HADITH

also spelled Hadit (Arabic: news, or story) the spoken traditions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, which are revered and received in Islam as a major source of religious law and moral guidance. The development of Hadith was a vital element during the first three centuries of Islamic history, and its study provides a broad index to the mind and ethos of Islam. Hadith embodies the sunna (right custom) of the community of Muslims. Every complete Hadith formulation consists of two parts, the text proper and the isnad (chain of transmitters), which precedes ite.g., It has been related to me by Yahya on the authority of Malik on the authority of Nafi' on the authority of 'Abd Allah ibn Omar that the Prophet said: If someone sells a palm tree which has been fertilized, its fruit belongs to the seller, unless the buyer stipulate it for himself.' This literary form came into being early in the 2nd century of the hijrah (soon after AD 720) and was at once put into writing. The emergence of such traditions was mainly due to the activity of the so-called traditionists, who tried to base the Islamic way of life not on custom as it had developed in the centres of the Muslim world but on individual precedents going back to the Prophet. This led to a wholesale creation of traditions with ever more elaborate isnads. As a result, most of the early opinions held on the religious law and dogma of Islam as well as on its early history (which provided legal and political precedents), not to mention prophecies expressing political and other expectations, were cast in the form of traditions, which often attempted to conceal their underlying tendencies. The Muslim scholars were aware of this but, being bound, on principle, to accept any formally reliable statement of what the Prophet had said or done, had to restrict themselves to the scrutiny of isnads, the truthfulness and orthodoxy of transmitters, and so on, although their unavowed criterion was the acceptability to the majority of the traditions in question. The result of that scrutiny is represented by six collections of traditions recognized as authoritative in orthodox Islam: the works of Muhammad ibn Isma'il al-Bukhari, Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj, Abu Da'ud al-Sijistani, Abu 'Isa Muhammad at-Tirmidhi, Abu' Abd ar-Rahman an-Nasa'i, and Abu Abdallah ibn Maja (all of the 3rd century AH). By that time, Islamic law had already taken its final shape, so that the study of traditions became of antiquarian and edifying interest, but they have deeply influenced Muslim thought. In critical scholarship, Hadith constitutes the main source for the study of doctrinal development during the first few centuries of Islam. also spelled Hadit (Arabic: news, or story) record of the traditions or sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, revered and received as a major source of religious law and moral guidance, second only to the authority of the Qur'an, or scripture of Islam. It might be defined as the biography of Muhammad perpetuated by the long memory of his community for their exemplification and obedience. The development of Hadith is a vital element during the first three centuries of Islamic history, and its study provides a broad index to the mind and ethos of Islam. Additional reading J. Robson, Hadith, in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed., vol. 3, pp. 2328 (1971); and Th.W. Juynboll, Hadith, in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 2, pp. 189194 (1927), two important summaries with extensive bibliographies; Alfred Guillaume, The Traditions of Islam (1924, reprinted 1980), a general introduction serviceable for a first study; Ignc Goldziher, tudes sur la tradition islamique, ed. by Lon Bercher (1952), a French trans. of the major part of vol. 2 of Muhammedanische Studien, 2 vol. (188890, Eng. trans. by C.R. Barber and S.M. Stern, Muslim Studies, ed. by S.M. Stern, 196771), a classic work on the early development of Hadith, reflecting the early history of religious ideas in Islam; Maulana Muhammad Ali, A Manual of Hadith (1944), a general selection, mainly from al-Bukhari, in Arabic and English; A.J. Wensinck, A Handbook of Early Muhammadan Tradition (1927, reprinted 1971), an alphabetical arrangement by a great Dutch scholar; Muhammad Z. Siddiqi, Hadith Literature: Its Origin, Development, Special Features and Criticism (1961), an Asian Muslim's presentation.