Study of the Analytical Religious Sciences and Historiography

Study of the Qur’an as the direct word of Allah was the foremost foundation of the Islamic religious sciences. Commentary (Tafsir) was the elucidation and exegesis of its script and required extensive training to master.

The prophet and his companions (including his wives) were the first and considered the most authoritative commentators. ‘Abdullah Ibn ‘Abbas (ancestor of the ‘Abbasid Caliphs) was a young cousin of Muhammad who became his companion and a major early commentator. He died in the Umayyad period.

The Qur’anic language was confusing even to Arabs and it has become a tradition that not all of it can be understood (at least until some time in the future). This difficulty led to an interest in the linguistic sciences which aimed to aid in the elucidation of as much as was possible especially in the 8^th and 9^th Centuries. At-Tabari (d. 923) probably produced the most comprehensive commentary of the early period. Commentaries began to be preferred on the basis of the theology (which I discuss in my next post) that had previously been decided upon by the reader leading to competing partisan commentaries in the following centuries.

Thus specialised theological school-approved and general commentaries came to co-exist. The new law was also naturally dependent upon this commentary science and thus each legal school also tended to have preferred commentaries. Philosophers skilled in Greek logic such as Ibn Rushd (known in the West as Averroes) also contributed commentary coming from this logical view-point. Commentaries even served the purposes of a multitude of other factions throughout the history of Islam including Sufis and two of the most noted commentaries (of many) in the modern tradition are those of Muhammad ‘Abduh (d. 1905) and Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966), incidentally written before his radicalisation.

The correct reading of the Qur’an was also a subject of disagreement and therefore studies were required to be made of this aspect of the Qur’an. Recital from memory also naturally required study to master. The language had to be altered to standardise readings, as mentioned in the last post. Melodic reading also became an art-form. There are about four major regional styles of reading the Qur’an today.

The Hadith were also subject to much dispute especially before there were written collections and therefore they were studied in order to verify and correctly interpret them. The Hadith were considered mainly important legally as elucidators of the Qur'an. The major collections of Hadith also required travel to meet possible hearers at the ends of the hearer-chains of the until-then oral Hadiths for the purpose of verification of their validity.

The alleged hearers of Hadith also had to themselves be studied extensively to ascertain their truthfulness, memory and the likelihood of them having been in a position to have heard the Hadith from the source in the chain alleged. Chains of transmission were thus studied over the many years before the Hadith were formally written in accessible collections. Some of the companions (sahāba) of Muhammad had collected and written down what Muhammad both ruled and said presumably for the purposes of understanding better what Islam required. It could also be used potentially to cite a legal precedent. These early notes (the sahifa) were then either communicated to many others or known to relatively few and mostly collected much later by scholars into various written collections.

At first the scholars focused on attributions to a single companion and that compilation was referred to as the companion’s musnad. Ibn Hanbal (d. 855), the renowned lawyer, produced an early version of a more comprehensive collection. Malik (c. 715 – 795), also one of the major lawyers, included the first more or less comprehensive collection arranged thematically in his unique (at the time) law book.

Eventually six major collections were made that are usually accepted (and debated over) by at least Sunni Muslims. Al-Bukhari (d. 870) produced his Sahih (True [Ones]), Muslim Ibn al-Hajjaj (d. 875) produced his and Abu Dawud, at-Tirmidhi, an-Nasa’i and Ibn Majah rounded out the most accepted large collections also in the 9^th Century. There are three major Shi’a works: those of al-Kulaini (d. 939), al-Qummi (d. 991) and at-Tusi (d. 1067) typically produced a little later.

Scholars criticised Hadith based on the collection of the biographies of all of the transmitters in chains. From that they reasoned whether a specific transmitter may have an ulterior motif when transmitting a version that suited him (or her) or a particular viewpoint (and the weakness of character to follow through with the deception). It quickly became apparent that Hadith and their collectors could not always be trusted and sectarian interests and loyalties were often at the heart of the matter, hence the tendency for a variety of collections rather than one authoritative one accepted by all. The science could also ascertain the possibility of the Hadith being a fraud by testing the chain (isnad) of transmission. For example one link may be that person A told the Hadith to person B. If it could be shown by science that person A had died before person B could understand (e.g. person B was a baby at the time) or that one of these people had never been in the same place at the same time as the other or one had become deaf or perhaps senile before the alleged transmission would have been possible the Hadith could be thus invalidated. The scholars regarded face-to-face oral transmission at all points in a given purported chain as necessary for the chain to be a valid Hadith chain.

The science of biography, then, became vital to the religious sciences. Various forms of work appeared including lists of the important transmitters of a generation or generations in chronological order or of a city or region or more comprehensive works arranged alphabetically (all arranged for ease of checking the logical possibility of isnads). Histories of cities were appended to these lists (basically to provide context) so that we now have this type of work and related histories for many cities and regions including Damascus, Egypt, Baghdad, Aleppo, Bukhara, Isfahan, Cordova, Fez and many others. With these resources scholars were able to focus on specific transmitters and thus criticise the unique musnad (i.e. any Hadith only known via that person) of that transmitter and 'disprove' the validity some chains 'scientifically'. This science, of course, is essentially a form of historiography. The dictionaries of transmitters continued to be refined until the 15^th Century.

Separate schools for Hadith studies proliferated from the 10^th Century throughout the Islamic world and were still common in the 20^th Century. The methods of source citation and criticism and the focus on biography arrived at in these schools thus significantly contributed to and influenced the science of historiography in the Islamic world.

In coming posts, I discuss the other religious sciences of theology, Sufism and Islamic jurisprudence (legal philosophy).