Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

GOD’ S WAY t 167
Abbas, in fact a very late convert to Islam but, more important, the
ancestor of the then reigning dynasty in Baghdad.
In their earliest form the hadith appear to have been offered
with little more validation than “I heard it said that the Prophet,
upon whom be peace . . .” Or “I heard from X, to whom it was
reported that the Prophet . . .” With the multiplication of Prophetic
reports, however, and the consequent jostling over their recognition
as a basis of law, credentialing hadith became more explicit,
and the Prophetic traditions were eventually cited with a
fully articulated chain of transmitters (isnad) that extended from
the most recent tradent, or transmitter, one who “hands down”
( Lat. tradere), backward to an eye- or ear witness among
Muhammad’s own contemporaries, the generation later canonized
as the sahaba, or Companions of the Prophet.
Note: The Companions of the Prophet who stand at the eyewitness
base of every hadith have been defined as any adult Muslim—though
some wished to remove the qualification of adult—who had some
sort of contact with Muhammad. The total number varies widely.
One authority tallied them at 100,000, while Ibn Hajar (d. 1448), the
Cairene scholar and judge who devoted himself to collecting every
shred of evidence on the Companions, published critical lives of
12,267 individuals who qualified, 1,522 of them women. The number
of Companions to whom authoritative Prophetic reports are actually
attributed amounts to no more than 1,060, however. Even this figure
is misleading. Five hundred related only one such report, and only
123 are credited with having witnessed twenty or more. At the very
top of the list is a certain Abu Hurayra, whose chief claim to fame
is that he transmitted 5,374 hadith. Close by is Muhammad’s wife
Aisha, who is credited with 2,210.
A Skeptical Reaction
Many in the ninth century began to criticize the rising tide of hadith
that was threatening to drown the still fresh enterprise of Muslim