Studies on the Origins and Uses of Islamic Hadith

Since the beginnings of this century, western scholars have become familiar with Ignaz Goldziher's hypothesis concerning canonical hadith literature — that religious literary genre of Islam, second in holiness to the Qur’an, which allegedly comprises faithful accounts of what the Prophet of Islam said and did. Goldziher rejected this allegation and maintained that the Hadith reflects, in the first instance, the social, legal, moral, and theological debates among the Muslims of the first two and a half centuries after the death of the Prophet. However, Goldziher never systematically searched for the real originators of this literature.

In this collection of articles, G. H. A. Juynboll deals with the uses Muslims have made of hadith through the ages. Studies on chronology, provenance, as well as authorship of the prophetic traditions form the backbone of this anthology. For this purpose, the author has developed new methods of analysing the chains of transmitters initially meant to authenticate the individual sayings.

His overall position can be summed up as midway between the official Islamic point of view and the stance adopted by his Western predecessors.

Studies on the Origins and Uses of Islamic Hadith provides critical insights and comprehensive analyses to scholars and readers interested in the history and development of Islamic traditions.