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A Revaluation of Islamic Traditions1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Joseph Schacht
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Extract

I should like to present some ideas on what, I think, is necessary revaluation of Islamic traditions in the light of our present knowledge; but am at a loss whether to call my conclusions something new and unprecedented, or something old and well known. No one could have been more surprised than I was by the results which the evidence of the texts has forced upon me during the last ten years or so; but looking back I cannot see what other result could possibly be consistent with the very foundations of our historical and critical study of the first two or three centuries of Islam. One of these foundations, I may take it for granted, Goldziher's discovery that the traditions from the Prophet and from his Companions do not contain more or less authentic information on the earliest period of Islam to which they claim to belong, but reflect opinions held during the first two and a half centuries after the hijra.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 81 , Issue 3-4 , October 1949 , pp. 143 - 154
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1949

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References

page 143 note 2 Gibb, H. A. R., Mohammedanism (Oxford University Press, 1949), p. 196Google Scholar, calls Goldziher's Muhammedanische Studien “the standard critical study of the Hadīth”.

page 143 note 3 Becker, C. H., Islamstudien, i, pp. 522 and 526Google Scholar, uses the expressions “der historische Instinkt” and “das historische Gefühl” in an otherwise fair and balanced review of Lammens, Fāṭima. But the reaction to Lammens's one-sided thesis ought not to have led to a reversion from historical criticism, a thing which Becker himself had feared would happen.

page 144 note 1 I borrow this formula from Poliak, A. N., in AJSL., vol. lvii, 1940, p. 52Google Scholar.

page 144 note 2 See my forthcoming book, The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence (Oxford, Clarendon Press).

page 145 note 1 Bulaq, 1325.

page 145 note 2 E.g. by Nallino, C. A., Raccolta di Scritti, iv, p. 89Google Scholar. Nallino's arguments take no account of the legal texts of the second century a.h.

page 146 note 1 Cairo, 1355.

page 146 note 2 Lahore, 1329.

page 146 note 3 Goldziher, , Muhammedanische Studien, ii, p. 72Google Scholar, rightly emphasizes the fact that only very few decisions of the Prophet on legal subjects can have been current in the Umaiyad period.

page 147 note 1 This has already been pointed out by Goldziher, in his Muhammedanische Studien, ii, p. 157Google Scholar, and in ZDMG., vol. 1, 1896, p. 483 fGoogle Scholar.

page 147 note 2 This has already been noticed by Stern, Gertrude H., Marriage in Early Islam, pp. 12Google Scholar and 16, although Miss Stern on the whole seems to take isnāds too readily at their face value.

page 148 note 1 The most ambitious effort of this kind was made by Caetani, Prince L., Annali dell'Islam, i, Introduction, §§ 19, 24–8Google Scholar.

page 148 note 2 Muhammedanische Studien, ii, p. 72 f.

page 148 note 3 See Brockelmann, C., Geschichte der ardbischen Litteratur (and Supplementbände), i, pp. 64 ffGoogle Scholar. Brookelmann erroneously states that Muḥammad b. 'Abdalraḥmān 'Āmirī, one of the reputed earliest collectors of legal traditions from the Prophet, died in 120; he died in a.h. 158 (Ḥajar, Ibn 'Asqalānī, Tahdhīb al-Tahdhīb, ix, No. 503)Google Scholar.

page 149 note 1 Margoliouth, D. S., The Early Development of Mohammedanism, p. 91Google Scholar, referring to Ṛabarī, , Annales, ii, p. 1918Google Scholar.

page 149 note 2 The Muslim Creed, pp. 52, 59.

page 149 note 3 Text, ed. Ritter, H., in Der Islam, vol. xxi, 1933, pp. 67 ff.Google Scholar; translation and commentary by Obermann, J., in JAOS., vol. lv, 1935, pp. 138 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 150 note 1 The firat tradition has parallels, somewhat differently worded, in Shaibānī's, Kitāb al-Āthār, pp. 56 and 60Google Scholar (not yet in the Muwaṭṭa'), and appears for the first time in Ibn Ḥanbal.

page 151 note 1 See Shaibānī, . Muwaṭṭa' (Lucknow, 1297 and 1306), p. 208Google Scholar; Mālik, , Muwaṭṭa' Cairo, 1310), ii, p. 183Google Scholar; Shāfi'ī, , Kitāb Ikhtilāf al-Ḥadīth, on the margin of his Kitāb al-Umm, vii, p. 238Google Scholar.

page 151 note 2 This conclusion agrees well with the evidence, correctly interpreted, of the fragments of Mūsā b. 'Uqba's (d. 141) Kitāb al-Maghāzī. I intend to discuss in detail in a separate paper.

page 153 note 1 In Annahs de l'Institut d'Études Orientates (Faculté des Lettres de l'Université d'Alger), vi, 1942–1947, pp. 108–155Google Scholar. The paper is dated January, 1945, and was published in October, 1948.