form much earlier than the preserved documents.  We are told that Abdul Razzaq organized the Hadiths in categories of fiqh.  If true, they were written in a book form.⁷²

Further Reading

https://islamichistory.com/advent-of-islam/introduction-of-early-hadith-literature

https://historyofislam.org

Endnotes

The post Earliest Written Hadith appeared first on Islamic History.

Description

These are two folios that treasure hunters collected from the Middle East in the 1920s.  Carbon dating of the folios has confirmed that the animal on whose skin this manuscript is written was alive between 568 CE to 645 CE.⁷³

Dating

As the folios have marks separating ayah and surah, it is clear that the said Quran was a codified book.  If we consider the carbon dating only, this manuscript could be part of a Quran in the form of a book being used two decades after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, i.e., Abu Bakr’s Text.  If we take into consideration its style as well, it could be a Uthmanic Text and should be used soon after 650 CE.⁷⁴  The academic discussion around the Birmingham Quran Manuscript makes one point very clear.  Exact dating of the earliest manuscripts of the Quran is not that easy.  Yet, it can be safely believed that the Birmingham Quran Manuscript was in public use during the Rashidun Caliphate period.

Further Reading

https://islamichistory.com/advent-of-islam/transmission-of-the-quran 

https://historyofislam.org/sources-of-advent-of-islam

Endnotes

The post Earliest Qur’an Manuscript appeared first on Islamic History.

Historical evidence

British library houses a number of manuscripts in its Oriental Manuscript Collection.  One of them is BL Add. Mss: 14,461.  This manuscript has 107 pages and contains Gospel according to Matthew and Gospel according to Mark. Somebody scribbled a few lines on its folio number 1 a.  Wright, who catalogued this manuscript, brought to attention that the distinctly legible writing on its folio number 1 a is a nearly contemporary notice of taking of Damascus by the Arabs in 634 – 5 CE.⁷⁵  What Wright had missed out, and realized by later scholars, was that it was the earliest notice of Prophet Muhammad himself.  Here is the scribbled text.  The writing being very faint, the reader has to add a few letters or words in between to make a sense.  Such letters are written within { }, whereas translator’s notes are written within [ ].  English translation of original Syriac reads:

In January {the people of} Ḥimṣ took the word for their lives and many
villages were ravaged by the killing of {the Arabs of} Mūḥmd [Muḥammad]
and many people were slain and {taken} prisoner from Galilee as far as Beth….
{…} and those Arabs pitched camp beside {Damascus?} {…} and we saw everywhe{re…} and o{l}ive oil which they brought and them.  On the
tw{enty-six}th of May the Saq{īlā}rā went {…} from the vicinity of Ḥimṣ
and the Romans chased them {…} On the tenth {of August} the Romans fled
from the vicinity of Damascus {and there were killed} many {people} some
ten thousand.  And at the turn {of the ye}ar the Romans came.  On the twentieth of August in the year n{ine hundred and forty-} seven there gathered in Gabitha {a multitude of} the Romans and many people {of the R}omans were kil{led} {s}ome
fifty thousand.⁷⁶

There are certain observations to be made here.  The people of Ḥimṣ ‘took the word for their lives’ is an expression that they agreed to surrender in return for their lives.  Then there was a battle in Palestine with the ‘Arabs of Muhammad’ in which many villages were ruined and people from the region of Galilee and Beth [? Sacharya, South west of Jerusalem] were taken captive.  Then the Arabs laid siege to Damascus (as read by Noldeke:  T. Noldeke “Zur Geschichte Der Araber Im 1, Jahrh. d.H. Aus Syrischen Quellen’, Zeitschrift Der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, 1876, Volume 29, P 76).  In May Saqilara had limited success in the beginning but apparently, he was unable to lift the siege.⁷⁷  The next battle took place in Gabitha, [a town to the north of river Yarmouk in the Golan massif].  The writing gives the date of battle of Yarmouk as 20^th August 947 AG which is 20^th August 636 CE.  Key word in this text is “we saw” which is written on line 13.  It means the writer was eyewitness to the events that were noted and that he had penned them down on or immediately after 20^th August 636 CE.  According to Hoyland, an English historian, it was customary during those days to write down commemorative notes on the blank pages of Gospel.⁷⁸  If we take the date of death of Prophet Muhammad as June 8, 632, above document was written just three years and three months after the death of Prophet Muhammad.

British library preserves another Syriac manuscript as well.  This is BL Add. Mss: 14,643.  This manuscript was first catalogued by Wright in 1870 and since then is giving frustration to the scholars.⁷⁹  It contains so much incoherent material that it is difficult to make sense of any theme or year of its writing.  One entry in it is significant from point of view of Islamic history.

In the year 945, indiction 7, on Friday, 4 February, [634 CE] at the ninth hour,
there was a battle between the Romans and the Ṭayyāye [Arabs] of Mḥmt [Muhammad] in Palestine twelve miles east of Gaza.  The Romans fled, leaving

hind the patrician Bryrdn, whom the Tayyāye killed.  Some 4000 poor villagers of Palestine were killed there, Christians, Jews and Samaritans.  The Ṭayyāye
ravaged the whole region.⁸⁰ 

This is the first explicit reference to Prophet Muhammad in a non-Muslim source, and its precise dating inspires confidence that it ultimately derives from first-hand knowledge.  The account is usually identified with the battle of Dathin, which Muslim sources say, took place near Gaza in the spring of 634 CE.⁸¹  If we agree that the above document was written on February 4, 634 CE, this is mention of Prophet Muhammad even earlier than the previous one, just one year eight months after his death.

There is yet another document of non-Muslim origin.  Doctrina Jacobi (teaching of Jacob) is a Christian polemical dialogue written in Greek against the Jews.⁸²  It is about hundred pages long document from an unknown author.  The background of the dialogue is Carthage in Africa.  The dialogue is between Jacob, a Jew who has been forced to convert to Christianity and other Jews whom Jacob wants to convert to Christianity.  The dialogue touches current political affairs of the Byzantine Rome in the light of recent Arab conquests.  At one place it says, “When the Candidatus was killed by the Saracens, I was at Caesarea and I set off by boat to Sykamina.  People were saying ‘the Candidatus has been killed’, and we Jews were overjoyed. And they were saying that the prophet had appeared, coming with the Saracens, and that he was proclaiming the advent of the anointed one, the Christ who was to come.  I, having arrived at Sykamina, stopped by a certain old man well-versed in scriptures, and I said to him; ‘what can you tell me about the prophet who has appeared with the Saracens?’  He replied, groaning deeply: ‘he is false, for the prophets do not come armed with a sword.  Truly they are works of anarchy being committed today and I fear that the first Christ to come, whom Christians worship, was the one sent by God and we instead are preparing to receive the Antichrist.  Indeed, Isaiah said that the Jews would retain a perverted and hardened heart until all the earth should be devastated.  But you go, master Abraham, and find out about the prophet who has appeared’.  So I, Abraham, inquired and heard from those who had met him that there was no truth to be found in the so called prophet, only the shedding of men’s blood.  He says also that he has keys of paradise, which is incredible.”⁸³  This is not a dated document but after the dialogue is over, one character is shown to leave Carthage on July 13^th, 634 CE.  This very date gives a clue to Hoyland that it was not written much after 634 CE.⁸⁴  Nau gives it a little later date of 640 CE.⁸⁵  More recently Thummel has also agreed to the date of 634 CE.⁸⁶  If we recognize July 13, 634 CE as the date of writing of Doctrina Jacobi, this becomes one of the earliest mentions of Prophet Muhammad in non-Muslim sources.  Though Prophet Muhammad is not named but apparently it is he who is being talked about.

Background of the debate

In 1930 Liutsian I. Klimovich, a Russian scholar, suggested that Prophet Muhammad is not a real historic personality.  Rather he is a legend created by Middle Eastern writers of mid-8^th and 9^th centuries.⁸⁷  Liutsian argued that the earliest known biographies and reports of Prophet Muhammad are from mid-8^th century.  If Prophet Muhammad were a real person why any evidence of his existence is not available for more than a century after his death?

Liustsian based his theory on research done only on early Islamic sources.  Earliest surviving biography of Prophet Muhammad is written by Ibn Ishaq and published in 750 CE.  Later historians searched the non-Muslim sources and found mention of Prophet Muhammad much earlier.

Why non-Muslim source mentioned Prophet Muhammad after death

Prophet Muhammad was of little consequence for outside world until after his death, so we have no contemporary external sources to elucidate his life.⁸⁸

End notes

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