LESSON 14
HADĪTH

For the first 150 years of Islam, Islamic law was a very free adaptation of the Qur'ān to new circumstances. Existing customary law was retained as far as possible, and Muslim jurists made new decisions on the basis of their considered personal opinion. In this way legal custom was evolving through common acceptance or agreement, and took the name and authority of sunna. Sunna concretely means "straight" or "beaten path", but commonly refers to an "established norm" or "set example".

Islamic law was not uniform. The Medinans turned to Mālik ibn-Anas (d. 796) and the Iraqians to Abū-Hanīfa (d. 767). Others followed Ibn-Hanbal (d. 855; see lesson 12). A fourth school formed around ash-Shāfi`ī (d. 820), a man who had a deep and permanent impact on all of Sunnī thought. His principle was that Muslims must be governed solely by God's revealed will, so that any purely human law was seen as a competition with God's authority. Ash-Shāfi`ī's conclusion was that every point of Sharī`a must be founded on a Qur'ānic prescription or on a Sunna that can be authentically ascribed to the Prophet through a chain of witnesses. It is doubtful whether Muammad ever intended to make a legal legacy of his own decisions and example apart from the Qur'ān. He may have been the most qualified to interpret the Qur'ān, but still as a human interpreter. Therefore scholars like Mālik held that his rulings could be rejected when better reasons were advanced.

Ash-Shāfi`ī's originality was to propose that, as the seal of prophets, Muhammad was the perfect man, a divinely guided and sinless model for all mankind to imitate. Therefore the Sunna of Muhammad was tantamount to revelation. The Qur'ān, ash-Shāfi`ī said, was recited or verbal revelation, while the Sunna is non-recited revelation, that is, a revelation of the meaning for which Muhammad was left to find his own words, but revelation nonetheless, and is referred to in the Qur'ān as "the Wisdom" (2:129). Ash-Shāfi`ī further argued that the Qur'ān could lend itself to many different interpretations, and man would be groping in blindness if he tried to understand the Qur'ān without the help of divinely provided Sunna. Moreover, many Qur'ān verses are abrogated by others and these can be known only by Sunna.

Sunna henceforward became equivalent to Hadīth, the written record of what Muhammad said or did, and a massive movement of Hadīth gathering took shape. Since for most practices no tradition from Muhammad existed, adīths were invented en masse. The authority for inventing hadīths was found in a forged hadīth quoting Muhammad that any good sayings that exist can be assumed to have been said by him and can be accepted on his authority. To prevent extremes in the free invention of hadīth, a second hadīth was fabricated as a control: "He who tells a deliberate lie about me (Muhammad) should be prepared for his seat in hell." Of the hundreds of thousands of hadīths that were amassed, most were eventually rejected as spurious from a critique of their chains of authority, not from any internal reason. The remainder were embodied in the commonly accepted "authentic" (sahīh) collections of al-Bukhārī (d. 870), Muslim ibn-al-Hajjāj (d. 875), Abū-Dā'ūd (d. 888), at-Tirmidhī (d. 892), an-Nasā'ī (d. 916), and Ibn-Māja (d. 886).

Most modern scholars accept many hadīths as going back to Muhammad substantively, though not in the exact words. They regard other hadīths as products of Muhammad's Companions and their successors detailing what Muhammad would have said or done in new circumstances. Other hadīths they reject on grounds of their deviating from the Qur'ān, although other Muslims would say that in this case Hadīth overrules the Qur'ān. A few modern Muslims reject Hadīth altogether, such as Ghaddafi in Libya.

It was clear that the legal system now claiming Muhammad's authority did not rest on the Qur'ān, and in some instances was in conflict with the Qur'ān. Fundamentalist devotees of the Qur'ān (known to us through ash-Shāfi`ī's writings) challenged the authority of Hadīth and maintained the complete sufficiency of the Qur'ān, denying even late in the 2nd century of Islam that there was any other legitimate source of law. They said that anything not determined in the Qur'ān was deliberately left unregulated by the divine Lawgiver. Ash-Shāfi`ī effectively made Sunna superior to the Qur'ān, since any interpretation of the Qur'ān must conform to it. Yet he would never admit as much, and said that the two could never clash. He knew that any claim that the Sunna ever once overruled the Qur'ān would make him lose the debate with the Qur'ān party.

Once the threat of the Qur'ān party receded and the position of Sunna was assured, its supporters could go further and maintain that in case of conflict Sunna does overrule the Qur'ān. The Qur'ān (53:4-5) was cited as proof: "He does not speak from mere whim, but it is a revelation revealed." This verse obviously refers to Qur'ānic revelation, but is stretched to apply to Sunna. Al-Baydāwī (d. 1316) concludes:

The majority concede that Sunna has abrogated the Qur'ān, as has occurred in the case of the penalty of flogging (Q. 24:2). Ash-Shāfi`ī disputed the possibility and urged Q. 2:106. He can be refuted by the consideration that the Sunna also was revealed.

The rationale for the possibility of Sunna overruling the Qur'ān is explained by al-Ghazālī (d. 1111):

The Prophet did not abrogate the Qur'ān on his own initiative (Q 10:15). He did it in response to inspiration (Q. 53:4)... Thus God does the actual abrogating, operating through the medium of his Prophet. One ought thus to hold that the rulings of the Qur'ān may be abrogated by the Prophet, rather than solely by the Qur'ān... God has but one word which differs in the mode of its expression. On occasions, God indicates his word by the Qur'ān, on others by words in another style, not publicly recited, and called Sunna. Both were mediated by the Prophet.

Muammad ibn-Mūsā al-Hamdhānī expressed the supremacy of Sunna in slogans like, "The Sunna is the judge of the Qur'ān", and "The Qur'ān has greater need of the Sunna than the Sunna has of the Qur'ān".

QUESTIONS

  1. Explain the original meaning of Sunna, and how it came to mean Hadīth.
  2. Discuss the authenticity of Hadīth.
  3. Discuss the authority of Hadīth.
  4. Explain the relationship between the Qur'ān and Hadīth.
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