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Looking at Hadith from the Inside |
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Shukran
Kalimāt Sayyid al-ʿArab Abī al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (a) is a newly published work by the 4/5th century scholar al-Sharīf Abū al-Ḥasan Muḥammad ibn Ṭāhir al-Jaʿfarī al-Zaynabī al-Isfahānī (also known as al-Ashraf al-Jaʿfarī). It was published by al-ʿAllāmah al-Majlisī Library in Qum. Being similar to Nahj al-Balāghah and written in Iran in about the same time period as the latter, its author was one of the scholars of Isfahan, but little is known about him. This is because he is not mentioned in the known biographical and biobibliographical works. His name is seen, however, in some books on genealogy and among some chains of narrators, and within the biographies of other individuals. Nonetheless, his works are not mentioned even in these secondary sources. A unique manuscript of this work was found in the Hagia Sophia library in Turkey and was then edited and published recently.
There are many merits in the published critical edition, primary among which is the detailed annotation which includes all the sources where the traditions are mentioned, starting from Nahj al-Balāghah itself, followed by those that contain chains of transmission (musnad), and those that don’t (mursal), and even sources where the same meaning (maḍmūn) is found, albeit paraphrased. The editor even records sources where a statement is found attributed to other than Amīr al-Muʾminīn (a). Since there is only one extant manuscript of the text, it could not be compared to other manuscripts as is usually done with critical editions. As such, the editor used other early texts from around the same period, or known classical texts that contain similar wordings, in order to identify any errors in the manuscript and then made a note of the same in the footnotes. In all, this is a well-researched work and definitely counts as a good critical edition of an obscure, and previously unknown and unpublished, work.
The published book has 788 pages, and a group of scholars worked together to edit the work under the supervision of al-Sayyid Ḥasan al-Mūsawī al-Burujerdī. The actual text is 477 pages with the rest consisting of introductory discussions and appendices, some of which are quite useful. It has a total of 661 aphorisms, letters, and sermons of the Imam, arranged in no specific order. In his preface, al-Sayyid Ḥasan al-Burujerdī describes how he came upon this manuscript and notes that despite searching all the available catalogues of the different manuscript libraries around the world, he was unable to find any other manuscript of this work. He says that this work may have been authored before Nahj al-Balāghah since the author lived at the same time; but in any case, there is no possibility of its author having knowledge of the existence of Nahj al-Balāghah, even if he compiled this work a few years later. The manuscript he found had been written in the year 754 AH by a Sunnī, Sūfī copyist from the original manuscript written during the lifetime of the author himself (and now lost).
The author of this work states in his own introduction that the purpose behind writing this text was in response to a request by someone for a book in which all the otherwise scattered statements of Amīr al-Muʾminīn may be compiled together – something that did not exist at that time. What makes this text more special is that it contains about 40 traditions from the Imam that are not found in any other source. It also has about 70 traditions that have similar meanings to what is currently present in some sources, but with noticeable difference in wording. Though technically the lack of chains of transmission and the dearth of knowledge about the author and the book itself means that its traditions are ‘weak’, it is still quite a treasure to be found so late. Indeed, this makes up one of the best examples of wijādah to date. The author, al-Ashraf al-Jaʿfarī was born around 370 AH and he passed away around 440 AH, though the exact dates are not known. Likewise, nothing is known about his creed, except that some of the passages of this work give us confidence that he was indeed an Imāmī Shīʿah.
It is hoped that we will get the tawfīq to do an in-depth analysis of the ‘new’ aḥādīth in this work and present our findings in a research article in the not-too-distant future, God-willing. And indeed Allah is the granter of success.
Anyone who writes books knows how long and tiresome of a process it is to complete a single volume, let alone a multi-volume tome. Hence, when we were taught that al-Majlisī had a team of scholars, or a committee, that worked together to write the encyclopedic work Biḥār al-Anwār (110 volumes in the present edition), it made complete sense. After all, such a large work could not possibly have been written by a single individual. In a recent presentation, however, Sayyid Hasan Musawi Burujerdi used manuscript evidence to show that al-Majlisī was himself the author of Biḥār al-Anwār, and his students only played the role of scribes, or what he compares to ‘typists’, copying down the text of narrations as instructed by al-Majlisī. Furthermore, all the commentary in the text was penned by al-Majlisī himself, as shown by handwriting analysis and other clues. Al-Majlisī started the work quite early, at the age of about 30 years, and completed most of it before attaining the post of Shaykh al-Islām, which would occupy his time thereby slowing down his writing and research activities. Here is the audio of Burujerdi’s presentation (in Farsi).
In his rather long-winded presentation on the reliability of Abū Hurayrah, Abdullah Al-Rabbat tries to prove that he was a great companion and an unimpugnable source of Prophetic traditions who can undoubtedly be relied upon. The presentation (which can be seen in this youtube video) lasts just under four hours, and addresses some of the primary concerns about the character of Abū Hurayrah and the arguments leveled by those who question his credibility. Some of the points put forward by Al-Rabbat are worthy of reflection, while others are clearly wrong, and a few are outright ridiculous.
In answering the main question of how Abū Hurayrah became so close to the Prophet (ṣ) as to have access to him and narrate from him more than most of the other companions, Al-Rabbat states (around 30 minutes in) that he maintained closer contact with the Prophet because he was in al-Suffah and would often accompany the Prophet, by his own attestation, in order to satiate his stomach. The question is hardly answered in this way as we know that there were many companions in al-Suffah even before him (he arrived there in 7 AH), so why is he special? Furthermore, Al-Rabbat’s other arguments like Abū Hurayrah’s residing in Madinah after the Prophet is equally unconvincing because many companions did that, yet none relate the number of traditions that he did.
Al-Rabbat’s assertions about certain ‘personal traits’ of Abū Hurayrah, like attention to detail, seems quite spurious. When one is so worried about his next meal, how is he expected to care about other details around him? Furthermore, a narrator’s own attestations regarding his credibility do not constitute reliable evidence, and we do not have anyone else from the companions who praised him for his attention to detail. In fact, people during his own time were saying that he is relating too many aḥādīth, that is why he tried to defend himself with various justifications. Other traits Al-Rabbat mentions like his sense of responsibility are also only based on Abū Hurayrah’s own claims.
On the tradition in al-Bukhāri’s Ṣaḥīḥ where, upon being questioned about a statement, Abū Hurayrah admits that “This is from Abū Hurayrah’s sack [and not from the Prophet (ṣ)],” Al-Rabbat humorously tries to twist this by claiming it to actually be a testament to his reliability. However, he fails to see how it was only when the people questioned him that he admitted to having added his own commentary to a Prophetic tradition, so it is no way a testament to his trustworthiness. One can only wonder how many other such traditions may have been related by Abū Hurayrah and passed as being from the Prophet?!
While it is laudable that Abdullah Al-Rabbat was willing to acknowledge that there are some problematic narrations in the Ṣaḥīḥayn, and that 18 of those are from Abū Hurayrah, one cannot help but express dismay at his method of counting the traditions of this notorious narrator. Even if we take his conclusions at face value, it is astounding that 143 traditions, by his count, have exclusively been related by Abū Hurayrah, while some of the more prominent companions have only a handful of traditions to their name. One hour and 29 minutes into the presentation, Al-Rabbat mentions the likelihood of Abū Hurayrah relating things from other companions without mentioning their names, and letting the listeners believe that he heard it directly from the Prophet (ṣ). While he brushes this off as a common occurrence, it clearly reeks of unreliability and dishonesty.
Al-Rabbat also downplays Abū Hurayrah’s link with the notorious fabricator Kaʿb al-Aḥbār using strawman arguments such as the mutual influence the two had on each other. He glosses over the very real possibility of Abū Hurayrah’s turning towards Muʿāwiyah towards the end of his life (as implied in some reports) and evinces some narrations attributed to him in praise of the Hāshimites. One obviously fabricated report he quotes is from Saʿīd ibn Marjāna from ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn (a) (2:44) where the latter hears something from Abū Hurayrah and then relates it to Imam Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn, who then proceeds to act upon it. Al-Rabbat completely overlooks that Abū Hurayrah died in 48 AH when ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn (a) was ten years old, so how could he have owned such expensive slaves which he purportedly freed at that time?
In the end, the four hours less eleven minutes spent hoping some solid new research might reveal a novel approach towards the otherwise problematic narrator that is Abū Hurayrah proves more of a disappointment than anything else. While the time taken to carry out research and prepare the presentation is appreciated, the obvious biases that lead to contorted conclusions and misrepresentations undermines the value of the presentation.
The latest addition to Hossein Modarressi’s oeuvre, which was much anticipated, unfortunately failed to impress. It was nothing close to his Crisis and Consolidation which was undoubtedly paradigm shifting in its effect. With half of the book comprised of ‘examples’ – traditions from Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (a) on various, mostly jural, topics – this work on the legacy of the sixth Imam of the Ahl al-Bayt (a) is in no way groundbreaking. That is not to say that there is nothing to be gained from the monograph. There are indeed many tidbits of interesting information peppered around the text, some of which must surely have required a good amount of time to unearth and decipher. The author’s original translation of numerous traditions also constitutes a mine for translators of classical texts, though like all other translations it does have its imperfections.
After highlighting the fact that ḥadīth fabrication had been rampant among the late Umayyads and early Abbasids, Modarressi notes that the phenomenon of fabrication was also present among the Shīʿahs, who, like their Sunnī counterparts, at times ascribed lies to Imam al-Ṣādiq (a) due to the popularity of his name (pp. 9-10). This then leads us to what is perhaps the most disappointing thing about the work, namely the author’s ‘methodology’, if one could call it that, in evaluating the aḥādīth and identifying the authentic traditions from those that are “spurious”. By his own admission, no attention is paid to the chains of transmission as they could easily have been forged (p. 12, footnote). Hence, centuries worth of biographical studies on the narrators of ḥadīth by Muslim scholars have been singularly dismissed by the author as worthless.
Instead, Modarressi has opted to adopt ‘common sense’ as the litmus test for authenticity of traditions. He appeals to the ‘style’ of the Imams in the language and conventions they employ as a distinguishing factor (p. 10), though he does nothing to clarify how one can actually go about recognizing the speaker from his speech, especially when it was spoken so long ago and, in many cases, paraphrased by its transmitters. Indeed, if this was a viable method on its own, Muslim scholars would have employed it much earlier. Apart from the most obvious cases of fabrication, it is very difficult (not easy – as Moderressi claims. See p. 10 footnote. 20), to arrive at an undeniable conclusion about the validity of the ascriptions of statements to the Imams. That which ‘can reasonably be deemed reliable’ due to its correspondence with ‘common sense’ and any internal and external corroborating evidence (p. 11) is an open-ended gauge susceptible to subjectivity – the kind of subjectivity that is anathema in academic research.
Augumenta e silentio, or arguments from silence, have been used by some Orientalist scholars to prove that certain aḥādīth were later fabrications, since earlier sources are silent about those traditions and have not mentioned them. They thus seek to estimate the date when a ḥadīth came into being by searching for the earliest [written] source that mentions it, arguing that if the ḥadīth had indeed been from the Prophet or Companion, it would have been known and hence in circulation from their own time, or at least in the immediate decades that followed. Therefore, if a ḥadīth compiler does not mention a tradition in his collection, it indicates that he was either unaware of that tradition or that it never existed during his time. Now if the ḥadīth in question was one of great importance, it is highly unlikely that a ḥadīth expert would be ignorant about it; so the only remaining explanation is that it never existed and was fabricated at a later date.
Interestingly, the basic idea being propounded here is not new to Muslim scholarship. It is quite similar to the principle: law kāna la bāna (had it existed, it would have been known) and is even subject to the same conditions. Essentially, three basic requirements have to be met before the principle can take effect: (1) The matter addressed is so important that there is no way any expert scholar would be unaware about it; (2) Despite its importance, the expert scholar (or any person who ought to know it) does not evince it as proof when discussing something directly pertaining to it; (3) There is no reasonable explanation for his lack of reference to it, such as dissimulation (taqiyya), etc. If all these conditions are met, according to the principle of law kāna la bāna, the matter or tradition did not exist at the time of that particular scholar and was a later fabrication.
The principle of law kāna la bāna, also referred to variously as: law kāna la ẓahara (had it existed, it would have been manifest), law kāna lashtahara (had it existed, it would have been popularly known), and law kāna la waṣala (had it existed, it would have reached us) by different scholars, has generally been accepted as long as it meets the required conditions. However, in practice it is very difficult to ascertain the fulfillment of all the requirements in order to employ this principle as evidence. This is due to a number of factors, such as the many lost works of ḥadīth that have not reached us, which makes it impossible to know whether or not the compiler mentioned a given tradition in his other, now lost, compilations. Hence, though theoretically the principle is sound, in practical terms it does not hold much value today.
This is not to say that there are no traditions that can be questioned using this principle. For example, ʿAllāmah Amīnī mentions in his seminal work al-Ghadīr (5:354) that the purported statement attributed to the Noble Prophet (ṣ) in which he reportedly addressed Abū Bakr and ʿUmar saying “No one will take precedence over you two after me” is an obvious later fabrication because if the Prophet had indeed said this, it would have been known to the people and even the first two caliphs would have used this statement as evidence of their right to caliphate, which they never did, and neither did any of the companions. Hence, it becomes clear that using the principle of law kāna la bāna, this was a later fabrication. That being said, however, such examples are very few and cannot be compared to the application of e silentio arguments by Orientalists for a large number of traditions, which is obviously motivated by their biases against ḥadīth.
A number of Sunnī and Shīʿah sources quote the Prophet (ṣ) calling Imam ʿAlī (a) ‘al-Anzaʿ al-Baṭīn’, which literally means: the bald and stout one. For instance, al-Kanjī al-Shāfiʿī (though there are some who consider him to be a Shīʿah) states: “ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib used to be called al-Anzaʿ al-Baṭīn. This is because he remained free from polytheism (anzaʿ min al-shirk) and never ascribed any partner to Allah even for a single moment in his life…” And the title ‘al-baṭīn’ actually meant that he was full of knowledge or had profound and deep knowledge (al-baṭīn min al-ʿilm). This is because Imam ʿAlī was known for his great knowledge and deep understanding which was unique and unmatched. That is why he was recognized as the most learned among the companions, having gained his immense knowledge from his numerous private sessions with the Noble Prophet (ṣ).
In one tradition, the Prophet (ṣ) is reported to have explained the meaning of these two terms as he told ʿAlī (a), “…Glad tidings to you, for indeed you are al-Anzaʿ al-Baṭīn – (i.e.) he who has been kept away from polytheism (manzūʿ min al-shirk) and is full of knowledge (baṭīn min al-ʿilm).” [Biḥār al-Anwār 40:78]. 1 If one neglects to go through all the traditions, he or she may come up with a wrong understanding of these two terms and think that they refer to the literal meaning and describe the outward appearance of Amīr al-Muʾminīn as a balding, stout man. Given the envy and enmity that many had for him, it is not unlikely that terms such as these, if they were truly spoken by the Noble Prophet (ṣ), would be misused to make fun of the Imam. Hence, it is important that we understand such terms correctly.
Notes:
