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Shukran
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 here) 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].3 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.
وإذا ما ازددت علما زادني علما بجهلي
And whenever I grow in knowledge,
I only grow in knowledge of my own ignorance.
(Muḥammad ibn Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī)
One of the most important gauges for true erudition is humility. Unlike what is claimed by some western-academia-trained scholars, knowledge is not an end unto itself. Rather, it is a means to an end. The end that it leads to (if acted upon) is perfection, salvation and success in the everlasting life of the Hereafter. It is easy to distinguish a true scholar (ʿālim) from one who has just memorized facts and figures, or the opinions of sages and philosophers, using this method. A true ʿālim will always be humble. This is because the more he learns and knows, the greater will be his appreciation of his own ignorance. This is what the beautiful quote above conveys.
Very little is known about the author of what is arguably the most influential ḥadīth collection in the Shiʿa world, Muḥammad ibn Yaʿqūb al-Kulaynī. Unlike some of his contemporaries and compilers of other well-known works of ḥadīth, details about al-Kulaynī’s life are sketchy at best. He is said to have hailed from the village of Kulayn in Rayy. However, some scholars such as al-Samʿānī (d. 562 AH) apparently confused this with another village known as Kilīn and as such referred to him as al-Kulīnī.4 His father was one of the known scholars of Rayy but since al-Kulaynī never narrated anything from him, it would be reasonable to surmise that he must have died while the latter was very young. However, al-Kulaynī did benefit from the tutelage of his maternal uncle.
In Baghdad, al-Kulaynī lived in the south-western quarter of Darb al-Silsilah and hence is also at times referred by the title ‘al-Silsilī’ in some sources. He passed away in Baghdad in either 329 AH (according to al-Najāshī and al-Ṭūsī in his Rijāl) or in 328 AH (according to al-Ṭūsī in his Fihrist and ʿAlī ibn Ṭāwūs in Kashf al-Maḥajjah). The former date is generally accepted over the latter. He apparently died in the month of Shaʿbān and this is of special interest since the final representative of the 12th Imām (a) in the minor occultation, al-Samurī, also died in exactly the same month and year. Al-Kulaynī’s grave is also a point of disagreement and in some older sources it is said that he was buried in the Bāb al-Kūfah cemetery. This is what Ibn ʿAbdūn, the erstwhile Imāmī scholar (d. 423) says when he recounts visiting al-Kulaynī’s grave only a few decades after his demise and seeing a tombstone on which was carved the name of al-Kulaynī and his father. However, it is reported that the site of his grave was later forgotten or lost (possibly due to flooding).5 However, there is a tomb in Baghdad that is said to belong to al-Kulaynī and is visited by many Shiʿas today, but it is located in a different area of the city, an area that was predominantly Sunnī in the past.
Andrew Newman suggests in his Formative Period of Twelver Shi’ism, that the author of al-Kāfī, Muḥammad ibn Ya‘qūb al-Kulaynī, was influenced by the rationalists of Baghdād due to his twenty-year residence there (p. 195). It is natural to assume that a person who spends such a long time in any place would be influenced by the prevalent trends of thought there. This, it has been suggested by Newman, accounts for the differences between the approaches of al-Ṣaffār in his Baṣā’ir al-Darajāt and al-Kulaynī in al-Kāfī. However, since the whole basis of this argument rests on the premise of al-Kulaynī’s lengthy stay in Baghdād, if this premise itself proves to be false, all the subsequent arguments that depend on it will come tumbling down.
Indeed, little is actually known for certain about al-Kulaynī’s life and as such, many details have been deduced and adduced by scholars from the little information available. The idea that al-Kulaynī spent twenty years in Baghdād is based on the statements of biographers, such as al-Najāshī, that the latter took twenty years to write his book, al-Kāfī. At the same time, we know for certain that he was buried in Baghdād. Putting these two ideas together led some scholars, like Newman, to conclude that he must have spent his last twenty years in Baghdād (p. 32). However, this is not necessarily the case.
The eminent scholar, al-Sayyid al-Burujerdi, says: the claim that al-Kulaynī was in Baghdād for twenty years is mere unsubstantiated conjecture… If indeed he lived in Baghdād for twenty years, that would leave little time for him to produce anything that could make him worthy of the title ‘the great Shaykh of Ray’ (al-Najāshī calls him “Shaykhu Aṣḥābīnā bi al-Ray wa Wajhuhum”) and this cannot be proven by his burial in Baghdād for he could have gone there for a short time at the end of his life or could have been passing through the city when he died.6
Furthermore, a simple study of al-Kulaynī’s teachers shows that most of them were Qummīs and only a negligible number of them were actually from Baghdād. The fact that he starts his work with traditions about the intellect and the importance of knowledge, or that he does not narrate many of the traditions on Imāmah that al-Ṣaffār does is because, unlike the simplistic categorization of Baghdād and Qum as centres of rationalism and traditionalism respectively, Qum actually did have rationalistic trends as well. Additionally, al-Kulaynī himself states in the introduction to al-Kāfī, that he intended to write a book on Imāmah, and that is where he most likely intended to compile a more complete set of traditions on the subject. Aside from this, in the instances where al-Sadūq narrates from al-Kulaynī, he does so through a chain comprising of narrators from Ray, thereby showing that al-Kāfī attained popularity in Ray before it did in Baghdād.
This statement has been ascribed to the Noble Prophet (s) and many scholars have discussed the possible connection love for one’s homeland may have to faith. Not being able to fathom any connection between the two has led many a scholar to classify this tradition as apocryphal. While not found in any early Shi’i hadith corpus, it has been refered to as a ‘hadith’ by certain late Shi’i scholars like Syed Muḥsin Amīn and Mullā Aḥmad Narāqī.7 There is no complete and uninterrupted chain of transmission (sanad) for this statement in any work of hadith or history, even though the earliest instance of this statement as prophetic tradition dates back to the fourth century.8
As far as the meaning of this statement goes, it cannot be taken literally since many non-believers also love their homelands. This is why some have understood it to mean that ‘loving one’s homeland does not contravene one’s faith’.9 Others have tried to explain this statement by saying that the homeland (waṭan) being referred to is the paradisal homeland of the Hereafter. Some mystics have even posited that waṭan here means one’s intrinsic nature (fiṭrah) and the first covenant made by man with the Almighty.10
Since this statement is not found in any early ḥadith works, it cannot be attributed to the Prophet (s). Nevertheless, it may be possible to acquiesce in a more suitable meaning for this statement that is acceptable and in line with the teachings of Islam. It would still not qualify as a tradition per se, but if explained correctly, it may be approbated as one of the popular aphorisms used by wise Muslim sages. And Allah knows best.
Was Imam ʿAlī (a) a Misogynist? This is the title that Amina Inloes gave to her article about the phrases that have been “falsely attributed” to Imam ʿAlī in Nahj al-Balāghah that apparently undermine women. Aside from the rather crude and sensationalist title, the article aims to show that the statements in the Nahj where women are referred to as being deficient could not possibly have been uttered by the Master of Believers, ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (‘a). From the melodramatic title, one can only conclude that anyone who disagrees with the author’s conclusions would have to accept that ʿAlī (‘a) was, god-forbid, a misogynist. This would be just like saying that the esteemed author of this article must be a misandrist because of her numerous works on women and implicit disregard for men!
Title aside, the article, which has been excerpted from a chapter of the author’s PhD thesis, aims to show that the passages which undermine women were late attributions that were falsely and posthumously imputed to the first Imam. She even speculates that these were Aristotelian tropes which somehow found their way into Islamic literature. A novel claim, but unconvincing and unsubstantiated. Inloes bases her arguments on what she terms a ‘detailed analysis of the textual sources’, followed by a critical examination of the various explanations and commentaries given by scholars for the specific passages of the Nahj, and finally a comparison between the so-called misogynist ideas in the Nahj and the approach taken in Kitāb Sulaym ibn Qays al-Hilālī.
We would take issue with each of these approaches. Firstly, what Inloes terms ‘a detailed textual analysis’ is lacking in many ways. She fails to examine the numerous traditions that are of similar or identical purport yet have been expressed in different wordings. This is a common problem with contemporary scholars who rely too much on digital resources and search for terms in large collections – they find select phrases but are unable to get other results of similar connotation because the phrases and words used therein differ. For example, we have a Prophetic tradition that has been narrated by the ‘Muḥammadūn’ in their important hadith collections that states:
مَا رَأَيْتُ مِنْ ضَعِيفَاتِ الدِّينِ وَ نَاقِصَاتِ الْعُقُولِ أَسْلَبَ لِذِي لُبٍّ مِنْكُنَّ
This has been narrated in al-Kāfī (5:322), Tahdhīb al-Aḥkām (7:404) and Man Lā Yaḥdhuruhu al-Faqīh (3:390), all of which are primary hadith collections. Moreover, there are numerous such traditions that have simply been overlooked. In fact, the sheer number of traditions would easily constitute tawātur maʿnawī regarding this issue, as some scholars have said.11
Secondly, her critical examination of the explanations given by scholars is also unsatisfactory. She quotes Nasir Makarim Shirazi and then goes on to make a mockery of the views of other contemporary Shi’i scholars by making readers play a guessing game to see if they can tell whether the quotations she gives are from ancient Greek philosophers or contemporary Shi’i scholars. Alternative explanations and detailed studies on the subject have not been objectively examined and it seems the author had already decided that these passages are fabrications and is only trying to prove her case. This is despite the fact that centuries of scholarship and over 60 commentaries on the Nahj exist. One would have hoped for a more thorough examination of the same. In addition, recent articles like that of Masjidi have not even been mentioned.
Thirdly, Inloes tries to compare the passages of Nahj al-Balāghah with Kitāb Sulaym ibn Qays. She skirts round the subject of the latter’s authenticity and uses the views of only Western scholars, such as Hossein Modarressi, to show that it can still be used to show what people thought and felt during the early days of Islam. And of course, since there is no mention of such phrases in Sulaym’s work, they must be a forgery and later attributions. This is another poor argument, for even if we were to accept that the book of Sulaym that we currently possess is the real book written by Imam ʿAlī’s companion Sulaym ibn Qays, it would only show us Sulaym’s perspective on things and would not necessarily be representative of the views of the entire Muslim ummah. Furthermore, saying that ‘the early provenance of Sulaym’s book is evident from his views on women’ (p. 350) constitutes a cyclical argument. Are we basing the assumption of early provenance on his discussion on women or are we basing the general understanding of the status of women on its early provenance?
In conclusion, Inloes fails to prove her case in this article and while we appreciate the effort, we would caution the esteemed author against jumping to sweeping conclusions based on biases or preconceived feminist notions. With prayers for success and praise to the Almighty.
