The Traditions of Islam

PREFACE It is a curious fact that an empire containing more than a hundred million Muslims has not produced a book in the English language dealing with and explaining a great branch of Muhammadan literature which stands beside the Quran as a source of Muslim belief and practice. The lack of such a book on the traditions of Islam is difficult to explain, because the everyday life of Muslims throughout the world is governed and directed by these traditions. But, at any rate, it absolves the author from the necessity for an apology for venturing to treat of so vast a subject. I need not point out my indebtedness to the work of older scholars, particularly the late Ignaz Goldziher, whose Mzihammcdanische Studun must form the basis of any work on the hadlth literature. Scholars will recognize that I have drawn freely from his writings, and this acknowledgement of my indebtedness must suffice. I have not, however, shirked the obvious duty of studying the literature at first hand, especially in the Kanzit-l-Ummal, compiled by ‘Ala-al-Din b. Muttaqi of Burhanpur, who died in 975 a. 11., and m the Mishkdhc-l-Masablh, ‘The Niche of the Lamjis,’ an anthology of tradition selected by Wallu-l-Din Abu 'Abd Allah [fl. 737), and based on the MasalnJiu-l- Sitnna of Muhammad Abu Muhammad A 1 Baghawi (d. 516), It would be difficult to over-estimate the Preface value of the Mishkat as a synopsis of the hadith literature. The author has (a) omitted the isnad or chain of narrators of each tradition, {B) arranged his material according to the subject-matter with sub¬ divisions of ‘ genuine ‘ good and ‘ weak ’ authority, {c) ranged almost the whole field of the literature, and (d) given a representative selection of the traditions free from the constant repetitions occurring in almost all the original collections. I have not always been careful to cite the individual author from whom the anthologist has culled his hadith, because a most laborious search would be necessary to determine whether a parallel hadith was preserved by other writers, and the point is often of no importance. Moreover, when the great concordance to hadith, which is now being prepared by Professor Wensinck, of Leyden, with the assistance of many British and Continental Arabists, has been published the curious will be able at a glance to determine such questions for themselves. Nor do I propose to notice the pro¬ lific growth of compendia and commentaries to hadith which form excrescences on the original literature. The Shi'a collections of traditions deserve a separate

I cannot hope in a work of this size to have given more than an outline of a vast territory which has not yet been opened up to the Western student. Experience as a political officer in the Arab Bureau during the war convinced me of the importance of hadith. I have, for instance, seen it invoked by doctors to settle the question as to whether the faithful might eat horseflesh, and by Bolshevists to persuade Muham¬ madans that republics are of divine appointment. Preface My thanks are due to my friend Sir Thomas Arnold, who first suggested this undertaking to me, and who has constantly assisted me with helpful criticism ; and to Professor Margoliouth, without whose advice no old pupil of his would venture to write on matters Arabian. Finally, I desire to express my deep gratitude to the Librarians and sub-Librarians of the India Office and the Indian Institute, Oxford, who lent me for long periods books which were otherwise inaccessible. CONTENTS

III. The Abbasid Period . . . . IV. Criticism of Hadith by Muslims

VlE'Torrowing from Christian Documents and Tradition . . . . . VII. Some Aspects of the Prophet Muhammad in Tradition .....

Appendix B. A Translation of the Kitabu-l- Qadctr from the Sahlh of A 1 Bukhari Bibliography of Works cited . A Glossary of the. more Common Technical Terms used in the Hadith Literature . Addenda. • . Index ........ PAGE I THE EVOLUTION OF HADITH Mcarihig and use of the word hadith and its relation to sunna.— Are any hadith genuine?—Their genesis and historical vahte. — When were hadith first written down"^—Autliorihes contradict one another.—MaliMs Muwatta.—Musnad of Ahmad .—1 he six canonical collections, Bukhari, Muslim, A bu Dand, AITirmidhi, Ibn Mdja, and AI Nasal.—Other collections. Inquiry into the content, scope, and character of the traditions of Islam must necessarily begin after the death of Muhammad , for the raison d'Htrc of this vast literature is to provide an authoritative standard of belief and conduct based upon the word and deed of Muhammad which shall be binding upon the whole of the Muhammadan world. It is notorious that though the Quran contains a certain number of laws, e.g. rules in regard to marriage, inheritances, and the care of orphans, it cannot be successfully invoked to settle questions arising in such diverse categories as systematic and moral theology, ritual, and civil and military law. The Jews found the Mosaic law with its wealth of detail insufficient by itself without the assistance of case law and tradition,'and the Talmud arose to supply this need. Similarly, the Muhammadan community found itself at the death of Muhammad with a holy book and the living memory of a prophet; from these two sources the ecclesiastical and temporal polity of the Islamic world was for all time built up. lo The Evolution of Hadith The word hadltJi is a noun formed from the verb hadat^a ‘to be new’ {cf.the Hebrew kadask with the same meaning and the noun hodesh ‘new moon’). Properly hadith means ‘ news ’ and then a tale or verbal com¬ munication of any kind. It may with propriety be used of an account of a tribal raid, of old sagas, of incidents in the life of the prophet, and even of the Quran itself. The great impetus given to religious thought and speculation by Muhammad and the Quran could not fail to influence the language of Muhammadan writers, and thus the word has acquired its narrowed technical connotation of an oral tradition which can be traced back to a Companion or to the prophet Muhammad. Arabic preserves clearly the consciousness of the special connotation given to the word/zaaff//?, for Bukhari records a saying of 'Abd Allah b. Mas'ud that ‘ the best hadith is the book of God and of the prophet in reply to Abu Huraira’s question, ‘ Who will be the happiest on the day of resurrection thanks to your intercession ? ’ ‘ I thought you would be the first to inquire of me about this hadith because I have noticed your eager¬ ness in regard to the hadith.’ ^ Hadith enshrines the sunna of ‘ beaten track ’—the custom and practice of the old Muhammadan com¬ munity. Inasmuch as hadith were often invoked to prove that a certain act was performed by the prophet, and was therefore to be imitated by all pious believers, it follows that hadith and sunna are sometimes names for one and the same thing. But there is no necessary connexion between them, and we often find that tradition is in conflict with custom. The great merit ^ Bab Ftisam, ed. Krehl, iv, p. 420. ^ Bab Riqaq 51, Krebl^ iv, p. 245. The Evolution of Hadith ii of Malik b. Anas in the eyes of his contemporaries that he was an authority both on custom law and on oral tradition. Perhaps the best example of the distinction is in the title of a book cited by the Fihrist, ‘ the book of the sunnas with confirmatory hadith’.^ The conservatism of the East has long been pro¬ verbial, and the Arab may fairly claim a share in the building up of this reputation. The acceptance of monotheism, it is true, marked a break with the past; but the prophet was careful to depart as little as possible from the path of his forefathers. Indeed, it may be said that in the Medina suras he appears as the restorer of the ancient faith of Arabia—the religion of Ibrahim Abu Isma'il.^ The word sumta up to the time of Muhammad meant the practice of antiquity . after his time it acquired m orthodox circles a different significance, and came to denote the practice of the prophet and his immediate successors. The same hatred of innovation finds expression in the utterances of the savants of Medina as in those of their heathen forefathers. Medina naturally became the ‘ home of the sunna because there lived the men who had first to adapt their lives to the teaching of the prophet; thus, so far as corporate life was concerned, Medina was the authority on questions of orthodox custom. The reverence in which the prophet was held by his contemporaries, and more especially by those who had m ^ p. 230, 3. The woid hadith thioughout this book wii! be used both as a singulai and a collective noun. Ifadilks is scaicely possible in English, and the constant employment of the Arabic broken pluial ahadJih is Iraidly to be desiied, ® See die illuminating observations of l^cic IL Lammens in Cfne adapiatum arabe dii monotheisme hibhqtie. 12 The Evolution of Hadith never seen him in the flesh, naturally led them to preserve and repeat his sayings on all subjects. The feverish desire to know what he had said and done, which is well marked in the second generation, in¬ creased in intensity until it reached its height in the absurdities of the exercise known as Talabii-l-Ibn} The foundation of the enormous mass of traditions which afterwards accumulated was laid by the Com¬ panions who were scattered throughout the Muham¬ madan world ; but it would be rash to dogmatize as to how much of existing material can be safely ascribed to them. Our estimate of traditions circulated in their name cannot but be adversely affected by the frequent accusations of forgery levelled against many of the professional traditionists, by the many anachronisms they contain, and by the political and sectarian bias they display.^ When all these factors are allowed for, and account is taken of the inevitable mistakes that must occur when traditions are handed down through a long line of speakers, it is difficult to regard the hadith literature as a whole as an accurate and trustworthy record of the sayings and doings of Muhammad. But however sceptical we are with regard to the ultimate historical value of the traditions, it is hard to overrate their importance in the formation of the life of the Islamic races throughout the centuries. If we cannot accept them at their face value, they are of inestimable value as a mirror of the events which preceded the ’ Infra , p 36. ^ ‘ The numbei of motives leading to the fabiication of tiadiiions was so gieat that the historian is in constant dangei of employing as veracious lecords what w^ere delibeiate fictions.*—Margoliouth, Mohammed and the Rise of Islam^ London, 1905, p. vl The Evolution of Hadith 13 consolidation of Islam into a system. Many of the political, dynastic, religious, and social differences which agitated Islam in the days of its imperial might are illustrated in traditions promulgated by the conflicting parties in the interest of their pretensions. In them we sec how the rival forces of militarism and pacificism, asceticism and materialism, mysticism and literalism, free will and determinism, strove fiercely for the mastery. While the prophet was alive he was the sole guide in all matters whether spiritual or secular. Hadith, or tradition in the technical sense, may be said to have begun at his death, for the c.xtr.iordinary influence of his personality on his companions and associates created from the beginning a demand tliat believers should be informed what the prophet bad done and taught in various circumstances in order that the life of the community and the individual might be modelled on that of the revered leader. But of the resultant mass of tradition few can be confidently regarded as emanating from the authorities whose names they bear. The veneration of a later generation for the prophet is well illustrated in a hadith quoted by Muir; ‘ Is it possible, father of''Abd Allah, that thou hast been with Muhammad ? ’ was the question addressed by a pious Muslim to Hndhaifii, in the mosque ot A 1 Ktifa ; ‘ Didst thou really sec the prc'phct, and wert thou on terms of familiar intercourse with him ? ’ ‘Son of my uncle! it is indeed as thou sayest.’ ‘And how wort thou wont to behave towards the pro[)hci ?’ ‘Verily wc used to labour hard to please him.’ ‘Well, by the Lord!’ exclaimed the ardent listener, ‘if 1 had been but alive in his time, I would not have allowi'd 14 The Evolution of Hadith him to put his blessed foot upon the earth, but would have borne him on my shoulders wheresoever he listed.’ ^ During the reign of the first four caliphs the energies of the Arabs were mainly directed to the expansion of their empire. ' The amazing rapidity of their conquests left little time, even if the inclination were present, to preach and teach the faith. A people which within a century had made itself master of the races and lands lying between the Atlantic and the Oxus could not be extensively preoccupied in religious matters. Nor must it be supposed that there was a fixed and established cultus and theory of an ordered religious life even in the prophet’s own town. Possibly in Medina, where, under the personal influence of Muhammad, men devoted themselves to the things of religion, an ecclesiastical usage may have developed quite early in the first century; in the provinces where Arabs represented but a mere fraction of proselytized nations no such usage existed. With the army went Companions and Followers, who must have carried with them some traditional religious customs; but in the earliest days Medina itself had" no fixed system of jurisprudence, indeed it was’ then hardly developing. The natural result was a wide divergence in practice between many of the provinces of the empire, which has continued down to the present day in the Muslim world. Echoes of this state of affairs can sometimes be heard in the hadith literature; Abu Baud constantly calls attention to the purely local character of some hadith {xnfarada ahl of such and such a place). * Life of Iluhammad, levised by T 11 . Weii, Edinbuigh, 1912, p xsx. (In this edition the icfeiences to the oiiginal souites aie omitted.) The Evolution of Hadith 15 The hadith literature as we now have it provides us with apostolic precept and example covering the whole duty of man: it is the basis of that developed system of law, theology, and custom which is Islam. Now inasmuch as the bulk of this literature is demonstrably the work of the two hundred and fifty years after the prophet’s death, it is necessary, in endeavouring to determine the age and early authority of hadith, to examine the very considerable amount of evidence for the existence of hadith written down during the life of the prophet. This evidence has been collected by Sprenger who also quotes what claims to be early evidence to the contrary. Of the series authorizing the writing of hadith we may cite one on the authority of that prolific father of tradition Abu Huraira, who says that one of the Helpers (Ansar) used to sit and listen with admiration to the utterances of the prophet of God, and, being unable to remember what he heard, lamented his weakness to the prophet. The latter replied, ‘Call your right hand to your aid,’ i.e. write them down. This hadith exists in many different forms associated with the nameS of Abu Srdih and Anas b. Malik. Again, 'Abd Allah b.'Umar says; ‘ We said, “ O prophet of God, we hear from you hadith which we cannot remember. May we not write them down ? ” “ By all means write them down,” said he.’ This hadith exists in no less than thirty versions, which present small differences. Again, Abu Huraira asserts—not without reason!—that none of the Com¬ panions preserved more hadith than he, except 'Abd * On Ike origin and progress, of wniing down historical fads among the Musuhnans. (^Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1856, i6 The Evolution of Hadith Allah b. 'Umar. ‘ But he wrote them down, and I did not write them.’ This'Abd Allah (d. 65) says, ‘The book I wrote from the prophet of God is A 1 Sadiqa,’ and Miijahid asserts that he saw this book in the possession of its compiler. Anas b Malik states that Abu Bakr wrote down for him the laws regarding alms. Abundant proof could be adduced that books were read and written by the early Arabs; it will suffice to quote a saying attributed to Dhu’l Rumma (d. ii7)> in which he expresses his dislike of those who rely on their memories instead of writing down poetry; ‘ Write down my poetry, for the written word is more pleasing to me than memory. ... A book does not forget, nor does it substitute one word for another.’ Probably the hadith literature presents us with more contradictory statements on the question as to whether it was permissible to write down traditions of the prophet in the early days of Islam than on any other question. Many express prohibitions can be quoted. Abu Said al Khudri asserts that he asked the prophet’s permission to write down hadith, and it was refused. Abu Huraira is reported to have said : ‘ The prophet of God came out to us while we were writing hadith, and said, “What is this that you are writing? ” We said, “ Hadith which we hear from thee.” Said he, ' “ A book other than the book of God! Do you not know that nothing but the writing of books beside the book of God led astray the peoples that were before you ? ” We said, “ Are we to relate hadith of you, O prophet of God ? ” He replied, “ Relate hadith of me: there is no objection. But he who intentionally speaks falsely on my authority will find a place in hell.” ’ In one version Abu Huraira adds that the The Evolution of Hadith 17 writings were heaped together and burned. Further Abu Nadhra relates : ‘ We said to Abu Sa'id : “ Would that you would write down hadith for us, for we cannot remember them.” He answered; “We will not write them, nor will we collect them in books. The prophet of God related them to us orally and we remembered them, so you must do the same ” ’ The comment of Ibn 'Aun (d. 151) on the situation is not without interest. He says'; ‘ The men of the first century who disapproved of writing held that principle in order that the Muslims might not be kept by other books from the study of the Quran. The ancient scriptures have been forbidden because it is impossible to distinguish what is true in them from what is false and the genuine from the spurious: moreover the Quran renders them superfluous.’ As a matter of fact, the controversy as to whether it was lawful or not to write down traditions I'eally belongs to the age when the critical collections of traditions were made. The hadith last quoted do not invalidate the statements that traditions were written down from the mouth of the prophet; the extra¬ ordinary importance attached to every utterance of his would naturally lead his followers who were able to write to record his words in order to repeat them to those who clamoured to know what he had said; and there is nothing at all in any demonstrably early writing to suggest that such a practice would be dis¬ tasteful to Muhammad. But it cannot be proved that any single tradition or group of traditions now extant were copied from the memoranda of the Companions. The most that can be said is that the canonical collections may preserve some such traditions. c i8 The Evolution of Habith Written hadith were, no doubt, objectionable to old- fashioned and orthodox traditionists, who preserved in their memories an enormous number of traditions and enjoyed no small reputation on that account. Objections, too, were raised by those who saw that in many points hadith were contradictory to the Quran. Those also who repeated traditions which were genea¬ logically unsound and accounted unworthy of a place in the written, and soon to become, canonical collections could not but view the corpus of Bukhari and his imitators with acute displeasure. The basis of hadith is essentially religious, and during the Umayyad period theologians were under a cloud; so that it was not until the second century was well advanced that hadith of a religious character won their way into literature. Of course, a consider¬ able number of traditions which were subsequently incorporated in the canonical collections of hadith were not committed to writing for the first time by the collectors. A goodly number of works on juris¬ prudence were already in existence besides the well- known works of Abu Hanifa, Shaibanl, Shafi'i, and Abu Yusuf. The earliest date which Muhammadans give for the collection of hadith is contained in the following tradition, said to rest on the authority of Malik b. Anas (94-179). 'Umar b. 'Abdu-l-'AzIz wrote to Abu Bakr. b. Muhammad b. 'Amr with the order: ‘ See what hadith of the prophet of God are extant or ancient customs {sunna madlyd) or hadith known to 'Amra, and write them down ; for I stand in dread of the disappearance of knowledge and of the death of them that possess it.’ This Abu Bakr. b. Muhammad The Evolution of Hadith 19 was one of the Ansar whom 'Umar II appointed judge at Medina, and 'Amra was his aunt. Of the statement Sir William Muir writes^: ‘About a hundred years after Muhammad, the Caliph 'Umar II issued circular orders for the formal collection of all extant tradition. The task thus begun continued to be vigorously prosecuted; but we possess no authentic remains of any compilation of an earlier date than the middle or end of the second century of the Hijra.’ It would seem that this writer accepts the statement at its face value, but the fact that no authentic remains of this alleged first-century compilation are extant, and that the indefatigable students and compilers of tradition in the third century make no mention of an effort to trace such early documents, suggest very strongly that the tradition is not based on fact. It is difficult, if not impossible, to suggest a cogent reason why such an early collection, if it existed, should never have been mentioned by later scholars whose life-work it was to recover the genuine hadith of the apostolic period. For this reason the hadith must be regarded as an invention designed to connect the pious caliph, whose zeal for the sunna was gratefully recognized by theo¬ logians, with the tradition literature of Islam. This seems the more likely, as another tradition connects Ibn Shihab A 1 Zuhri with 'Umar II in this work. Moreover, Malik’s statement is only to be found in A 1 Shaibani’s recension of the Muwatta. It is absent from the other versions. Two other second-century writers have been cited as authors of compilations of hadith, namely, 'Abd al Malik b. Juraij and Sa'id b. Abi 'Aruba. Their works ‘ Op. Lit., pp. 33 f. 20 The Evolution of Hadith are not extant; but from the description of them given by later writers there is little doubt but that they were books of jurisprudence {Figk), drawn up with a view to stabilizing the sunna. Therefore they only incidentally contained traditions; their primary purpose was to serve as handbooks for lawyers. The need for such works increased when the free development of the public religious life of the community was no longer hindered by the worldly rdgime of the Umayyads. Of a similar nature, though of far greater importance, is the Muwatta of Malik b. Anas. This work, which has always been highly prized by Muhammadans, is not a collection of traditions. The author’s interest was in jurisprudence, and his aim to establish a system of law based on the sunna of Medina. Thus he appeals to legal precedents as often as to hadith, which it was only incidentally his purpose to record for the sake of their legal significance. His object was not, like that of the later collectors, to ascertain what traditions of the prophet were current throughout the Muhammadan world and to test their authenticity by a series of artificial canons; but he had the severely practical and limited aim of establishing a system of law according to the agreement or consent {ijmot) of the people of Medina. Thus he appeals, in matters in which his paragraphs coincide roughly with the hadith literature, not to hadith carried back by a chain of guarantors to the prophet, but to the sunna, which, with the legal decisions of recognized authorities and the consensus oJ _ opin km^of jh e Me dinotes, in his view constituted a system of law binding on the whole community. His "method was to collect under distinct heads the sunna of Medina in regard to legal and religious The Evolution of Hadith 21 matters: where tradition failed he appealed to ijma\ Thus he had none of the theoretical interest in hadith which characterizes the traditionists of the next century. When necessary he did not hesitate to express his own opinion {^ay) on difficult points where the evidence seemed to be at all dubious or self¬ contradictory. The following extract from the Mudawwmiat will best illustrate Malik’s method: ‘ Malik was asked concerning certain persons who went raiding and disembarked in Cyprus, where they pro¬ ceeded to buy sheep, honey, and butter, and paid for these articles with dinars and dirhems; Malik dis¬ approved. He further said to us of his own initiative : ‘ I strongly object to coins which contain the mention of God and His book being taken and given to one that is unclean. I disapprove most strongly of such a practice.” I asked him whether we might make purchases with dirhems and dinars of traders who disembarked on our coast, or of members of the tolerated cults. He replied that he disapproved. He was asked whether money might be changed by changers in Muslim markets who belonged to these cults. He replied that he disapproved.’ ^ That Malik was no collector of traditions in the later sense is clear from his independent handling of his material. He does not always take care to trace back his isnad'^ or chain of guarantors to the prophet, nor are all the links in the chain set out. Thus, although his Muwatta saw the light a century before the canonical collections, it contains many hadith which have no place in the later works, because they ^ X, p. X02, as quoted by Maigoliouthj Early De%^elopmeni of Muhanimadamsm, p. 119. - Infra^ p* 23, 22 The Evolution of Hadith are not supported by a list of names reaching in uninterrupted succession from Muhammad to Malik. It is unfortunate for the study of Muhammadan origins that the extant versions of the text of the Muwatta differ so radically one from another. The explanation of these different versions is probably to be sought in the practice of Ijaza and Munawala,^ to which Malik frequently resorted when pressed by a number of pupils.* The textus receptus of Malik is the version of his Spanish pupil Yahya b. Yahya al Masmudi; and it is this version which is commonly quoted as the Muwatta. But there are no less than fifteen other versions all differing from the Muwatta Yahya and from each other. Of these by far the most important is the work of Muhammad b. Al Easan Al Shaibani, who was the pupil of Malik and of Abu Hamfa. This is generally cited as the Muwatta Muhammad. It contains certain matter which is not to be found in the received text and has been worked over by Al Shaibani and brought into accord with the tenets of his master Abu Hanifa. In such cases he prefixes his own views and comments with the words ‘ Muhammad says ’.® The growing importance of tradition as an authori¬ tative force in the establishment of the legal and ritual life of the community created a demand for hadith on every conceivable subject, a demand which, as will be seen in the following chapters, produced an unfailing ' See Additional Note to Chap. I. “ Cf. Sprenger in ZDMG, x, pp. 9 ff. ‘ A translation of a short section of the Muwatta illustrating the differences between the recensions of Yahya and Shaibani will be found in MS, ii, pp. 224-6. The Evolution of Hadith 23 supply; and naturally the vast accessions to current tradition thus generated necessitated some sort of systematic arrangement of material. The earliest collections are at one with the later in this, that atten¬ tion was focused not on the main or subject-matter of the tradition but on the isnad or chain of guarantors going back to a Companion of the prophet. The characteristic of the Miisnad, the earliest type of collection, was that hadith, quite irrespective of their contents and subject-matter, were arranged under the name of the Companion on whose authority they were supported (mtisnad). The person who could repeat a respectable number of such musnad traditions re¬ ceived the honorific Musuid, or Musnida in the case of a woman. The isnad must always be in direct speech, thus: ‘ A told me, saying that B said C had informed him, saying D mentioned that he heard E relate, “ I heard F ask the Apostle of God so and so.” ’ The name musnad, which properly belonged to the individual tradition, passed over to the whole collec¬ tion. A large number of such collections was current in the third century, though comparatively little of the literature survives to-day. The most important would seem to have been the Musnad of Ahmad b. Hanbal. On account of its great bulk ^ this work was seldom to be found in its entirety even in antiquity. It contains about thirty thousand hadith grouped under the names of some seven hundred Companions. Though the author follows a plan of his own, dividing his work into books of traditions emanating from Muhammad’s family, the Helpers, Women, and so on, he makes no ‘ The Cairene edition (1890)15 in six volumes 4'°, containing m all 2,885 pages. 24 The Evolution of Hadith attempt to group his gigantic store of tradition with any regard to the encyclopaedic range of the several subjects dealt with. Ahmad was an indefatigable Talibu-l-'Ilm, and to his journeys we owe the Musnadtt-l-Shamiyyln and other geographical groups of traditions. His vast collection was edited and published by his son 'Abd Allah Abu 'Abdu- 1 -Rahman (d. 290). The Musnad preserves a great many traditions which are not to be found elsewhere. Like all other collectors, Ahmad practically always confined his criticism to the isndd\ especially was he strict in his scrutiny of traditions from any one suspected of Qadarite leanings. Post eventum prophecies are to be found in the canonical collections; but not in the profusion and with the detail and exactitude of Ahmad’s collection. Hadith dealing with conquests, the geographical advantages of certain cities, and royal personages are the clearest examples of this development. The Mtisnad is marked by a fearless indifference to the s usceptibilities of the ‘j^bbasids. Whereas the two great works of Bukhari and Muslim may be searched in vain for any generous recognition of the merits of the Umayyads, Ahmad, who forsooth had little to thank their successors for, preserves many of the numerous traditions extolling the glories of the Banu Umayya which must at one time have been current in Syria. A similar liberal attitude is adopted towards hadith which support the claims of the Shfas. The great importance of this gigantic collection of tradition lies in its wealth of detail. Its value as a witness to events in the prophet’s life, real and fictitious, is best illustrated in Margoliouth’s Muhammad. The Evolution of Hadith 25 Later writers in the opposing schools often edited the collections of their leaders, arranging the authorities m alphabetical order, so that we read of the Musnadu- l-Shafiz or the Mnsnadii,-Maltk. The reference is to the works mentioned on page 20 arranged as mtcmads. \ The word musnad is often misapplied by Muhammadan scholars, who speak of tradition works in general as musnads, e.g of the Musnadu-l-Bukhari, where yami )yould be correct. , By the middle of the third century hadith had a tfiined s uch importance as a means of determining the practice and beliefs of the community that a more practical collection and arrangement than the musnads became imperative. It was felt generally that hadith must be («) br ought into cl oser relation with juris¬ prudence, and (^)_put on_an|unassaiLabIpTootuTg. The controversy among the doctors of Islam which deter¬ mined whether the community might develop its customs and re-interpret them according to the needs of each age, or whether it must rigidly conform to the practices and precedents of the apostolic generation, was probably responsible for the great impetus given to the collection and codifying of hadith. At this time traditions were written down with the definite aim of establishing an unerring authority for law and custom ; thus, though the collectors devoted scrupulous attention to the isnad, so far as the arrangement of traditions was concerned t he tsnad. waa. R iTbnrrHqat-e to . the ma in. Tr aditions w ere recorded according to their subject and the subjecLmatter was arranged under the" headings of law books. Such collections were Musannafat. The object of the mnsaimaf was to provide the lawyer with a handbook of tradition m D 26 The Evolution of Hadith which he could readily look up the ipstssima verba of the prophet and thus silence an objector. The musnads were obviously unsuited to such a purpose: unless one knew the name of the original guarantor of a particular hadith one might have to read through the whole corpus of tradition to find it. While no ordered arrangement of oral and written tradition existed it was impossible to ask that young men who were being trained for the office of judge in the various provinces should be made to study hadith. The task of the compilers was to demonstrate the practical value of hadith for the practical lawyer. The first and most important of the Musannafs is the Sahlh, ‘the Genuine’, of Abu 'Abd Allah Muhammad b. Isma'il A1 Bukhari (194-256). This is a corpus of tradition pure and simple, compiled with the object of providing an orthodox criterion in all matters of jurisprudence.^ The author applied himself to the task by adopting as the framework of his book headings which covered the whole range of fiqh. His work is divided int o nine ty- sevgrubeoks, which again are divided into 3,450 babs or chapters. The traditions themselves are preceded by a tarjama or rubric designed to lead the reader to a decision where authorities in the various MadJmhib or schools differ. As A1 QastallanI has said, ‘ Bujkharfs fiqh is contai ned in th e headings of his chapters.’ The iarjama consists of a text from’the "Quran, or quite as often of a fragmentary hadith for which no isnad is ' As Chapter V will show, jurisprudence is by no means the only interest of hadith. Inasmuch as the Sahih is a Jami' it contains inter aha histoncal, biographical, and eschatological matter. It is piecisely Its many-sided character which lends charm to the study of the hadith literature. The Evolution of Hadith 27 forthcoming. It is generally supposed that the author regarded these last as genuine, but was unable to find a genuine chain of transmitters. There is great acumen behind the selection of these texts and frag¬ mentary traditions with which most chapters are fur¬ nished, for they suggest a connexion in thought and a consequent interpretation of a hadith which is otherwise neutral or s usce ptible of a contrary meaning. More¬ over, in cases where the Quran was invoked the author appeared to have the support of an unimpeachable authority. An interesting feature of these paragraphs is that they sometimes occur without any hadith fol¬ lowing. It has been inferred from this that although Bukhari planned to cover the whole field of Jiqh he sometimes failed to find confirmatory hadith and left the heading in the air, as it were, in the hope that the hiatus would some day be filled. This theory of the gaps is in.keeping with the general purpose of this and other musaimafat, and accords with the scrupu¬ lous honesty and exactitude of the author himself. M. Houdas, however, makes the interesting suggestion * that they are in realit y a polemic against the Murjiites : ‘ El-Bokhari . . . usa d’un moyen d^tourne pour at- teindre plus shrement I’hdrdsie qui menagait I’existence mdme de I’islamisme; et, tandis que ses confreres se bornaient a classer et etiqueter leurs hadits, il songea a en faire une arme offensive centre les Mordjiites et centre tous ceux qui attentaient a la puretd primitive de la religion musulmane.’ Thus he sees a peculiar significance and purpose in the first hadith recorded by Bukhari, ‘Works are only to be judged by their inten- ' El Bokhart, Les Traditions islamignes traduites . . . par O. Houdas ei IF. 3 Iarcau^ u. Pans, 1906, pp x C 28 The Evolution of Hadith tion,’ and in the chapter on Faith. In his view, the explanation given above does not suffice. It is to be regretted that M. Houdas has not worked out his interesting theory in detail. It is not difficult to find examples to which his explanation could hardly apply. It might be held, for instance, that the first hadith, which continues, ‘ As for him who migrates to obtain worldly possessions or to marry, his migration will be rewarded according to its object,’ is rather a protest against the usurpation of the term Muhajir than an attack on the Murjiites. Nevertheless, as M. Houdas well says; ‘ Quoi qu’il en soit de cette question bien secondaire en somme, El Bokhari a, d’une part, rendu un signale service a I’islamisme en conjurant le peril Mordjiite, et, d’autre part, il a, pour ainsi dire, fixe d’une maniere definitive la constitution pratique de la religion du Prophfete.’ Tradition reports that this remarkable man took cognizance of 600,000 hadith,^ and himself memorized more than 200,000. Of these he has preserved to us 7,397, or, according to other authorities, 7,295. If one adds to these the fragmentary traditions embodied in the tarjama the total is 9,082. On the other hand, the same tradition is often repeated more than once under different chapters {Adwab), so that if repetitions are disregarded the number of distinct hadith is reduced to 2,762, which are to be found in the 3,^5° cobwab into which his book is divided.® When one reflects * Ibn Khallikan, Wafayatu-l-A'ym, ed. WUstenfeld, p. 580. These figures must be taken with a gram of salt. It is hardly likely that a ttian of Bukhaifs ability would commit to memoiy 200j000 hadith in order to utilize less than a twentieth of them. " I have taken these figures from Houdas, op* nL The Evolution of Hadith 29 from these figures furnished by a Muslim historian that hardly more than one per cent, of the hadith said to be openly circulating with the authority of the prophet behind them were accounted genuine by the pious Bukhari, one’s confidence in the authenticity of the residue is sorely tried. Where such an enormous preponderance of material is judged false, nothing but the successful application of modern canons of evidence can restore faith m the credibility of the remainder. This is not, of course, to assert that the hadith litera¬ ture IS destitute of any historical foundation : such a conclusion would be unwarranted. But the un¬ doubted historical facts do demand that each indivi¬ dual hadith should be judged on its merits So far as one is able to judge, Bukhari published the result of his researches into the content of what he believed to be genuine tradition with all the pains¬ taking accuracy of a modern editor. Thus he records even trifling variants in the hadith, and wherever he feels that an explanatory gloss is necessary either in isnad or main it is clearly marked as his own. When a variant has been given he sometimes adds his comment at the end, Qala Abu 'Abd Allah . .. ashbah, in my opinion the words so and so are more probably correct. In the Appendix will be found a translation of the Kitabu-l-Qadar from this most important of all hadith collections.^ Though the text of the SaJilh does not present the unusual divergences in type to be found in the Muwatta it has survived in several recensions. It is only to be expected that a collection which, according to Ibn ^ Reproduced, without critical and historical notes, from my ai tide m JJiAS, January 1924, by permission of the Society. 30 The Evolution of Hadith Khallikan^ was read before ninety thousand hearers, should now be extant in several different forms. Of these the best known is that founded on a critical edition made by Muhammad A 1 Yunlnl (d. 658). This was printed at Bulaq in 1314, is carefully vocalized, and contains marginal notes of variant readings. The commentary of Ahmad b. Alimad A 1 Qastallani (d. 923), Irshddtc-l-Sart,^ is of such value as to be wellnigh indispensable. The version of Abfl Dharr, represented by Krehl’s text, is also of consider¬ able value: it is frequently at variance with the received text. Nothing is more eloquent of the exalted position of hadith in the Islamic community from the third century onwards, and of the prominent position of A 1 Bukhari among the Ashabu-l-kadltk, than the extravagant homage which was paid to him and his work. A man who laboured sixteen years on the compilation of his corpus, who sought the aid of prayer before com¬ mitting a tradition to writing,® and who interrogated over one thousand shaikhs living in places so distant as Balkh, Merv, Nisapur, the principal towns of Meso¬ potamia, the Hijaz, Egypt, and Syria, deserved well of his co-rehgionists. If Muslims since his death have ^ Loc, cii. ® Bulaq, 1305, ten vols. Foi the liteiature see Brockelmann, Geschtchie d, arahscken Litieraiur, i, pp* 158 If, ® Bukharf s work from first to last was an act of consummate piety. He was inspired to undertake the task, he says, by a dream m which he seemed to be driving away flies from the prophets person. An interpreter of dreams told him that the flies were lies which had gathered round apostolic tiadition. He never afterwards inserted a hadith in his collection until lie had made an ablution and offered up a prayer of two rak'as The Evolution of Hadith 31 canonized him, made pilgrimages to his tomb, and invoked his saintly aid in the difficulties of this life, they have but shown their devotion to the man who holds the position next their prophet. The latter, indeed, is reported to have been seen in a dream awaiting the arrival of Bukhari at the gates of Paradise.^ Another Musannaf on which Islam has also conferred the title AI Sahlh is that of a younger contemporary of Bukhari, Muslim b. A 1 Hajjaj (d. 261). Its contents are practically identical with Bukhari’s collection except in the isnads, and the difference in treatment is really not very great. The principal difference is the absence of the paragraph headings characteristic of Bukhari. Muslim’s work is arranged according to Fiqh, but he does not follow his plan so scrupulously; thus, while Bukhari often arranges the same tradition with a different isnad under different paragraphs when it is suitable to support more than one point of law and custom, Muslim places the parallel versions together. He does not plunge straightway into his task, but prefaces his book with a statement of the conditions a tradition must fulfil before it can be regarded as genuine and authentic.^ Every hadith which could serve as a support for fiqh must itself rest upon the authority of men whose trustworthiness was above suspicion {ihiqai). Further, the authorities must stand in unbroken succession {ittisal ); it must be demon¬ strable that they were contemporaries, and were actually in personal intercourse. Such a hadith must contain the words haddathanl, sami‘hc, or some other ^ Houdas, II, xxiiL ® Some extracts from bis mtroductioii will be found in Chap. IV. 32 The Evolution of Hadith word implying personal intercourse. Another category of hadith which was not so highly esteemed was called mu'an an ■, in these in place of a verb of hearing or telling it is only asserted that A narrates from (an) B. Muslim was willing to accept such hadith if it could be established that A and B were contemporaries, but Bukhari demanded a further proof, that they should have been in personal contact: it was not sufficient that A should report—though in good faith—that B had related a certain hadith unless it could be proved that he himself had met him and therefore could be presumed to have heard it from his mouth, not through a third person. Muslim, however, excluded many traditions, not because he questioned their genuineness, but because they were not supported by ijma. His assertion of this prepared the way for a more thorough Jamf} The man Bukhari has always been immeasurably greater in the popular estimation than Muslim, and the tendency has been for the work of the former to take precedence of the latter. The one is prized for its range over the whole field of fiqh and the strictness of the shurut or rules for determining the trustworthiness of rawls, while the other is preferred for its more concise treatment of the material. Together they form an almost unassailable authority, subject indeed to criti¬ cism in details, yet deriving an indestructible influence from the ijma' or general consent of the community in custom and belief, which it is their function to authenticate. * It has not been considered necessary to give a translation of any section of Muslim’s Sahih, because the gieat majoiity of the hadith given in Ch. V are muttafaq, i. e. to be found in the Safyi^an. The Evolution of Hadith 33 Besides these ‘Two Genuine Books’ there are four others which Islam has elevated to canonical rank, the whole being known as ‘ The Six Books ’ [A l-kuiubu-l- sittd). These are the Sunan of Abu Daud (d. 275). yami" of Abu 'Isa Muhammad al Tirmidhi (d. 279). Sunan of Abu 'Abd Allah Muhammad b. Maja Sunan of Abu 'Abd Al-Rahman al Nasa’i (d. 303).^ The same motive which inspired Bukhari moved the authors of the Sunan to their labours. Their aim was a narrower one, the compilation of a coHection which would provide hadith dealing with all that was permis¬ sible and unpermissible to a Muslim If so much genuine material had existed it is a priori inconceiv¬ able that it would have been passed over by Bukhari and Muslim; consequently much greater latitude had to be given to all who narrated hadith that were desiderated. Apostolic authority was obtained for all the enactments in jurisprudence, but at the cost of a principle. Hadith which were only fairly sound hasan were included. As the author of Masabilm-l- Sunna tells us, ‘ support for most of the akkam comes from fair hadith ’. Abu Daud, a contemporary of Bukhari, was a pupil of Ahmad b. Hanbal, and the master of Al Nasal. These two reversed the principle of the Sahihan that only hadith which rested on the authority of men universally esteemed trustworthy could be accepted, and they rejected only those which were universally ^ These are loosely called ‘ the foui sunnas ’, but inasmuch as Tirmitol does not confine himself to matleis of junspiudence but deals with the whole field of hadith, his collection is propeily a Jami', S8S1 E 34 The Evolution of Hadith deemed unworthy of credence. They noted that some theologians were stricter than others in their scrutiny of the guarantors (rijat), and where a favour¬ able verdict had been accorded by a lenient scholar they accepted the hadith despite the weight of adverse criticism. At the same time they did not attempt to exalt the mass of additional matter to the same degree of respect as that accorded to a hadith admittedly sahih. They expressed their opinion of the guarantors in no unmeasured terms. Abu Daud says that he =. wrote down half a million , hadith, from which he selected 4,800; he calls these authentic, those which seem to be authentic, and those which are nearly so.^ The Sunan naturally fill up the gaps left by Bukhari in his scheme of fiqh, and supply hadith in support of the most peuifog ging details in the ritual and legal life of the community, a pedajitry which threatened to bring the whole system of hadith into ridicule. A 1 Nasal in his Siinan-^ takes notice of this ridicule.- A 1 Tirmidhi studied under Bukhari, Ahma^ b. Hanbal, and Abu Daud. He was the first to classify the various hadith under the three headings sahih, hasan, and hasan sahih- The great value of these snnau is in their witness to the extent to which the rival schools of Islam had established their ritualistic and legal systems in the third century. A 1 Tirmidhi in particular, with his wealth of inconsistent hadith, shows clearly how the ^ Muir, op. at, xlii ® A 1 NasaX Shahdra 1282, i, p 6, qdla-hmushriMma tnna nard sahhaku 7 n yuallmukum-hkharSata. In tmth, what was really being said by men who objected to all the insignificant activities and even decencies of life being governed by apostolic tiadition is here put into the month of the idolatious contemporaries of Muhammad, The Evolution of Hadith 35 divero-ences in the orthodox schools of to-day were as o clearly marked in his time. Besides the ‘six books’ there were several other collections in circulation which failed to establish themselves in catholic consent. Of these the most important is that of Abu Muhammad 'Abd Allah al Darimi (d. 255). The chief characteristic of his work is its eclectic and subjective method. He often records his own opinion as to whether a hadith is binding on the community or not; and he does not hesitate to give decisions contradicting earlier authorities. It is a little difficult to say whether his book is with pro¬ priety to be called Sunan or It is in the main a manual of hadith necessary in jurisprudence, but it does not confine itself to purely legal matters. The author is indifferent to the minute questions of law and ritual so fully dealt with in the Madhhab collec¬ tions of Abu Daud and Al Nasai, so that even with the inclusion of matter of a general character his work is barely a third of the size of the other sunan. The tendency was for the pressure of the School (Madkkab) to increase, and a collection which failed to apply that pressure everywhere could not compete with sunan of a comprehensive character: thus Al Darimi’s work never won its way to canonical rank. It would unduly prolong this work to Enumerate and discuss other collections which enjoyed a certain amount of popularity, e.g. Baqi b. Makhlad Al-Qurtubi (d. 276), Al 'Assal (d. 349), which are sometimes quoted by writers with the encyclopaedic knowledge of Al Suyuti and Ibn Khaldun. An account of them will be found in Brockelmann’s Geschichte, and their hadith in some of the later compendia. 36 The Evolution of Hadith ADDITIONAL NOTE TO CHAPTER 1. Jjaza and Mtmawala. It will have been seen that the Sahih of Bukhari owed its existence to the arduous journeys undertaken by its author in search of hadith m circulation throughout the Muslim world So great was the prestige of one who could nairate, as the last Imk m a chain, a tradition from the mouth of the prophet that those who weie prevented by the responsibilities of life from undei taking these journeys in quest oVibfi had to find some othei means to secure their admission to this apostolic succession The means lay ready to hand. Malik b. Anas had been known to give his pupils a written text with his authority to repeat its contents with the formula haddaikana, as though the conveyance had been by word of mouth This process was called Muiiawala, ^ personal transmission * or ‘ handing ovei Jjaza^ ^ per¬ mission’, was more lax A teacher or rdw^ was asked to allow a person to promulgate a collection of hadith m his name. Malik IS said to have allowed a pupil to do this without examining his text The extraordinary differences between extant texts of the Muwatta are probably the sequel. Bukhari evidently felt some hesitation about tiaditions by way of munawala, but m the following centuiies, when the zeal of the ^ Searchers aftei Knowledge ’ was at its height, ijdza could be given by letter or by proxy by an authonty living in one end of the Muhammadan woild to an applicant in the other. It would seem that when the content of tiadition had been committed to writing, and paitially established the continued pursuit of ^knowledge’ merely represented the activities of the credulous, who believed that there was still a residue of genuine apostolic iiadition to be recoveied, and who hoped to add their finds to the collections which had been accepted or weie then winning then way to lecogmtion in the second rank. II THE UMAYYAD PERIOD Faint injiiLencc of the great Umayyad line on tradi tion.—Character and policy of thetr regime.—No fixed religious use.—Hostile attihede of doctors towards Umayyads reflected in hadith coined to influence the pious.—Official counter-invention of hadith.—Syrian hadith.—Hadith frankly recognised as inventions. An account of the rise and character of the Umayyad dynasty would be naturally sought in a general history of the Caliphate rather than in a description of the traditions of Islam. But some explanation is certainly needed to show why Islam in its canonical literature has remained unmindful of the inestimable service rendered to its empire, and ungrateful for the enduring prestige bequeathed it by the Umayyads. The reason is that in authoritative tradition the voice of the schools of the Iraq and the Hijaz is to be heard sounding the praises of Abu Bakr, 'Umar, and 'Ali, and sometimes of 'Uthman ; but the Syrian tradition for the most part perished with its great dynasty.'* The compilation of the canonical collections dates from the time when the 'Abbasids were firmly in the saddle, and by this time systematic efforts had long been made to extirpate the memory of the predecessors of the reigning house. We know that the names of the Umayyads were even removed from public monuments. * The Musnad Ahmad, as, we have !>ecn, ib an cxceplion. The Umayyad Period Earlier writers ^ have with good reason emphasized the godless regime of the Umayyads, yet it would be a mistake to regard it as entirely worldly. Lam- mens^ has pointed out that after the time of 'Umar the public treasury, the army, booty of war, and the administration were called mal All&h, jund Allah, fai Allah, and sultan Allah respectively.® The Belgian savant gives good reason for his assertion that the religion of Yazid, in the eyes of the orthodox the arch offender, was no better and no worse than that of his contemporaries. It has been recorded as a heinous offence that the Caliph Mu'awiya sat down to pronounce the Khutba (solemn oration); yet this posture while giving public direction was common in the pre-Muhammadan era {jahiliyya), and Muhammad is said in the canonical traditions to have sat down in the pulpit {minbar) while addressing the faithful. It is undoubtedly due to later writers’ ignorance of the practice of antiquity that they explain the references to 'Uthman sitting in the minbar during the khutba to betrothals {khutbatu-l-nikaJi).^ Curiously enough in this matter, in which they have been held up to reproach as godless innovators, the Umayyads were adhering to the sunna of the prophet, and preserved the early significance of the minbar as the seat of judgement on which the ruler sat.® Only in the days ' E. g. Von Kremei and Dozy. ® Etudes sur le regne du Cabfe Omaiyade Mo’awia ler. Melanges de la Faiulte' orkniale, Beyiout, 1906, p 9. ® ‘Expressions sonores, formules archaiques, demeur^es pratiquement vides de sens,’ op. ciL, vol. ii, p. 88. Jahiz Bayan, i. 50, and cf. MS, p. 53. ° There may have been a simpler explanation: Mu awiya in middle The Umayyad Period of the next dynasty did the minbar degenerate into a pulpit from which the weekly sermon was delivered. Indeed, the role played by the mosque itself in the early days of the Islamic empire was radically different from that of later times. At first it served the purpose of a town hall or council chamber. The Umayyads took counsel with their advisers and transacted their public business in the mosque, not in their palaces. While still to a certain extent followers of the old democratic principle of tribal government, they were not slow to see the importance of the weekly harangue from the pulpit. In some respects the Umayyad administration was far in advance of its time. It was marked by a genial tolerance of Christianity and other religions. One of Mu'awiya’s contemporaries protested that the Caliph would have employed negroes in public offices had it suited his purposes of state.^ This reproach would not unnaturally follow Mu'awiya’s treachery in em¬ ploying a Christian physician to rid him of the powerful Abdu- 1 -Rahman, the son of the great general Khalid, ‘ the sword of Allah whom he feared as the rival of his son Yazid. He even allowed the said Christian to collect religious imposts from the people of Homs. Tolerance of Christians was not confined to Syria. The governor of Medina actually employed Christians from Aila (Aqaba) to police the holy city.** In the Iraq, too, they held offices of importance. A variety of reasons led to this toleration of age was gluttonous and corpulent. Al Fakh/1, ed. Caiio, 1317, ’ Despite their provocative function there is no record of any protest having been made against their presence. 40 The Umayyad Period Christians : first, there were the aristocratic connexions of the Christians among the Arabs of the peninsula; the kingdom of Ghassan, and the names of Bakr, Taghlib, and the Banti Hanifa, all co-religionists, stood high in the estimation of Arabians. Secondly, Islam had not hardened into a systematized religion; and owing to the poll-tax on dhimmis, or members of tolerated religions, an increase of converts meant a decrease in revenue. And thirdly—perhaps the most potent reason—the Syrians, who formed such a powerful and importanPpart of the Umayyad armies, were Christianized Arabs who cared little for Islam. Ibnu-l-Faqih ^ calls them mudimfma fl akhlaqi-l- Nasara, Muslims with the characteristics of Christians. It was not uncommon at this time for a soldier in the Caliph’s army to ring the bell of a neighbouring church, or perform other minor duties of a religious nature among the Christian community.^ These examples of the I'elations between Muslims and dhimmis in the Umayyad period will illustrate how utterly different in outlook were the caliphs and the theologians.® 11 could hardly be said that an enormous number of soi-disant Muslims flouted the sunna : they were simply ignorant of its existence. In the wars that seem inevitably to follow the rise of a new religion it is often difficult to separate their political from their religious significance. And it is ' 9 Geog., ed. M. de Goeje). “ ‘Devcnus musulmans, moitid par ambition, moitid pai lassitude, ils constataient sans regiet I’attachement de leurs patents et de leurs femmes h I’ancienne religion,’ op. at , p. 54. ” Malik’s attitude towaids the tolerated cults as illustrated on p. 21 above is an instructive contrast The Umayyad Period highly probable that much of the odium that has gathered round the Umayyad name in the sphere of religion is really due to their determination to hold the pre-eminence in temporal affairs. Their natural enemies, as later events so clearly proved, were in the Hijaz and the Iraq; and consequently the traditionists in these territories who claimed to interfere in the public and private lives of the subjects of the Syrian monarchs were repressed with scant ceremony. It can hardly be denied that the policy of the Umayyads—always with the exception of the piously brought up 'Umar b. 'Abdu-l-'AzIz—was dictated by considerations of a worldly rather than a religious nature. They had practically no interest in religious law, and no great veneration for the teaching of the prophet. The Book of Songs is an eloquent witness to the unbridled licence of thought and life at that time. A 1 Walid II, when threatened with the divine wrath pronounced in the Quran against the enemy of religion, actually threatened to use the sacred volume as a target for his arrows. However, it must always be borne in mind that the sources from which our knowledge of this period is gained are for the most part marked by a fierce hatred of the Umayyads and all their works; so that those who denounce them as the enemies of the faith shut their eyes to the wise and firm administration of the early rulers of that house, their conquests, military organization, navy, and public works. All these benefits were as nothing in the sight of their Phari¬ saical subjects in Medina. Like the Hasidim of old, who held fast to Law and Tradition, standing aloof from the national party and its materialistic aims, the The Umayyad Period doctors of Medina refused to deal with the caliphs of Damascus. They laboured to establish the sunna of the community as it was, or as it was thought to have been, under the prophet’s rule, and so they found their bitterest enemies in the ruling house. As sincere Muslims they risked their lives by refusing to do homage to the Umayyads ; and it required the ferocity of the notorious A 1 Hajjaj to compel them to yield even lip service to his masters so deeply were their religious sentiments outraged. The consequences of the attitude of the government were twofold. In the first place, abysmal ignorance of even the rudiments of Islam prevailed over the Muslim world; and in the second place, a theoretical turn was given to the subterranean labours of scholars who were endea¬ vouring to elaborate a rule of life and thought for the community. Debarred by the policy of the Umayyads from any share in the administration— good orthodox Muslims who accepted office under the worldly regime were scathingly rebuked by the godly , irreconcilables—their work suffered under the disad¬ vantage inseparable from all legislation which is not founded on, and tested by, experience. They were as it were legislating for posterity, and much that was idealistic and out of relation to everyday life was incorporated in their work to serve as a basis for the normal practice of the future. How far the surprising ignorance of the ordinary duties and beliefs of a Muslim which reigned through¬ out a large part of the Muslim world towards the end of the first century is due to the policy of the Umayyads, and how far a fanatical desire to prosely¬ tize has wrongly been attributed to the earlier Muham- The Umayyad Period 43 madans, are points for the historian to pronounce upon. But certain it is that at this time the people of Basra did not know the rules of ritual prayer. A 1 Bukhari tells us^ how Malik b. A 1 Huwairith instructed the people there in the postures proper to prayer. The tarjama is interesting in that it contemplates the eivinsf of formal instruction in ritual. Further, the o o existence in Syria of a salutation Al-salam 'ala ’llah shows that the chapter devoted by traditionists to the correct forms of greetings and salutations was by no means uncalled for. The contrast between the theoretical and the prac¬ tical at the end of the first century is startling. For in theological circles, if A 1 Darimi is to be believed, the sunna was declared to be the judge of the Quran, not vice versa.^ This view was shared by A 1 Shaibani and A 1 Shafi'i, and theologians did not shrink from proclaiming as a dogma the corollary that the sunna was of divine origin. Amid general ignorance and indifference pious doctors painfully gathered material for a reconstruction of the conditions of Muhammad’s time They ques¬ tioned all living Companions and Followers on points of law and custom. Driven by a deep sense of reli¬ gious obligation to gather the precious material at any cost to themselves, these men did not shrink from travelling thousands of miles in search of Companions who could give them first-hand information of the prophet’s actions. Thus armed with the authority of the prophet, the traditionists hoped, by giving the ’ Adhan, no. 45, Krehl, 1, p. 175. ® I hesitate to put an obelus to a tradition which Goldzihei {MS, ii, p. 21) accepts. 44 The Umayyad Period widest possible circulation to hadith, to rouse the public to a sense of their religious duties, and to undermine the world power of the government. The temptation to use so potent a weapon to further their political aims was more than flesh and blood could resist. We may detect covert attacks on the U mayyad dynasty in the numerous hadith which extol the merits of the prophet’s family, whose representatives were, of course, the house of Ali. The hadith literature faithfully reflects the passions roused by the government. The burning question was how the believer was to conduct himself under a godless tyranny. Was it a duty to take up arms against the tyrant, or must his rule be accepted as ordained by God ? There was a party which refused to have anything to do with the Umayyads, who declined to take office under them, who reviled them and their vice-gerents, their generals, and their ignoble instruments the forgers of prophetic traditions, and who promised the martyr’s crown to him who died in resisting the oppressor. Traces of this attitude still survive in the canonical collections in hadith like the following: ‘ A Muslim must hearken and obey whether he approves or dislikes an order so long as he is not commanded to disobey God. In that case obedience is not incumbent on him.’ Again, ‘ No obedience is due where disobedience to God is involved. Obedience is only due to lawful demands.’ The Murjiites, on the other hand, refused to see in the suppression of religious law any cause for refusing homage to the Umayyads; it sufficed for them that their rulers were nominally Muslims : they did not care to inquire too closely into their actions. A good The Umayyad Period example, directly contradictory in import to the last two, is; ‘ Whoso obeys me obeys God. Likewise whoso disobeys me disobeys God. Whoso obeys an Amir obeys me, and whoso disobeys an Amir disobeys me. Verily an Imam is a shield behind which one fights and is protected. If he gives orders in the fear of God and with justice he will have his reward; if contrary thereto he will suffer for it.’ ‘ All three hadith are mutlafaq.^ These were the men who by lending themselves to the government as instruments in the promulgation of hadith favourable to the powers that be did so much to keep down the rising tide of disaffection. But it was the intermediate party which left the deepest mark on the hadith literature and on the thought of Islam. They did not go so far as the Murjiites, who boggled not at supporting even the massacre of the pious, but they taught that though a ruler was the most unworthy of men, it was wrong to take up arms against him to the detriment of the state and the unity of Islam. ‘ Hearken and obey though an Abyssinian slave be made your governor with a head like a dried grape' ’ They preached the duty of submission to the will of God, and of patience and endurance under oppression. ‘ Let him who dislikes the conduct of his Amir be patient; for he who divides the Muslim community a hand’s breadth shall die the death of a pagan.’ At all costs the unity of Islam must be preserved. Muslim gives the following on ^ The text of the Mishkat vanes between mmhu and mtmnata. The conomentators prefer the former, and explain ^alaih minhu: 'alaiki wizran ihaqtlan min sanfihi. ^ See Glossary of Technical Teims. 46 The Umayyad Period the authority of 'Arfaja • ‘ Evil times will come repeatedly. But he who seeks to separate this people which is a united community slay him with the sword be he who he may.’ Hadith of a similar import are extremely numerous. The attitude of acquiescence was supported by the doctrine of ijma', an example from the first century of that respect which Islam has always paid to the fait acpmpli. Invariably in times of stress the theologian and would-be reformer appealed to it to deliver him from an impossible position, and never in vain. Most probably the prolific output of pseudo-prophetic hadith had their origin in the days of the Umayyad oppression. The pious, in the name of Muhammad, who by projecting himself into an unhappy future becomes a laudator teniporis acti, pronounce condemna¬ tion on the degeneracy of the times. ‘ The best age for my community was the time when I was sent, then the time following, then will arise a people whose word none can trust’ This hadith exists in very many different forms and collections. The following from Ibn Hanbal is of interest as showing the interpretation given to it in the time of the next dynasty: ‘ Prophecy will be with you as long as God wills; then he will take it away; then will come a caliphate on the pattern of prophecy; then will come a tyrannical ^ kingdom . . . then will come a kingdom in arrogance; then will come a caliphate on the pattern of prophecy. Then the prophet was silent. Uabib said: When 'Umar b. 'Abdu-l-'Aziz came to the throne I wrote to him 'aidan explained by the commentatoi ydaddu ba'du ahhhi ba'dan kdaddi-l-hlab, ‘its subjects will bite one another after the manner of dogs’. The Umayyad Period 47 informing him of this hadith, and said; “ I hope that you are to be the Amiru-l-Muminin after the tyrannical and arrogant reigns,” whereat he was much pleased.’ This hadith is reported by Hudhaifa, who is credited elsewhere with being the prophet’s confidant on escha¬ tological matters.^ His information from this source is asserted to extend to the yatimti-l-qiyama, so that, for the orthodox, there is an adequate explanation of the prophecies on such matters as the rise of the T urks and the principal battles fought against the Byzantines. The reigning house could not afford to leave their opponents with the sole right of collecting and promul¬ gating hadith: in fact, TabarH states that Muawiya I ordered that all hadith favourable to the house of 'All should be suppressed, and the glories of the family of 'Uthman be extolled in hadith. The Umayyad hand is perhaps most clearly seen in the traditions which were forged to emphasize the sanctity of Jerusalem vis-d-vis Mecca and Medina. While his rival 'Abd Allah b. Zubair was m possession of the holy places, and could bring pressure to bear upon the pilgrims who resorted thither, and seduce them from their allegiance to the northern house, the problem which confronted 'Abdu-l-Malik in Syria was not unlike that of J eroboam the son of Nebat in those regions ; nor was his counter¬ move dissimilar. Whereas Jeroboam provided within his own territory sanctuaries for the veneration of his subjects, 'Abdu-l-Malik hit upon the expedient of enjoining a pilgrimage to the mosque he built in Jerusalem instead of the orthodox journey to Mecca and Medina. All that was necessary was to declare ‘ See Bab Fitan and the locus classicus in Qadar, p. 173. 48 The Umayyad Period that a circumambulation of the holy place at J erusalem ppssessed the same validity as that enjoined at Mecca, and to procure for his assertion a confirmatory hadith with an isnad going back to the prophet himselfd ‘Journey only to three mosques, A 1 Masjidu-l-Haram, the mosque of the prophet, and the mosque of Jeru¬ salem,’ is the form this tendentious hadith takes in AI Bukharin The inventor is A 1 Zuhrl, who fathers it on Abu Huraira. This was countered from Medina by the following hadith, which comes next in Bukhari’s bab : ‘ A prayer in this my mosque is better than a thousand prayers in others, except the Masjidu- 1 - Idaram.’ The interesting feature of these two hadith as Bukhari records them lies in the tarjama, which reads; ‘ Of the superiority of prayer in the mosques of Mecca and Medina'. Bukhari was too scrupulous to omit from his collection a hadith which was supported by witnesses whose bona fides he did not suspect; but by the simple expedient of ignoring the references to the Masjidu-l-Aqsa he asserted the paramount sanctity of the holy places of the Hijaz. Ibn Maja gives the Syrian version of the latter half of the second hadith— undoubtedly the original, since Muhammad in the Quran had established the sanctity of the Hijaz temples—to the effect that prayer at Jerusalem is a thousand times more effective than at other places. ’' Many hadith which exalt the honour and sanctity of Syria over the rest of the Muslim world still find a place in some of the collections. Thus in Ahmad’s Musnad and the Jami' of Al Tirmi^H we read that Journal Asiafique^ 1887, P* 4^^ 2 Bah Fadh-l-Baldt^ Krebl, p 299. ^ Sunan, Delhi, p. 102 MishkdiU’-I-Mamhl^y p« 574. The Umayyad Period the prophet said: ‘Blessed be Syria! “Why?” we asked. “ Because ”, said he, “ the angels of the Com¬ passionate spread their wings over it.”’ Abu Baud from 'Abd Allah b. ‘Amr: ‘ There will be migration after migration and the best of men (will flee) to Abraham’s place of refuge.’ Again, Ibn Hawala: ‘ It will come to pass that armies will be assembled in Syria, the Yaman and Iraq.’ Said he: ‘Choose for me my course, O Apostle of God, if I live till that epoch.’ He replied: ‘ Get you to Syria, for that land is chosen by God from his (whole) earth, and thither will he gather the chosen of his creatures. If you refuse (to go there) then get you to Yaman and water your flocks from its pools. Verily God hath guaranteed to me the safety of Syria and its people.’^ Other hadith tell us that the prophet especially recommended Damascus as a place of residence, and appointed a suburb, Al Ghuta, a military rendezvous. Another form of the Umayyads’ official propaganda was the publication of hadith glorifying the name of the murdered 'Uthman. He is said to have been marked out for the caliphate by the prophet, to have been a martyr, and destined to be the companion of Muhammad in paradise. The long and involved explanations of ‘Uthman’s cowardice at Uhud and Badr,^ which earned him the title Al Farrar, The Fugitive, are undoubtedly an attempt to defend the ^ Most of the hadith that follow are quoted fiom the Mtshltai, and can easily be found under the appropiiate chaptei headings. A more precise reference will not be given, for the reasons explained in the preface. ® Manaqtb 'Uthman in the vaiious collections, and Houdas, ii, 600 f 28S1 G 50 The Umayyad Period memory of one from whom the Umayyads claimed their right to the throne. If any external proof were needed of the forgery of tradition in the Umayyad period, it may be found in the express statement of A1 Zuhri: ‘ These princes have compelled us to write hadith.’ * Undoubtedly the hadith exalting the merit of the pilgrimage to the qubbatu-I-Sakhra at Jerusalem is a survival of the traditions A1 Zuhri composed. Ibn 'Ann, who died in the middle of the second century, refuses to credit traditions resting on the authority of Shahr b. Hau- shab because he had held office under the government.^ It is difficult to imagine a more telling accusation. A1 Bukhari a century later feels no compunction in including traditions in Shahr’s name in the category of ‘genuine’, presumably because he knew little or nothing about the circumstances of the time in which Shahr lived, nor the pressure that was brought to bear upon him. And it is to be remembered that Shahr is by no means the only Muhaddith whose name appears both in the canonical collections of tradition and in the roll of Umayyad state officials.^ It need cause no surprise that comparatively few traditions ‘inspired’ by the Umayyad house survive. We have seen that a great many were in circulation while the dynasty flourished, and we hardly need the express assurance that the Abbasids sternly repressed them. The house of Abbas had ruled for more than a century when the great written collections were made, and during this time the theologians and muhaddithun * Sprenger, loc. cit., and Muir, LM, p. xxxiii. “ A 1 Tirmi^i (Bulaq, 1292, ii, p. 117), who constantly quotes hadith guaranteed by Shahr The Musnad of AI Tayalisi, Ibn 'Aun’s pupil, contains but three such. * MS, pp 40 ff The Umayyad Period had been able to develop their doctrines and practices without the hindrance, and often with the help, of the government. In these circumstances it would be astonishing if more than a faint trace of traditions favourable to the irreligious race of the Umayyads was allowed to appear. As a matter of fact, we find that those preserved by A1 Bukhari suggest to the faithful that Mu'awiya was careless, or at all events eccentric, in his religious exercises. The following example must suffice: ‘ Mu'awiya made an odd number of rak'as after the evening prayer while a freed man belonging to Ibnu-l-'Abbas was present. Whereupon the freed man came and told his former master, who said . “ Let him alone, for he has been in the society of the prophet of God.” ’ ^ There is a pathetic ring about the tradition ascribed by A^mad b. Hanbal to Shuraih b. 'Ubaid. He says : ‘ The Ahlu-l-Sham were mentioned in Ali’s presence with the remark “ Curse them, O commander of the Believers” “No,” said he, “for I heard the apostle of God say: The Abdal are in Syria. Now they are forty men; when one dies God puts another in his place. By them rain is obtained,^ victory gained over ^ Bab Dhikr Muavoiya^ no 28 , Krehl^ p. 446 ® Cf. Aghani, x (quoted MS, iq p. 381 note) of Abdu-l-Mahk. Khalifati-llah yusiasqd bihi-I-matam, The Abdal weie an oidei of wonder-working saints who mingled unrecognized and often unpei- ceived among their feilow-cieatures. They formed the third of five ordeis of a mysteuous hieraichy, at whose head stood the Qiitbu- 1 - Ghauth See Arabian Society in the Middle A^es, LanCj London, 1883, pp 47“-9. On lam-maldng among the heathen Aiabs, see Weilhausen, Kes/e arabiscJmi Heidenimns, p. 157. I suspect the activities alluded to here are similar to those of Rabbi Horn in the Talmud, Tdaniih, foL 19 a, The UaiAYYAD Period our enemies, and punishment turned aside from the people of Syria.”’ This hadith is to be connected with the ritual cursing of the Umayyads. A1 Ma’mun had to send round a street-crier to threaten all those who spoke well of Mu awiya, and a collection of hadith assailing the honour and prestige of the Umayyads was circulated by A1 Mu'tadid with the order that the cursing of the first of that dynasty should form part of the ritual. The presence of traditions of this kind in the Musnad of Ibn Hanbal strongly suggests that it was not only his theology but also his political fear¬ lessness which made him an object of A1 Ma’mun’s hatred. An account of the criticism which Muhammadans have from time to time passed on the hadith literature has been reserved for a later chapter, but it may not be out of place to examine the defence implicit in many of the hadith themselves. During a long period of suppression the pious had to endeavour to form the religious life of the community. They had no official position under the government—with few exceptions— and the prophet’s position as the seal of the prophets and the revealer of the will of God for all time effec¬ tually shut the door to any fresh revelation. Thus those who desired to secure universal recognition of their dogmas must perforce cast them into a form which would be regarded as authoritative by the com¬ munity. There was only one way of doing this, namely, to throw the teaching it was desired to incul¬ cate into the form of a hadith with an isnad reaching back to the prophet. Second-century writers make no secret of this method. They recognize that it is only the form adopted to secure the respectful attention of The Umayyad Period their audience, they recognize, too, that it is a form adopted by all who wish to gain a respectful hearing from the piously disposed. Thus a hadith which obviously has no greater authority than those it seeks to undermine says: ‘ After my death sayings attributed to me will multiply just as a large number of sayings are attributed to the prophets who were before me. What is told you as a saying of mine you must compare with the Quran. What is in agreement therewith is from me whether I have actually said it or not.’ This IS but another way of saying that provided an invented hadith is edifying or unobjectionable to the orthodox, none need trouble to inquire whether it actually pro¬ ceeded from the mouth of the prophet or not. What¬ ever the effect this frank admission may have on our estimate of the genuineness of the Muhammadan tradi¬ tions as a whole, there is no necessity to impute the worst motives to these men who adopted the only course open to them to persuade their co-religionists. It is instructive to observe that the defence of the legitimacy of those who, according to Old Testament critics, promulgated a code of laws in the name of Moses some five hundred years after his death is in substance the same as that in the hadith last quoted.^ * ‘To this conclusion, that Deuteionomy was wntten m the age of either Manasseh or Josiah, it is objected that the book plainly- produced Its effect on account of the authority which it was believed to possess, m other words, on account of its claiming, and being supposed, to be the woik of Moses. if Josiah had not believed the ancient law-book of Isiael to have been discovcied, would he have attached any weight to its woids ? . Its foice must have been due principally to the name of Moses, which it bore ; and if the piophets weie aware that it did not really possess his authority, then not only are they guilty of an act questionable moially, but the course taken The Umayyad Period Less than half this space of time lay between the Muhammadan traditionists and their apostle. More¬ over, the principle is canonized in J udaism, for we read in the Talmud a statement of startling similarity to that quoted above: ‘ Anything that a disciple of the wise may say in the future was revealed to Moses on Sinai.’ The use here of the word haddesk — haddatha is extremely interesting and suggestive: the intimate relationship between the Talmud and some sections of the hadith literature is a subject to which I shall recur in another place. In spite of these warning notes which still sound in by them is a confession of moral impotence and failuie they resort to an external name to accomplish what centuries of then own teaching had failed to effect* ^In estimating these objecdoiiSj it must be lemembered firstly^ that what is essentially new in Deuteioiiomy is not the matter^ but the form, , . Such laws as aie really new m Deuteronomy are but the logical and consistent development of Mosaic principles^ * .. All Hebrew legislation^ both civil and ceiemonial, however, was (as a fact) derived ultimately from Moses, though a comparison of the different Codes in the Pentateuch shows that the laws cannot all in their piesent form be Mosaic: the Mosaic nucleus was expanded and developed in various diiections, as national life became moie complex, and religious ideas matuied* Nevertheless, all Hebrew laws are foimulated undei Moses’ name,—a fact which shows that thcie was a continuous Mosaic tradition embracing a moral, a ceiemonial, and a civil element: the new laws, or extensions of old laws, which as time went on were seen to be desirable, were accommodated to this tradition, and mcorpoiated into it, being afterwards enfoiced by the piiestly or civil authority as the case might be. .. * It is no fiaudulent invocation of the legislators name: it is simply anothei application of an established custom*’—S. R. Driver, A Critical and E.\egeinal Commentary on Deuteronomy^ Edinburgh, 1902, pp. Iv-lvii. All this IS equally true of Muhammadan legislation and the ethical and moial tmths inculcated in the hadith liteiature* IV CRITICISM OF HADITH BY MUSLIMS Minatory hadith against liars in tradition; the ‘ qiissas —Hadith as a study.—Method of Mushm criti¬ cism .— The categories of hadith.—Ibn Khalduns verdict on tradition.—Modern criticism by Muslims. We have examined some of the influences which were at work during the formative period of Islam, and seen how they have all left their mark on tradition. It now remains to review briefly the criticism of hadith by Muhammadans themselves. It is quite impossible here to attempt to give a rdsumi of the opinions formed by the principal Arabic writers. In general, perhaps, it may be said that, like most Oriental authors, without feeling themselves in any way bound to take into account the trustworthiness of their sources, they used the hadith literature as a quarry from which to extract whatever they considered relevant to their purpose. ne writers who were not afraid to subject the .rfibnical literature to some sort of criticism will be noticed. The two judgements which Muhammadans them¬ selves have passed on hadith have been admirably summarized by Dr. N icholson : ^ ‘ While every impar¬ tial student will admit the justice^ oO^5_,0utayba’s 'Halmrithaf'ird religion has quch historical attestations as Tilam— faysa li-ummatin mina H-umami asnadun ka- dsnadihiin —he rnust at the same time cordially assent to the observation made by^ahothef Muhammadan : ^ A'Xthrary History of the Arabs, London, 1907, p. 145. “ In nothing do we see pious men more given to false- jhood than in Tradition” {lamnam 'l-sahhlna fl shayin akdhctba minhum fi H-kadltli).' The latter statement ' was made by'Asim al-nabll (d. 212 ) almost the same swords are reported to have been said by Yahya b. ' Sa'id (d. 192 ); both of them were active nearly a cen- ' tury before the compilation of the first corpus of ' canonical tradition. Al-Zuhrl is reported to have said ! that the reason he wrote down hadith was because of ; the prevalence of traditions emanating from the East ' whose authenticity he denied.^ A most significant recognition within hadith itself of the untrustworthiness of guarantors is to be found in Bukhari.^ Ibn 'Umar reports that Muhammad ordered all dogs to be killed save sheep-dogs and hounds. Abu Huraira 'added the word mo sad in , where¬ upon Ibn ‘Umar makes the remark, ‘Abu Huraira owned cultivated land (’ •* A better illustration of the umderlying motive of some hadith can hardly be found. Weighty pronouncements against what was becoming a universal evil produced a reaction. Men came to see that the union of truth and falsehood might result in the complete overthrow of apostolic tradition. A most remarkable feature of the reaction was that the theologians borrowed the weapons of the liars. In order to combat false traditions they invented others equally destitute of prophetic authority. An extra¬ ordinary number of Companions are cited as witnesses ^ JASB^ 1856; p. 322. “ Ktidbu-l-Said, Bab 6. ® Cf, Tirmidbi, i, p. 281, and MS^ ii^ p. 49 and the notes there (to which add Ibn Maja, Bab Qatli-l-kiiabi, ilia kalb saidin an zarhn). I do not find Ibn ‘Umar’s damaging observation on Abu Huraira m Krehi or Houdas in loc» BY Muslims that the prophet said, ‘ Whoever shall repeat of me that which I have not said, his resting-place shall be in hell.’ ^ A study of the theological systems of the world would hardly reveal a more naive attempt to tread the sirdtti-l-imistaqim I Other pseudo-prophetic hadith portray Muhammad warning his people against liars who will seek to mislead the community while claiming his authority for so doing. However, the threat of eternal damnation was not thought to be sufficient in itself to secure the com¬ munity against the forgeries of the unscrupulous. The matter soon, moreover, became one of political urgency. Such chapters as we now find in the canonical tradi¬ tions dealing with the merits of the heroes of the different factions of Islam had a profound influence on the popular mind. Obviously much might be done by promulgating the Faddil or, on the other hand, the Faddil''Uthmdn, in a province which had heard of neither. In fact, according to the express statement of Muslim, criticism of hadith owed its rise to the great dynastic struggles of the second century, when the empire was split into hostile camps, each of them supporting their pretensions by a claim to apostolic authority. Criticism of hadith was keenest in those regions where political and religious differences were most felt, notably in the Iraq. As we have seen, it centred not on the subject-matter but on the chain of guarantors, though perhaps, since Orientals are the best judges of Oriental mentality, the result was very * Cf Muu, LM, 1912, p. XXXVI. The saying is to be found in all collections. ^ The hadith extolling his meiits and establishing his claim to the highest place in the prophet’s estimation. 8o Criticism of HadiTH much the same. Hadith was not criticized from the point of view of what was inherently reasonable and to be regarded as worthy of credence/ but from a consideration of the reputation which the guarantors of the tradition bore. However, the doctrine of Ijma' may have had a restraining influence on purely subjec¬ tive criticism, for quite early it had been extended to cover the sphere of hadith, and what the community agreed upon was above serious questioning. However, there was still a large circle outside the orthodox thinkers who rejected the whole system of hadith. They were not concerned to adopt those which happened to fit in with the views and doctrines of the doctors, or even with those which might fairly be held to support their own view of life. So far from being impressed by the earnestness of the traditionists who scrupulously examined the tsn&d, or by the halo of sanctity which had gathered round the early guaran¬ tors of tradition, the independent thinkers of the second and third centuries openly mocked and derided the system as a whole and the persons and matters named therein. Some of the most flagrant examples of these lampoons will be found in the Book of Sonos, where indecent stories are cast into the form in which tradition was customarily handed down to posterity. Nor were these careless free-lances alone in attacking the elaborate system which was being built up on the foundation of the supposed utterances of the prophet. Popular as such literature was among savants and ^ I except, of course, the great philosophical historian Ibn KhaldQn, who expressly says, ‘ the rule for distinguishing what is true from what is false in history is based on its possibility oi impossibility,’ quoted by Nicholson, LHA, p 438. BY Muslims 8 i vulgar alike, a more serious enemy to the orthodox entered the field. The many mutually contradictory traditions coined to establish dogmatic and legal points were intolerable to contemporary philosophers, who eagerly seized upon hadith which had been discredited by the conscience of Islam. The presence of folk-lore and fable whose heathen origin was well known to the learned could not but excite contempt, and the hadith which were borrowed direct from Jewish Haggada and Christian legend were especially vulnerable to attack. Their presence is deprecated by speeches attributed to the prophet in other hadith, and Ibn Qutaiba boldly throws them overboard. ' As Ibn Khaldun says, the Arabs were an ignorant race, with no literary nor scientific knowledge, and when they wished to probe the mysteries of creation and the universe they turned for information to the Jews who had accepted Islam. These, says this learned author, were no less ignorant than the surrounding Arabs; but they brought over into Islam a mass of their own traditions, especially those dealing with the origin of the creation and with the future of the human race. Commentaries were soon filled with their stories. So great was their reputation with the Muslims that their fables and pseudo-prophetic hadith were accepted despite the fact that all proof of the speakers’ veracity or the intrinsic probability of the stories were lacking. These Jews included natives of the Yaman such as Ka'bu-1 Ahbar (d. 32 ) and Wahb b. Munabbih (d. 114 ) and 'Abd Allah b. Salam (d. 43 ). The popularity of these moralizing stories, whatever their source, among the Ascetics and Moralists, and also among the general public, has ensured them 82 The Criticism of Hadith a permanent place in Muslim tradition* Despite their vulnerable isnads, the later collectors accepted them for the sake of their valuable influence in the sphere of morals and ethics. Nemesis followed hard on this weakness,, for, as we have seen, the fables were on the one hand a cause of embarrassment in dealing* with the attacks of the learned; and the public on the other hand showed a marked preference for the lying and impudent inventions of the street story-tellers, the gussas, who clothed their nonsense in the garb of a canonical sanad} Unless the ears of the simple believer had been tickled and his curiosity stimulated by these haggadic stories the qttssas could never have entered into competition with the muhaddithfm. So great was the effrontery of these street orators and fablemongers that the saintly Ibn Hanbal had to flee before them. ^ The following two illustrations of the methods of these plausible rascals deseive mention, as they are not without humour, and show how inciedibly ciedulous the ordinaly ignorant Muslim was % (a) ‘ The poet Kulthum b. 'Amr al 'Attabi, who lived in the time of Harun and Al-Ma’mun, collected a crowd round him in a mosque of the capital, and gave out the following hadith m the coireci form: He who can touch the end of his nose with the tip of his tongue can be certain that he will never feel the flames of hell/' As though a signal had been given the w'hole company put out their tongues to see whether they had the visible maik of those destined for Paiadise/ MS^ ii, p, 164. {P) *They collect a great ciowd of people lound them one Qass stations himself at one end of the street and nanates tiEditions about the meiits of *Ali, while his fellow stands at the otliei end of the street exalting the virtues of Abu Bakr. Thus they secure the pence of the Nasibi as well as the Shfi, and divide then gams equally afterwaids/ BY Muslims 83 But in matters of jurisprudence the traditionists refused to yield. On the contrary, one result of the attack on tradition was to enhance its authority, as the following hadith, which are now canonical, will demon¬ strate: ‘Venly I have brought the Quran and along with it that which is similar thereto, yet the rich man on his throne would say, “ Hold fast the Quran and its injunctions to enjoy and to refrain.” But verily what the apostle of God has declared unlawful God has made unlawful. . . Again: ‘ Does any one of you suppose that God has not forbidden anything but what is contained in this Quran ? Verily by God that which I have commanded, admonished, and forbidden is like unto the Quran and more than it. And God does not permit you to enter the houses of the People of the Book without their permission, nor to beat their wives and eat their fruit, provided they have paid their taxes.’ Nothing could be more explicit than this assertion of the authority of the oral law enshrined in tradition. But this position involved the giving of some sort of guarantee that traditions were authentic, and so, when in the third century the compilation of the canonical collections was begun, a systematic selection of trustworthy traditions—trustworthy, that is, in the uncritical estimation of the collectors—became an integral part of the science of tradition. Inquiries were made as to the character of the guarantors, whether they were morally and religiously satisfactory, whether they were tainted with heretical doctrines, whether they had a reputation for truthfulness, and had the ability to transmit what they had themselves heard. Finally, it was necessary that they should be 84 The Criticism of Hadith competent witnesses whose testimony would be accepted in a court of civil lawd In Muslim’s day the great importance of hadith, as a study in itself, was clearly recognized, for we find in his collection^ the saying; ‘Verily this science'’ is a religion: take care on whose authority you receive your religion.’ There are also the solemn words: ‘ The isnad is a matter of religion; and were it not for the isnad any one could say what he pleased ’ [laula-l- isnadii laqala man ska a m.a shad ): in other words, the isnad was regarded as a protection against forgery and invention, as it well may have been with the religiously- minded Muslims. Muslim himself evidently does not feel comfortable about the selection he has made from the content of Muhammadan tradition. He tells us on the authority of Ibn Sirin that ‘ people used not to ask questions about the isnad, but when dissension {fihid) * broke out they said, “ Tell us the names of your autho¬ rities.” So the ahhi-l-sunna were scrutinized and their hadith received, and the akhi-l-bidd were scrutinized * JASB, 1856, p. 53. “ Bab Al Isnad mtn al Din. * The ‘Science of Tradition’ determines what is to be understood by a saying or action of the prophet which forms the subject of tradition. It is defined in the Dictionary of Technical Terms ..., ed. A. Sprenger, Calcutta, 1862, p. 27, thus: ‘ The science of tradition IS that science by which the sayings and doings of the prophet of God are known. As to his sayings, they are in the Arabic tongue, and consequently he who is unacquainted with Aiabic is unable to acquire this science. It may be something said by itself or in a context, metaphoiical or literal, general 01 particular, absolute or qualified, explicit 01 implicit, and so on, according to the rules of Arabic.. . . As to his doings, they are the things which he did of himself, whether he commanded us to follow him therein 01 not, as for example, actions which he did naturally or out of some individual characteristic.’ ‘ On the double meaning of this word see BukhSii, Kiidhu-l-Saum. BY Muslims and their hadith were not received.’ In the same chapter he mentions that traditions—which the context suggests were in some way suspicious—were received as genuine because the people who reported them were notoriously pious Muslims. He adds the exceedingly important note that in his day the traditionists (aklul 'Ihn) frequently suspected reporters of tradition, but that they did not feel it incumbent upon them to expose their faults and to give a decision against them, except where serious interests were involved. He strongly deprecates this careless¬ ness on the ground that false hadith constitute a standing menace to Islam. He urges that the utmost pains should be taken to brand such traditions false and unworthy of credence, and he has only contempt for those who, knowing that traditions are weak, wil¬ fully repeat them in order to be accounted learned and pious. ‘ He that thus treads the path of knowledge has no part in it, and ought to be called ignorant rather than learned,’ says Muslim. The three categories into which all traditions were divided were sound {sahT/i), fair (Jiasmi), and weak {da'lf). One of the great differences between the collections of Bukhari and Muslim^ was that the former refused to regard hadith mu'an'an as standing in the same category as those which contained words like ‘ I heard ’ or ‘ I saw ’ the Prophet of God, or ‘ So-and-so informed me’. Unless' some word implying personal contact between two guarantors was used in a tradition Bukhari maintained that Islam could not apply it to establish any law. To him and to rigorists in tradition ' Supra, p. 32. 86 The Criticism of Hadith all other traditions were at the best a sort of apocrypha. It rather looks as if Muslim, when he attacks an anonymous contemporary {ba 'dtt 'l-mtmtahali 'l-hadlth min ahli 'asrind) and asserts that the expression implies personal contact unless there is direct evidence to the contrary, has Bukhari in mind. He accuses his opponent of inconsistency on the ground that there are several hadith midanan which are accepted as genuine, e.g. Hisham ''an ablhi. In this and similar cases, he argues, it would be ridiculous to suppose that there was no personal contact between the two men, and to refuse to regard the tradition as genuine. The classification of traditions is a highly technical pursuit, and a new terminology had to be evolved to indicate the numerous kinds of tradition current in the Muhammadan world. The Muslim doctors’ view of tradition, as given by A1 Jurjanl (d. 8i6), is both detailed and clear, and is substantially the same as that which has always pre¬ vailed among his co-religionists. He says with good reason that the text of a tradition is rarely taken into account, and that criticism is confined to the isnad. He accepts the three categories given above, and defines and subdivides them at length thus. I. Sahlh or sound tradition. musndd. A traditioif^ich is supported by authori¬ ties resting on the prophet. muUasal. With a continuous uninterrupted isnad. If it does not go back to the prophet it is said to be mauquf stopped. marfu'. Carried back and attributed to the prophet; i.e. it may be mitttasal or mauquf. mtCatCan. Linked by the word ‘from’ instead of a word implying personal contact. BY Muslims miCallaq. Suspended with the name of a guarantor or more missing. If the name is missing from the middle it is mimqatd ; if from the end it is mitrsal fard. Unique; peculiar to one district. Sometimes it means peculiar to one reporter, m which case it may be weak. mudraj. One which has been glossed or interpolated by one of the first reporters. mashhilr. Well known, and from many reporters. gharib. Resting on the authority of only one person. 'azlz. Resting on the authority of two or three persons. musahhaf. Badly written either in respect "to the name of a guarantor or with a variant reading in the main. musalsal. With a chain going back to the prophet containing the formula ‘ I heard ’ and so on. 2 .^a If or weak. StdppecTsliort of the prophet, and therefore no legal proof. maqtfi Cut off. Emanating from the ‘ Followers ’ as to their sayings and doings. Not a legal proof. nmrsal. A saying of the Followers that the prophet did or said so-and-so. munqatd. Severed, i.e. a link is missing. ■mddal. One or more names missing, c.g. a statement of Malik that Muhammad said. shadk. At variance with another well-tested tradition. munkar. A weak tradition at variance with another weak one. m7iallaL With a hidden fault or inconsistency. mudallas. With a hidden fault: either personal inter¬ course is falsely claimed between guarantors, or the name of one has been intentionally disguised by means of an appellative. imidtarab. Deranged by verbal inconsistencies with another tradition. 88 The Criticism of Hadith maqlub. One known to have come from a person other than the one named. maudii. Supposititious; hearsay which may be truth or mere invention. ^■.. J^asa n or fair_tradition is that which stands midway between genuine'and"weik.' It may be either genuine or false. It is fair because nothing is known against the character of its reporter, and because it can sometimes be supported by other evidence. The reader will probably agree with A1 Jurjani’s saying that ‘ further examination into the distinction of names, titles, epithets, and degrees appertaining to the science would be a lengthy matter’, and be content with a perusal of these and the other technical terms given in the appendix.^ As an example of the appli¬ cation of this systematic criticism the following extracts from Abu Daud may be of interest: ^ ‘ Dies ist ein verwerfliches {mtinkar) Hadith, niemand anders hat es uberliefert als Yazid al Dalanl von Qatada . . . Abu Dawudsagt: Ich habe das Hadith des Yazid al Dalani dem Ahmad b. I^anbal vorge- legt, er hat mich aber hart zuruckgewiesen, well er es als krasse Falschung betrachtete, er sagte : Was hat Jazid . . . unter den Genossen des Qatada zu suchen, hat er sich ja nicht um Hadith gekiimmert! . . . ‘ Dieses Hadith ist nicht stark (^awl), Muslim b. Khalid ist schwach {ddlf). . . Ein schwacher Gewahrs- * Much information is to be found m the Dictionary of Technical Terms used in the Sciences of the Musalmans, ed. A. Sprengei, Calcutta, sub The Science of Tradition, and in his article m ZDMG, x, 1856, pp. I—iSj Uber das Traditionswesen bei den Arabern. See also Edward E Salisbury, Contributions from Original Sources to our Knowledge of the Science of Muslim Tradition, in fAOS, vii, 1862, ® Abu DSud, Cairo, 1280, i, p. 20, quoted in MS, ii, p. 251. BY Muslims mann, beide Hadithe sind falsch {wahn) . . . nach einem Isnad; A1 Hajjaj 'an A1 Zuhri. I)ies ist ein schwaches Hadith, A1 Hajjaj hat den Zuhri nie gesehen und nie von ihm gehort, auch Ja'far b. RabT'a hat den Zuhri nie gesehen, dieser hat nur schnftlich mit jenem verkehrt.' (p 197 .) The importance and value of the examination of the isnM is obvious. By impugning the bona fides of a guarantor—the process was called jark or idan, i.e. wounding the reputation—thousands of untrustworthy traditions were eliminated from the canonical collec¬ tions. On the other hand, if the subject-matter {nzatti) contained an obvious absurdity or an anachronism there was no ground for rejecting the hadith if the isnM was sound. This is the reason why there are so many hadith of a contradictory import in one and the same bab. Historical difficulties within the main could not arise when once the prophetic power of Muhammad was established as an article of faith. The exist¬ ence to this day of such hadith as those quoted in Chapters V and VI can only be accounted for when the amazing credulity of the Muhammadan community is realized. It is refreshing, after perusing these, to read the sane remarks of Ibn Khaldun^ on a subject which more than once within living memory has profoundly stirred a Muhammadan country. ‘ The whole body of Muslims throughout the cen¬ turies have held that at the end of the age a man of the family of the prophet must appear who will strengthen religion and make justice manifest. The Muslims will follow him, and he will gain possession of the Muslim kingdoms, and be called A1 Madhi. ‘ Al Muqaddima, Beyrut, ch. 52, p. 271. M K86I 90 The Criticism of Hadith Al-Dajjal (the Antichrist) will come and afterwards the signs of the (last) hour indicated in the Sahih. Then Jesus will descend from heaven and kill Al- Dajjal; or, as some say, will descend with him (A1 Mahdi) and help him to kill Al-Dajjal, and will have the Mahdi as Imam in prayer. On this subject hadith are cited as proof which the Imams have published, though there are not wanting those who deny their authenticity, often comparing them with other reports. . . . We will now quote the hadith that bear on this matter; the objections which have been made to them , and the ground on which the objections rest. . . . We say, then, that many of the Imams have published hadith about the Mahdi, namely, A1 Tirmidhi, Abu Baud, A1 Bazzar, Ibn Maja, A1 Hakim, Tabarani, and Abu Ya'la al-Mausili. They carry back the traditions to many of the companions like 'Ali, Ibn 'Abbas, Ibn Umar, Talha, Ibn Mas'ud, Abu Huraira, Anas, Abu Sa'id al-Khudri, Um Habiba, Thauban, Ourra ibn Aias, ‘Ali al Hilali, and 'Abd Allah b. al Harith b. Juzi. The genuineness of the isnads has often been denied, as we shall explain; but, as the doctors of hadith know, impugning {jarJp) precedes justification {ta'dll). If we find any of the guarantors of tradition convicted {ta'an) of carelessness, defective memory, weakness, or lack of judgement, the soundness of the hadith is thereby adversely affected and its value decreased If it be argued that on these grounds guarantors accepted by the authors of the Sahihan are affected (we may reply) that Ijma* has agreed to accept the works of these two writers, and public conduct ('ami) is based on their contents. Ijma' is the greatest protec¬ tion and the best defence. No other work can be put in the same sure category (as the Sahihan). Never¬ theless we find ground for discussion as to their isnads in what has been handed down by doctors of hadith.’ Our author then proceeds to quote a long extract from the work of Al-Suhaili (d. 581 ) on the authority BY Muslims of Abu Bakr b. Abu Khaithama (d. 279), of which we give a summary. ‘ He (apparently Abu Bakr) ^ says : the following hadith rests on the authority of only one companion and comes from al Iskaf: 1. The prophet of God said; “ He who disbelieves in the Mahdl is an infidel, and he who disbelieves in Al Dajjal is an infidel.” ’ Now he says the same thing of the sun rising in the west—sufficient indication of exag¬ geration ' Moreover, God knows whether he is right m carrying back the tradition to Malik. At any rate, Al Iskaf with the doctors is suspect and an inventor. 2. (a) Tirmidhl and Abu Daud publish a tradition resting on the authority of Ibn 'Abbas ^ by way of 'Asim (d. 127), one of the seven readers, Zirr b. Hubaish and 'Abd Allah b. Mas'ud from the prophet. ‘ Though the world had but a day to exist God would prolong that day until he sent a man of mine or of my family whose name is my name and whose father’s name is as my father’s name.’ So Abu Daud without comment. Now he says in his celebrated epistle that what is cited in his book without comment is true. ( 5 ) Tirmidhi’s version is : ‘The world shall not pass away until a man of my family and of my name shall reign over the Arabs.’ And elsewhere with the variant ‘ until a man of my family shall be in power ’ (wala). Both of them are hasaii sahlh. Moreover, * One cannot always determine the authot of ceitaiu passages. None of the wnleis systematically documciiLs his sources, and theie- fore the comments may emanate fiom our authoi or lus primary or secondaiy authority. Either this is a mistake foi Ibn Mas'ud, as I suspect (Ibn Abbas and Ibn Mas'iid weie both named ‘Abd 'Allah); 01, since they weie contemporaiies, the tiadition was attnbuted to them both. 92 The Criticism of Hadith he relates them mauqUf on the authority of Abu Huraira. A 1 yakim says that A 1 Thaurl (d. i6i), Shu'ba (d. i6o), Zaida, and other Imams of the Muslims relate the same from 'Asim. The following summary of the judgements passed on the said 'Asim as a traditionist is most instructive: A 1 yakim. Sahih. 'Asim was a Muslim Imam. Ahmad b. yanbal (d. 241). An honest, trustworthy man; but Al-A'amash (d. 148) had a better memory ; and Shu'ba, too, preferred him to 'Asim. Al-'Ajli (d. 261) did not accept his authorities (Zirr and Abu Wail) (d. 79), and regarded tradi¬ tions from these men as weak. Muhammad b. Sa'd (d. 230). Truthful, though he made many mistakes in hadith. Ya'qub b. Sufyan (d. 288). Confused {mudtarab). 'Abd al Rahman b. Abi Hatim (d. 327) ‘I said to my father “Abu Zara' says that'Asim is trust¬ worthy.” ye replied he is not.’ Ibn 'Ulayya {d. 193). All the 'Asims have bad memories. Abu Hatim (d. 275). Trustworthy and honest in hadith, but he has not a retentive memory. Al Nasal’s judgement on him is not consistent. Ibn Hirash (PKhirash d. 322). Disapproves of his hadith. Abu Ja'far al 'Aqali (d. 322). He had nothing but a bad memory. Al Daraqutnl (d. 385). Has somewhat to say about his memory. Yahya b. Al Qattan (d. 198). Every 'Asim I have ever met had a bad memory. I heard Shu'ba say “Asim b. Abu Nujud told me traditions, but I kept my own opinion about them.’ ^ Al Dhahabi. As a Quran reader he was trustworthy, ^ Read ft nafst for Jii-nash BY Muslims but not as a traditionist, though by nature truth¬ ful. His traditions are hasan. Ibn Khaldun remarks that if it be objected that the two shaikhs have published traditions from 'Asim, it may be replied that they have only done so when his reports have been confirmed by others; not solely on his authority. But God knows best. The reader would only be wearied by further examples of Ibn Khaldun’s exhaustive investigation of the authority for the belief in the coming of the Mahdi But it is interesting to notice that he makes the point that there is no mention whatever of the Mahdi in Muslim’s Sahih; and that of the relevant traditions elsewhere only a few are free from taint. Moreover, a tradition which can claim some measure of support credits the Prophet with the utterance. ‘ There is no Mahdi except Jesus the son of Mary.’ ^ The extraordinary reverence in which the Sahih of Bukhari was held naturally deterred Muslim scholars from criticizing its contents. Within a century of its appearance it was hailed by a writer as the prophet’s own book, and the prestige of the work grew with the advancing years. Bukhari was regarded as a saint, and pilgrimages were made to his tomb: the possession even of a copy of his book was held to be a sure protection against disaster. Although such an exalted position was not attained ^ The Isnad given is: Muhammad b. Klialid A 1 Jundi fiom Abban b. Salih b. Abl ‘Ayyash fiom A 1 Hasan al BasrI from Anas b. Malik. The judgements on these are as follows: Yahya b. Ma'in says Muh. ibn Khalid is trustwoUhy. Al Baihaqi, it is unique. Al Hakim says the isnad occurs in different foims, mursal. Abu 'Ayyash is branded as matruk by Baihaqi; it is munqatd ; in short, the tradition is ddif and mudfarah. 94 The Criticism of Hadith by Muslim and his work, yet it has always been bracketed with the Sahih of Bukhari, and they are cited as The Two Sahihs (Sahihan). But inasmuch as the ground of the authority of the Sahihan was their acceptance by the general consent of the Islamic com¬ munity, and they had not been subjected to any systematic critical examination, some dissentient voices have been raised against them from the earliest times down to the present day. Like the customs they sought to authorize by appeal to apostolic custom and precept, they owe their position to ijmd, not to their inherent virtue and faultlessness. AI Daraqutni (d. 385) devotes a book {al Istidrakat wal Tatabhi') to the demonstration of the weakness of many of the canonical traditions, while Abu Baud and his disciples claim for his work a higher position than that of any collection of hadith. Again, Ibn 'Abd al Barr (d. 463) and Al Nawawi (d. 676) do not hesitate to assail tradi¬ tions which seem to them to be contrary to reason or derogatory to the dignity of the prophet However, though theologians down to the ninth century in¬ veighed against particular hadith in the canonical col¬ lections, the authority of the Sahihan as the content of genuine apostolic tradition as a whole was not called in question. Modern Criticism of Tradition by Muslims. The study of hadith and hadith-criticism in Muslim academies still continues on the lines laid down a thousand years ago ; and it is interesting to see how the modern educated Muslim regards this activity. BY Muslims The extracts that follow are taken from ‘ A critical exposition of the popular “Jihad” ... by Moulavi Cheragh Ali.’^ ‘ The biographers of Mohammad and the narrators of his campaigns are too lax in enumerating the expe¬ ditions led by Mohammad. They have noted down the names and accounts of various expeditions without having due regard to a rational criticism, or without being bound by the stringent law’s of the technical requirements of traditionary evidence. Consequently they give us romances of the expeditions without specifying which of them are true and which fictitious There are many expeditions enumerated by the bio¬ graphers which have, in fact, no trustworthy evidence for their support; some are altogether without founda¬ tion, and some of them are wrongly termed as expedi¬ tions for warring purposes.’ The writer in a foot-note adds: ‘ The Mographers have only compiled or arranged the mass of popular romances and favourite tales of campaigns, which had become stereotyped in their time, but were for the most part the inventions of a playful fantasy.’ Further, he observes (p. xxii) of Bukhari’s account of Muhammad’s wars in the Kitabu- 1 -Maghazi: ‘ Even the latter minimized numbers are not deserving of confidence.’ p. cii. ‘ It IS only the Mohammadan Common Law, with all its traditions or oral sayings of the Prophet— very few of which are genuine reports ®—and the sup¬ posed chimerical concurrence of the learned Moslem Doctors, and mostly their analogical reasonings (called Haclees, Ijma, and Kias), passed under the name of Fiqah or Shariat, that has blended together the spiritual and the secular, and has become a barrier in some respects regarding certain social and political innovations for the higher civilization and progress of the nation.’ * Calcutta, 1885, pp. XX if. “ The italics arc mine.—A. G g6 The Criticism of Hadith It is not onr purpose to examine how the learned Indian author repudiates traditions and traditionists which do not support his own enlightened views, nor to criticize his attitude towards hadith from the same authorities when they tend to glorify the founder of his religion. But it is interesting to see how the hadith literature, and the vast structure built upon it, are viewed by the modern Muhammadan.^ ‘It is only a theory of our Common Law, in its military and political chapters, which allow[s] waging unprovoked war with non-Moslems, exacting tribute from “ the people of the Book ”, and other idolaters, except those of Arabia, for which the Hanafi Code of the Common Law has nothing short of conversion to Islam or destruction by the sword. As a rule, our canonical legists support their theories by quotations from the Mohammadan Revealed Law, i e the Koran, as well as from the Sonnah, or the traditions from the Prophet, however absurd and untenable may be their process of reasoning and argumentative deductions.... The Mohammadan Common Law is by no means divine or superhuman. It mostly consists of uncertain traditions, Arabian usages and customs, some frivolous and fortuitous analogical deductions from the Koran, and a multitudinous array of casuistical sophistry of the canonical legists. It has not been held sacred or unchangeable by enlightened Mohammadans of any Moslem country and in any age since its compilation in the fourth century of the Hejira. All the Mujta- hids, 'Ahl Hadis, and other non-Mokallids had had no regard for the four schools of Mohammadan reli¬ gious jurisprudence, or the Common Law.’ The same writer is even more explicit elsewhere: ® ' Op. at., pp. 158 ff. “ The proposed political. . . ref01 ms in the Ottoman Empire and other Mohammadan States (Bombay, 1883), pp. xix and 147, quoted by Goldziher, MS, p. 132. BY Muslims ‘ The vast flood of traditions soon formed a chaotic sea. Truth and error, fact and fable mingled together in an undistinguishable confusion. Every religious, social, and political system was defended, when neces¬ sary, to please a Khalif or an Ameer to serve his purpose, by an appeal to some oral traditions. The name of Mohammad was abused to support all manner of lies and absurdities, or to satisfy the passion, caprice, or arbitrary will of the despots, leaving out of con¬ sideration the creation of any standards of test. . . . I am seldom inclined to quote traditions having little or no belief in their genuineness, as generally they are unauthentic, unsupported, and one-sided.’ It will have become clear how the acute reasoning of this cultured and enlightened Indian gentleman has anticipated many of the conclusions of European Orientalists. His writings are by no means alone in protesting against the authority of tradition. They are symptomatic of a force in liberal Muhammadanism which awaits the opportunity for expression in that Reformation and Renaissance many of the best minds in Islam confidently anticipate. 2mi n V SELECTIONS FROM HADITH Ethics and morals.—Trade and commercial mora¬ lity. — Divorce. — Co%trtesy and kindness. — Slavery .— Treatment of animals. — Retaliation. — fThdd.—Oaths and vows.—Folklore and animism — Women and mar¬ riage.—Manners and cicstoms. To give an exhaustive account of the whole contents of the hadith literature is as impossible as it is to perform a similar office for the Talmud. The most that can be done in the following pages is to gather under headings some of the salient and some of the more interesting traditions.^ If the reader finds the constant quotation tedious it must be urged that there are already a large number of books about Islam which give the opinions of their writers; and only by giving the ipsissima verba of the traditions can the charge of unfairness and partiality be rebutted. The moral grandeur and beauty of many of the sayings attributed to Muhammad in the hadith is not the least of the causes of the veneration and affection in which he is held throughout the Muhammadan * I have found the Kanzu-l-'Ummal impossible to use except as a book of reference. Its vast bulk and peculiar method of arrange¬ ment render it unsuitable except as a corpus traditionum. Almost all the citations in this chapter are from the Miskkdiu-l-MasdMh, Bombay, 1880 The translation of this by Captain A. N. Matthews (Calcutta, 1809), in two volumes, is a remarkable work foi its time. A tradition can be readily found by its means, but the work is not complete, or, at any rate, follows a somewhat shorter text, and should be used with caution. Selections from Hadith 99 world. And any estimate of liis living influence must necessarily be one-sided unless it allows not only for the all-pervading authority and example of the prophet applied as it is to every single detail of human life, but also for the constant expression of a loving and affectionate consideration for mankind. It is this aspect of Islam and of its founder which has not obtained in the West the generous recognition it has earned. Ethics and Morals. The prophet is said to have declared that ‘ A^uslim is he from whose tongue and hand s Muslims are safe V and that ‘ it is required of the best oF men that they should love God and his apostle above all others and their fellowmen ^ for God^s sake^. The prophetic view of honesty as a principle of life is well expressed in the hadith, ‘A sefvant of God shall not acquire property unlawfully and give alms thereof which shall be accepted. Nor shall he spend thereof and be blessed. And he shall not leave it behind him as it will bring him to hell. God does not blot out evil by evil, but God blots out evil by good.’ A chapter bearing the title ‘Gentleness in social relations’ contains the prayer that God may deal kindlywith~lTie man who sells and buys and claims ' An interesting play on the woid Muslim: AI viiishmu ma?i salma-l-mushmuna , • . ^ "abd. Theie is a sinking smiilaiity m tlie phraseology of some of these sayings and the maxims of the great Jewish fathers. The constant enumeration of categoiies (already found in the book of Proverbs), e.g. Three things aie an abomination unto the Loid, is strongly leminiscent of Piiqe Aboth, ed, Taylor, Cambridge, ha-meshanmieslmn eih ha-Rab, &c. loo Selections from Hadith his debts in a kindly spirit. ‘ The place of the faithful merchant who speaks the truth is with the prophets, the veracious, and the martyrs.’ The prophet ex¬ pressly forbade buying from a person in distress; the purchase of any thing to which a risk or hazard attaches;^ and of fruit before it has ripened. ‘He who sells a thing without notifying the buyer of a defect in it will abide in the hate of God, and the angels will curse him unceasingly! ’ Muhammad is said to have related the following story (which in a shorter and somewhat different form is related of Rabbi Shim'on in Haggada). A man of the people who were before you ^ bought a plot of land, and found in it a jar containing gold. Whereupon he said to the seller, ‘ Take your gold for I only bought your plot.’ The latter replied, ‘ But I sold you the ground and whatever it contained.’ So they went to an arbitrator, who instructed them to marry the one’s son to the other’s daughter and endow them with the proceeds, giving something in alms. The golden rule is implicitly taught in the following ; ‘ Let no one milk a man’s cattle without his permission. Would any one of you like to have his upper chamber broken into, his treasury ransacked, and his food taken away ? Now the udders of their cattle are the treasury of their food.’ Again: ‘ There was a man who used to lend money and to say to his servant, “ If you come to a man who is unable to pay, pass him over; per- ^ iat'u-l-gharari. Commentators differ as to the meaning of this phiase. * This reference to the Jews would seem to indicate that the speaker is conscious that he is borrowing from an alien source. Selections from Hadith ioi adventure God will pass over our shortcomings.” And when he stood before God He did so pass him over/ This principle is carried even further in the chapter which deals with the laws of retaliation. The higher law of forgiveness is clearly propounded. Abu Darda says: ‘ I heard the prophet say, “ There is no man who receives a bodily injury and forgives ^ the offender but God will exalt his rank and diminish his sin.” ’ Trade and Commercial Morality. The following are some of the wholesome restrictions ideally govern¬ ing the commercial life of the Muhammadan world : Abu Mas'ud A1 Ansar! said, ‘ Verily the apostle of God declared unlawful the price of a dog, the wages of immorality, and the fee® of a diviner.’ Abu Huraira : ‘ The apostle declared unlawful the price of a dog and the earnings of a singing girl.’ The thoroughness of the prophetic condemnation of usury leaves no room for any part, however indirect, in the transaction. ‘ The apostle of God cursed the receiver® of interest, the payer, the clerk who writes the bond, and the two witnesses thereof, and said, “ They are equally culpable.” ’ Another tradition records that Muhammad forbade the barter of a heap of dates of an unknown weight for a specified quantity. Similarly, Muslims are forbidden to sell the fruit upon their trees before it is ripe, even when the two parties are willing to take the risk inseparable from the transaction.* ^ faiasaddaqa biht. The commentatoi explains that this means he pardons the offender •iabran 'ala qadn-llah, leaving requital to Him. ^ Lit. douceur, ® Lit. ^ eaterC£ Hebrew ndshak, of biting and of paying interest ^ The wisdom of prohibiting speculation in the food supply of a community noioiious for its poveity is obvious. 102 Selections from Hadith It would seem that the early Muhammadan trades¬ man was quite modern in his methods He knew how to ‘corner’ the food of a town, how to ‘doctor’ an animal when coping, how to use the arts of misrepre¬ sentation in order to squeeze the largest possible sum from his customers. All these immoral methods are sternly condemned in hadith attributed to Muhammad. ‘ Do not go out to meet the caravans to bargain. . . J Do not buy one against another and outbid one another, and let not the townsman bargain with a Beduin (so as to keep the price up for the consumer). Do not keep back in the teats the milk of a camel or goat.“ He who buys such a one has the choice, after milking it, of retaining or returning it with a sa'a of dates.’ ‘ He who monopolizes a commodity is a sinner.’ ‘ An importer is blessed, but a monopolist is accursed.’ ‘ He who monopolizes food against Muslims may God smite with elephantiasis and grinding poverty.’ Another hadith says: ‘ Though he give the profit in alms it is no atonement.’ The charming anthology of prophetic sayings collected by A1 Mas'udi contains the following, which has as good a claim to be regarded as genuine as those just quoted: ‘ When he is ruined a merchant speaks the truth! ’ ® Divorce. The Islamic ordinance which makes it impossible for the husband who has divorced his wife by the threefold repetition to remarry her until she has lived with another man is supported by a ruling of the prophet.On the other hand, there are not wanting ^ I. e. let them come into the markets ^ To give the impression that the animal is still yielding milk. ® Op. at., iv, p. 172 * The Rtsala of A 1 Kindi, London, 1880, p. 105, contains some Selections from Hadith 103 several hadith which make a vigorous protest against such an immoral injunction. Thus, ‘Abd Allah b. Mas'ud reports that the apostle la^ana-l-imihallilcL wa- l-muJiallala lalm ‘ cursed the second husband who makes her again lawful for the first and cursed the first husband for whom she was thus made lawful.’ Other hadith which remind one of Christ’s interpreta¬ tion of the Mosaic law are : ‘ Of the things which are lawful the most hateful to God is divorce.’ And: ‘ O Mu'adh, God has created nothing on the face of the earth dearer to him than the emancipation of slaves, nor anything more hateful to him than divorce.’ The following hadith claims to give Muhammad’s view on the question of the custody of the child: ‘ A woman came to the apostle and said, “ With my body I carried, nourished, and cradled this son of mine, and now his father has divorced me and wants to snatch him from me.” The apostle answered, “You are the most worthy of him so long as you remain unmarried.” ’ On the other hand, two traditions ascribed to Abu Huraira allow the boy to choose which of his parents he will adhere to.^ Cottrtesy and Kindness. The Muslim practice of returning a salutation with an additional compliment or blessing is as old as creation, for at his creation Adam trenchant observations on this practice from a cultured Chnstian Arab. The practice was constantly attacked by Christians. Cf the Muja- dala of Abu Quna, MS Arabe J'O, in the Bibliothbquc Nationale, fol. 199 b. ’ Foi the interpietation of these aqwal in Muhammadan law see the commentators in loc. “ For many interesting details see Lane, Modern Egyptians, ch. 8. The necessity of loplying at length to ‘ salutations m the market-place' is sometimes objected to by the modern Muslim. An amusing protest 104 Selections from Hadith was ordered to go and salute a number of angels and listen to their response, which would be the pattern for posterity. Thereupon he went and said AI Salam and received the response AI Salam "alaika wa-rakmaftt-llahi. A long section of the hadith literature is full of sayings inculcating the necessity of kindliness and love, of which the following may serve as examples: ‘ God will not have compassion on him who hath not compassion on mankind.’ ' The Compassionate has compassion on those who show compassion. Show compassion to those on earth, and He who is in Heaven will have compassion on you.’ ‘ For every young man who honours an old man on account of his age will God ordain one who will honour him in his old age.’ ‘ The best house amid the Muslim com¬ munity is that which contains an orphan who is well treated; and the worst is that wherein an orphan is wronged.’ ‘ He who is destitute of gentleness is destitute of goodness.’ Hospitality, for which the Arabs have ever been justly praised, is in hadith a mark of the true believer. Thus, Abu Huraira tells us that the prophet said: ‘ Whoever believes in God and the last day, let him honour his guest, let him not injure his neighbour, and if he has nothing good to say let him remain silent.’ A more precise definition of the hospitality incumbent on a Muslim: ‘ Whosoever believes in God and the last day let him entertain his guest bountifully for a day and a night. Hospitality (should be given) for three against this genial practice appeared m one of the Cairene newspapers m 1918 under the heading of‘Izze ek'. Selections from Hadith ,-105' days. What is done over and above that is in the""' nature of almsgiving. It is not right for a guest to stay in a man’s house so long as to embarrass him.’ Again, Abu-l-Aliwas asks the prophet whether he is \ to entertain a man who in the past had refused him i hospitality. Muhammad replies, ‘ Certainly, entertain ^ him.’ Slavery. The status of the slave in the Muham¬ madan world does not differ materially from that described in the New Testament. As a co-religionist of his master he is a ‘member of the household, and shares in the fortune good or bad of his owner.^ The following sayings will illustrate the traditional policy and attitude of Muslims towards their slaves; ‘ The slave must be given food and clothing. He must not be given a task which he is unable to perform.’ ‘ It is }’Our brethren that God has put beneath your hands. He who has one thus subjected to him by God must feed him from what he eats himself, and clothe him in ’ A good deal of misapprehension still exists in this country as to the lot of slaves in Islam. It may be doubted whether it is so unenviable as that of many people in our great cities. Cf. Buitoii, Pilgrimage, i, London, 1915, p. 61, and Doughty, Arabia Deseria, 1, have been made slaves .. . even though cruel men-stealeis rent them from their parentage. The patrons who paid then price have adopted them into their households, the males aie circumcised, and—that which enfianchises their souls, even in the long passion of home¬ sickness—God has visited them in then mishap; they can say, ‘ It was his grace ’, since they be thereby entered into the saving religion. This, theiefore, they think is the better country, where they are the Lord’s free men, a land of more civil life, the soil of the two Sanctuaries, the land of Muhammad; for such they do give God thanks that their bodies were sometime sold into slavery' ’ io6 Selections from Hadith his own clothes. He must not give him a task beyond his strength. If he does, then he must help him himself.’ Again, ‘ He who beats a slave for a fault he has not committed or slaps his face must make atone¬ ment by setting him free.’ ‘ Whoso separates a woman frgm her child (the commentator explains, by selling, giving, &c.) God will separate him from his loved ones on the resurrection day.’ It is related that the apostle of God gave AH a slave, saying: ‘ Do not beat him, for I have ordered that those who pray shall not be beaten, and I have seen this slave at prayer.’ The chapter on Qisas contains the words of the prophet, ‘ We will slay him who slays his slave, and we will maim him who maims him.’ (Another version reads : ‘ We will castrate him who castrates his slave.’ Treatment of Animals. The claims of the brute creation on the compassion of good Muslims is clearly set forth. The prophet once passed by a camel whose belly clave to its back. ‘ Fear God ’, said he, ‘ in these dumb animals, and ride them when they are fit to be ridden, and let them go free when it is meet they should rest.’ The following of kindness to birds: We were on a journey with the apostle of God, who left us for a short space. We saw a hummara with its two young, and took the young birds. The hummara hovered with fluttering wings, and the prophet returned, ^ The hatted of the right-minded Muslim foi the practice of making eunuchs is expressed by Al Jahiz, who, while unfairly blaming Christians for originating this honible custom, rightly asks how they dare claim a monopoly of kindness and tenderness and yet habitually commit this crime Muslim historians often note with disapproval that the Umayyads weie the first to intioduce this barbanty into Islam, Selections from Hadith 107 saying, ‘ Who has injured this bird by taking its young ? Return them to her.’ Again: Do not clip the fore¬ locks of your horses, nor their manes, nor their tails; for the tail is their fly-whisk; the mane is their covering; and the forelock has good fortune bound within itd Animals are not to be ridden unnecessarily. By precept and example the prophet showed consideration for beasts of burden. Thus Abu Huraira reports that he said: ‘Do not use the backs of your beasts as pulpits, for God" Has onlj made thern subject to you in orderTKat"'tHey may bring vou to a town .-yQii-.coxild only otherwise reach by fatigue of body.’ ^ . . . While Anas writing of his custom says: ‘ When we stopped at a halt we did not say our prayers until we had unburdened the camels.’ Nevertheless a donkey may be made to carry two men, for we read that Buraida said: ‘ While the apostle of God was walking a man with a donkey came up, and said as he moved back on the donkey’s rump: “ Ride, O apostle of God.” He replied: “No, for you are more worthy of riding in front on your own beast, unless you give me the place.” He said: “ I do give you the place; ” so he rode in front.’ The Lazv of Retaliation. The Quran has established * This is one of the sayings of the heathen Arabs which was in¬ corporated in the hadith literature. Cf. Imru-I-Qais, 8, i. Muhammad himself did not scruple to incorporate sayings and proverbs of the Jahiliyya in the Quran, so that his followers had a precedent for drawing on this source. ^ The commentator says, ‘The meaning is: Do not sit on their backs, and make them stand while you transact your business; but dismount, accomplish your object, and then ride them again.’ io8 Selections from Hadith in the Islamic community the principle of ‘ an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and, like its prede¬ cessor in this legislation, the Torah of Moses, it claims divine authority for its law. Nevertheless, the Muslim, like the Jew, knows how to interpret this law with justice and some degree of mildness. The hadith illustrate the application of the principle, and an attempt to carry it through in opposition to the deeply- rooted custom of paying and receiving pecuniary com¬ pensation for bodily injuries. Thus Anas: A Jew broke the head of a slave girl between two stones. She was asked the name of the culprit, and when the Jew’s name was mentioned she made a sign with the head in assent. So the J ew was brought, and acknow¬ ledged the act; whereupon the apostle ordered that his head should be broken with a stone. The same authority reports that Rubai', the aunt of Anas b. Malik, broke the teeth of a slave girl of the Ansar. They came to the prophet, and he ordered the law of qisas to be applied to her. Anas b. A1 Nadr said, ‘ No, by God, her teeth shall not be broken, O apostle of God.’ He said, ‘ But, Anas, retaliation is in the Book of God ^ ’ Then the people agreed to accept the price of an injury, and the prophet said: ‘ There are some servants of God who, if they take an oath by God, God holds them free from guilt.’ ^ Again: He who kills a man intentionally must be given up to the relatives of the slain : if they wish they can kill him, and if they will they can accept blood- money. There are only three crimes for which a man * The commentator writes, The meaning is: ‘God makes him truthful in his oath, not a peijurei ’, i. e. God perfoims, or allows him to perfoim, his oath. Selections from Hadith 109 can be condemned to death according to the hadith, namely, wilful murder, adultery, and apostasy from Islam. The murder of Muslims is, of course, in question, as the chapter on Jihad clearly shows, though harsh treatment of adherents of other faiths is deprecated. The interesting point is raised: At what point can a man rightly be regarded as a Muslim ? The prophet was asked ; ‘ If I meet an unbeliever and we fight, and he smites off my hand with his sword, and then takes refuge behind a tree, and says, “ I am a Muslim to God ” (another version is : And when I am about to kill him he says, “ There is no God but the God”), am I to kill him after that ?’ He replied, ‘ Do not kill him.’ ‘ But, O prophet of God,’ said the man, ‘he has cut off one of my hands.’ The apostle answered; ‘ Do not kill him, for if you kill him, before you can kill him he is in your state, and you are in the state ^ he was before he made his utterance.’ It will be obvious that the example given is one evolved from the inventive minds of the Muhammadan legists. It is closely akin to the discussions of the Jewish halaka, and owes it origin to the desire to frame traditions which will give the weight of sacred authority to every possible contingency of life.* As though it were realized that it would be neither safe nor practic¬ able to allow an enemy to escape death in action by the mere repetition of the formula la ilaka illa-llahy the foregoing tradition is weakened somewhat in its effect by the tradition attributed to Usama b. Zaid. ‘ You cannot kill him because he has become a Muslim, and to kill a Muslim is to commit murder and forfeit your own life. If you do kill, you have come under God’s wiath like an infidel. * Cf. Maigoliouth, Early Development, p. 96. no Selections FROM Hadith ‘ The apostle of God sent us against some of the Juhaina, and I was about to spear one of them when he cried, “ There is no God but the God.” I transfixed and slew him, and when I came to the prophet and told him what I had done he said : “ Did you kill him when he had borne witness in these words ? ” I replied, “ But, apostle of God, he only did that to save himself from death ! ” Muhammad said: “ Can it be that you did not test his sincerity ? ” ’ (Another version is ; ‘ What will you do with those words: “ There is no God but the God” at the day of judgement ? ’ The prophet repeated these words several times.) The following hadith expresses the opinion of the religious on the murder of an unoffending non-Muslim ‘ Whoso slays a Mtiahid shall not smell the scent of Paradise ; and verily its perfume is perceptible a forty years’ journey distant’ Abu Darda expresses the higher truth when he says: ‘ There is no man who receives a bodily injury and forgives the offender, but God will exalt his rank and lessen his sin.’ Theft. Theft, according to ancient tradition, is to be punished by the amputation of the hand. According to 'Aisha the prophet said that this punishment was not to be inflicted unless the theft amounted to the fourth of a dihar. Abu Huraira, however, says : ‘ God curses a ^ef who steals an egg or a rope, and his hS cTmust be cut off.’ ^ JiliM, So many Christian writers have discussed ^ Vaiious attempts have been made by the commentators to mitigate the harshness of this doclrme. Thus, it is said, haida means an iron helmet, and hahl a ship’s cable 1 Otheis think it refers to primitive practice. The Qihla^ the organ of the Sharif of Mecca, August, 1918, contains an account of the application of the Shaiia* to a local thief* Selections from Hadith hi at length the prominence assigned to Jihad, the holy war against infidels incumbent upon all Muslims, that it does not seem necessary to quote here more than a few of the exceedingly large number of traditions on this subject. From these it will be seen that fighting in the way of God {fl sablh- llaE) is a religious exercise of supreme merit, dearer m the sight of God than any other form of piety: the meanest participator—the non-combatant—who loses his life or substance in the holy war is thereby assured of eternal life. The most extravagant praise of Jihad is the saying vouched by Sahal b. Sa'd, and recorded by Bukhari: ‘ F rontier du ty for one day in the way of God is better than the world mTd'air that'therein is.’ This tradition in almost the same words is independently ascribed to Anas. A man asked if his sins would be forgiven if he fell fighting in the way of God. Muhammad answered, ‘ Yes, if you display enduring patience, faith in a future reward, ever advance and never retreat. This does not apply to the sin of debt. Gabriel in¬ formed me of this.’ ‘ One of the Companions travelled by a mountain path in which was a pool of sweet water; and liking it exceedingly he exclaimed, “ Would that I might withdraw from men and dwell in this spot • ” The apostle of God was told of this, and said : “ Do not so, for to remain in the way of God is better than praying in one’s house for seventy years. Do you not desire that God should pardon you and bring you into Paradise ^ Make raids in the way of God ! He that contends in the way of God but the time between two milkings of a camel, paradise is his due.”’ A1 Tirmi^i and Ibn Maja report the following: II2 Selections from Hadith |the martyr has six privileges with God: his sins are jpardoned when the first drop of blood falls; he is ,|shown his seat in paradise; he is safe from the punish- jment of the grave and secure from the great terror (i.e. hell); a crown of dignity is placed on his head one jewel of which is worth more than the world and all that IS therein; and he is married to seventy dark- , eyed virgins ; and he makes successful intercession for { seventy of his relatives. ‘ He who equips a warrior in the way of God has fought himself; and he who is left behind to take care of a warrior’s family has fought himself.’ The last quoted hadith probably marks an early stage in the reaction against the extravagant claims of martyrs on the admiration of men and the notice of God. Taken by themselves the hadith we have selected clearly imply that the martyr’s merit exceeds that of all others. But inasmuch as all men could not be combatants, even in the early days of the Arabian Caliphate, rival traditions soon began to circulate, asserting that the warrior had no better chance of eternal life than the pious non-combatant. Of these perhaps the most significant is fathered on the long- suffering Abu Huraira: ‘ He who believes in God and his apostle and performs prayer and keeps the fast of Ramadan has a claim on God to be brought into Paradise, whether he fights in the way of God or sits in his plot on which he was born.’ They said: ‘ Then are we to tell men of this ? ’ Muhammad answered : ‘ There are in paradise a hundred steps which God has prepared for his warriors: the space between two steps is as the space between heaven and earth. When you pray ask for Firdaus, for that is in the Selections from Hadith 113 middle of paradise {A/ yanna) and its highest point: above it is the throne of the Merciful. From it gush forth the rivers of paradise.’ This tradition would seem to recognize a protest registered against the prevailing exaltation of martyrdom, and at the same time reinforces the claim of the warrior by giving him a position in paradise above that of the faithful. There is a sturdy independence about the first half of the tradition which creates a strong suspicion that the second half has been added by those who feared the logical application of its teaching. The next stage is clear. It is asserted that he who asks God with all sincerity to grant him martyrdom will have the reward of the martyr though he die upon his bed. The object of this hadith is apparently to safeguard, as it were, the interests of the man who has fought in the yihad unscathed, or has been prevented by some unavoidable circumstance from taking any part in it. Abu Huraira is the spokesman in the last stage of the controversy between the soldier and the civilian for priority in paradise : were it not for the terrible serious¬ ness of the yihad itself the conclusion would be laughable. ‘ The apostle of God said ; “ Whom do you regard as a martyr ? ” The companions replied : “He who is killed in the way of God.” He replied : “ Of a truth in that case the martyrs of my people would be few. ... He who dies in the way of God (without being slain) is a martyr, as also he who dies of the plague and of a disease of the belly.” ’ Oaths and vows. It can hardly be said that an oath or a vow among Muslims has the binding force even on the pious that it assumes in the West. The hadith, as will appear from the few extracts given below, p II4 Selections from Hadith practically make the performance of a vow dependent on the convenience of the speaker. This does not mean that a vow has no power to bind; but rather that there is an instinctive dislike to a vow of any kind. When made it need not be regarded as irrevoc¬ able ^ Vow not at all is the sum of the traditions recorded in the Baitt-l-Ntidhur of the Mishkdtu-l- Masdblh\ and the chapter heading in the Sunan of I bn Maja Ai Nahyio 'ani-l-nadkr^ speaks for itself. It is related that during the Khutba the prophet saw a man standing, and asked the reason. He was told that the man had vowed never to sit, nor seek shade, nor speak, and to fast. Thereupon the prophet gave orders that he was to abandon his intention. A similar incident is narrated of an old man whom Muhammad saw tottering along between his two sons, and was told that he had vowed a vow to walk to the Ka'ba. Said he: ‘Verily God the exalted does not need that this man should punish himself! ’ and he ordered him to ride. Ka'b said to the apostle, ‘It is a part of my penitence that I should strip myself of my wealth in alms to God and his apostle.’ The apostle answered, ‘ Keep back some of your money, for it will be better for you.’ I said, ‘ I will retain my lot in the ground in Khaibar.’ Again : ‘ When you take an oath to do a thing, and you see a better alternative, then do what is best and make atonement for your oath.’ 'Aisha said : This verse was revealed : ‘ God will not punish you for rashness in your oaths,® as for example when a man says, “ No, by God I ” and “ Yea, by God! ” ’ ^ A 1 Fakhii (ed. Derenbouig, pp. 267 f) will illustiate the caie that is necessary to devise an oath that will bind a Muslim when anything of great impoitance is at stake. * Piohibition of Vows ® Sui u. 226 Selections from Hadith 115 The Babu-l-Aman of the MishkM contains some interesting hadith on the subject of fidelity to private and national agreements made between belligerents; they display a high standard of honour. ‘ An agree¬ ment lay between Mu'awiya and Rum, and he used to march to the frontier so that, when the agreement expired, he might raid them. There came a man on horseback, crying, Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Fidelity, not Treachery! When they looked they saw it was 'Amr b. 'Abasata. On being asked what he meant, he said: “ I heard the apostle of God say : ‘ Whoso has an agreement with people must not break it until the allotted time has passed or give notice dissolving the agreement on equal terms.’ So Mu'a¬ wiya withdrew with his men.” ’ This tradition, as the mention of Mu'awiya’s pious obedience would suggest, is not to be found in the Sahihan, though both Tirmidhl and Abu Daud report it. Again, ‘ The apostle said to two men who came to him from Musailama,^ “ By God, were it not that messengers (i.e. heralds) must not be killed I would behead you.”’ Folk-lore and Animism. The hadith literature contains a very large number of allusions to pre- Islamic practices Besides the well-known heathen rites of the pilgrimage to the holy places,^ we find the beliefs of the pagan predecessors of Muhammad often confirmed by him, and their customs and preju¬ dices repeated.® Along with these primitive folk- ^ The false piophet. Muii, Life of Muhammad, p 478. - Bui ton, Pilgrimage^ pp« 279-93. ^ A most iniciesting account of the extent of animistic beliefs and customs in Islam to-day will be found m Zwemei's The Influence of Ammism on Islam, London, 1920. ii6 Selections from Hadith lore is perpetuated. Examples are: ‘ The cry of a child at birth is caused by the evil touch of Satan.’ * ‘ The apostle said to his Companions, “When your brethren were slain in the day of Uhud God put their spirits into the crops of green birds which come down to the rivers of paradise and eat of its fruit and shelter in golden chandeliers suspended in the shadow of God’s throne. And when they perceive the excellence of their food, their drink, and their resting-place they exclaim; ‘ Who will inform our brethren of our state in paradise, so that they may not despise it and refrain from war ? ’ God said, ‘ I will inform them of you,’ and He revealed: ‘ Reckon not those slain in the way of God as dead. Verily they live’, &c.”’ (Sur. iii. 170 ) ^ Snakes. ‘ Kill snakes; kill the one with two black lines on its back and the abtar,^ for these two blind the sight and cause miscarriage.’ ‘Abd Allah said : ‘While I was driving out a snake to kill it Abu Lababa called out to me, “ Do not kill it.” I said, “ But the apostle ordered snakes to be killed.” He replied, “ Yes, but afterwards he forbade the killing of those who live in houses, seeing they are inhabitants.” ’ The commen¬ tator here explains that the passage means that the snakes are jinn. Zwemer remarks,^ ‘ The superstitious idea that every house has a serpent guardian is pretty general throughout the country [Egypt], and many families still provide a bowl of milk for their serpent 1 This superstition is nearly as old as man. - The student will hnd a somewhat similai belief, cited as a belief of the heathen Aiabs, m ShahiastanI, Kifalu-l-Milal wa-l-Nthal, ed. Cureton, p. 433. ® i. e. shoi t-tailed. ‘ Op. at., p. 224. Selections from Hadith 117 protector, believing that calamity would come upon them if the serpent were neglected. This is un¬ doubtedly a survival of the ancient belief that the serpent was the child of the earth—the oldest inhabitant of the land and guardian of the ground.’ Perhaps a clearer example of the power ascribed to the snake is : ‘ These houses have domestic snakes ; if you see one of them urge it to go three times. If it goes, well; if not, then kill it, for it is an infidel.’ Again: ‘ If a serpent appears in a dwelling say to it; “ We ask you by the agreement with Noah ^ and Solomon b. David not to stay and annoy us.” If it returns then kill it.’ It is not surprising that those who did not share the animistic beliefs of the com¬ posers of the hadith just quoted display no tenderness towards the snake in traditions coined to express a more enlightened view. I bn 'Abbas says: ‘ The prophet ordered snakes to be killed, and said. Whoso lets one alone fearing the vengeance of his mate is not of us.’ Similarly, Abu Huraira is made to voice the common sense view: ‘Never have we made peace with them since war between man and snake began, and whoso lets one of them alone out of fear is not of us.’ Jinn and Devils. ‘ Verily Satan is present in all the activities of life, even at meals, so when one of you drops a mouthful he must remove any dirt from it, and then eat it, not leaving it to Satan. And when he has finished, he mu.st lick his fingers, for he does not know in what part of his food blessing resides.’ * The naive suggestion of the commentatoi as to the date of this agreement is that perhaps it was made when Noah took the snakes into the ark! ii8 Selections from Hadith The jhm are of three kinds: one has wings and flies, serpents and dogs are another, and the third stops at a place and travels about ^ ‘ At the beginning of nightfall keep your little ones in, for Satan (commen¬ tator, i.e. the jinii) roams abroad at that time. When an hour of the night has passed let them free. And bolt your doors and make mention of the name of God. Satan cannot open a door which has been bolted. Tie the necks of your water skins, and mention the name of God, and put a veil over your waterpots, mentioning His name (though you but lay something across them), and extinguish your lamps.’ ‘ When you hear the bai'king of dogs or the braying of asses at night then seek refuge in God from Satan the stoned, for animals see what is invisible to you, and forbear to go out often when the feet are at rest (i.e. at night). For God in the night spreads abroad whom he will of his creatures.’ (The conclusion of this hadith follows fairly closely the text of the pre¬ ceding.) Again, of the noise of bells we read: ‘ A slave girl took Ibn Zubair’s daughter to 'Umar. She had little bells on her leg, and 'Umar cut them off, with the words : “ I heard the apostle of God say there is a devil with every bell.’” When any one sees a vision (or dreams a dream) which he dislikes let him * The same extieme vagueness about the jmn in the mind of the modem Bedum is noticed by Doughty, Arabia Desetta. I have no doubt that the Jewish view of Shedim has influenced the Aiab writer (unless we seek a common oiigm in Peisia). Talm. Chaglga, i6a ‘Six things are said of the demons- m thiee they lesemble the angels they have wings, and fly fiom one end of the woild to the other, and they know what the future holds in store.... As men, they eat and drink, they leproduce theii species, and they die.’ Selections from Hadith 119 spit to the left three tsmes, and take refuge with God from Satan three times, and let him turn from the side on which he lay when he dreamed. Spells and the evil eye. There is no attempt in the hadith to disguise the source of popular beliefs which are still held by the ignorant and superstitious to-day. Thus 'Auf b. Malik A1 Ashjai says: ‘We were in the habit of using spells in the time of ignorance, and we said: “O apostle of God what is your opinion of them ?” He replied; “ Show me your spells. There is no harm in a spell in which there is no taint of polytheism {skirh).” ’ Anas reports that the prophet permitted the use of spells against the evil eye, snake-bite, and pustules. On one occasion he saw a slave-girl suffering from a stroke of Satan (i.e. jaundice), and said ; ‘ Use spells for her, for the evil eye has looked upon her.’ ^ Jabir relates that Muhammad had forbidden spells, and the family of 'Amr b. Hazm came and said: ‘We have a spell for use on those bitten by scorpions, and you have forbidden spells ’; and they showed him it. He answered : ‘ I see no harm in it. If any of you can help his brother by it, let him.’ The theistic view of such charms is expressed in hadith, of which these must serve as examples: Isa b. hlamza said: ‘ I went to visit 'Abd Allah b. 'Ukaim, who suffered from a rash, and said “ Why do >ou not tie on a charm ? ” “ God forbid,” said he, “ for the prophet of God said, ‘ He who depends on a thing will be left trusting to it.’ ” “ It will suffice you to say what the apostle of God used to say: ‘Take away misfortune, ^ The Nihaya explains the words Ma nazraMn thus: biha *ainuii asabaiha min nazaii-l-jmm. 120 Selections from Hadith O Loid of men, and heal. Thou art the Healer: there is no healing but Thy healing.’ ” ’ Omens. ‘ The prophet used to take good omens, not bad ones, and he was fond of a happy name.’ ‘Taking a bad omen is polytheism. These words Muhammad said thrice. There is not one of us but will have evil presentiments removed by God if he trust in Him.’ Divination. The following hadith make it evident that traditionists have no doubt that sorcerers and diviners are able to foretell the future.^ The general conclusion is that they obtain their information from the evil one and his messengers. The first of those quoted is interesting, as the somewhat cryptic reference to the prophet who used to write suggests a reference to J ohn viii. 6.® Mu awiya b. A1 Hakam said: ‘ I said to the apostle of God, “ In the time of ignorance we used to resort to diviners.” He said: “Do not consult them.” “Also we drew bad omens.” He replied: “If you are troubled in your mind because of it do not let it deter you from your purpose.” “We used to draw lines.” He said: “ One of the prophets used to draw lines. And he whose writing agrees with his is good.” ’ From 'Aisha. When the prophet was asked about diviners, he said, ‘ They are nothing.’ ‘ But ’, they objected, ‘ it sometimes happens that they relate what ® For a description of the writing of incantations, &c,s see Lane, op. n/., pp. 274 ^ Probably on the ground (though the woid used is khatt, not nakata)« Selections from Hadith 121 is true.’ He said; ‘ That word of truth the jinn seizes and repeats in the ear of his devotee’- . . . and they mix more than a hundred lies with it.’ Again • ‘ The angels descend in rainclouds and mention what has been decreed in heaven. Then the devils listen stealthily and reveal what has been said to diviners, and they add a hundred lies to it out of their own minds.’ Hafsa reports that Muhammad said. ‘He who goes to a sorcerer {'arraf) to ask about a matter, his prayer will not be accepted for forty days.’ ‘ He who learns knowledge from the stars learns a branch of sorcery {sihr) the more of one the more of the other.’ The following is the explanation of the shooting stars. ‘While some of the Companions were sitting with the prophet one night a star shot and gleamed bright. “ What used you to say in the time of ignor¬ ance,” said he, “ when a star shot like that ? ” They replied: “God and his apostle know best. We used to say: ‘ A great man is born to-night and a great man has died.’ ” He said: “ It did not shoot for the death or the birth of any one, but when your Lord decrees a thing the bearers of the Throne praise God; then the inhabitants of heaven near thereto, until the ’ The reading and meaning of the two words omitted are doubtful— qarra-1-daja.jati—qaria, according to the Nihaya, means to lepeat or pout woids into a peison’s car until he understands them. The commentator mentions that qaria is the verb used when a hen brings hei cackling to an end. He records a vaiiant zujaja, and infers ‘the Jinn pours it into his ear as one poms liquid into a glass bottle!' Ibn A1 Salah says the forraei leading is correct, and the latter conupt. I suspect an ancient coriuption. ‘As a hen repeats’is hardly a satisfactoiy sense. Iloudas, op, ciL, iv, p. 84 , completely ignores the woids in text and notes. 122 Selections from Hadith Tasbtk reaches the inhabitants of this lowest heaven* Those near ask the bearers of the throne what their Lord has said. They are informed, and the inhabitants of heaven inquire one of another until the information reaches this lowest heaven, and the jinn steal the tidings and carry (throw) it to their devotees and (the stars) are thrown at them/'' ^ Again : ' God created these stars for three reasons: to be an ornament of the sky, to be used as stones against the devils, and as signs to guide people. Whoso interprets them otherwise is in error, loses his good fortune, and pretends to know what he is ignorant of/ ' There is no contagious disease, nor oriiithomancy, nor Mina, nor significance m the serpent Safan^ Nevertheless, flee from one with elephantiasis as you would from a lion/ An Arab of the desert said: ' O Apostle of God, what of the camels in the desert? they are as it were gazelles in condition, ^ Cf. Sums 15. 17, 18.48, 37 7, and 26.212, This explanation of the phenomenon caused considerable embairassment when Greek astronomy and philosophy gamed a stiong position among Aiabian savants. Cf. AI Jahiz, m loc,, and Margolioiiih, Early Development, “ Text: la 'adwd wala ih ata wa Id hdmata wa Id safara. This hadith IS cited by the authoi of the Musialraf and by Shahiastanl, op, at,, p. 433. In the latter quotation the author might possibly have taken *adwa to refer to metempsychosis The passages quoted will explain the hdma or bird which issued fiom a dead man s skull Safai means either the month of that name, or a kind of serpent. The commen¬ tator of the Miskkdt (p. 383) says Imtil yaia^hd 'aviuna bi-dukhUh Sa/ar, They used to regard the entry of a Safar as an evil omen. Houdas, op, czL, iv, p. 83, writes: ^ Suivant les uns, il s^agiiait d\in animal, sorte de seipent ou de vei, Iog6 dans le coips de Thomme j il moidrait les entraiiles de Fhomme chaque fois que celies-ci seraieni Yides et qu’ii aurait faim.^ See Mishkdi, maigm. Selections from Hadith 123 yet mix them with mangy camels, and they become mangy too.’ The apostle answered • ‘ But who infected the first with a contagious disease ? ’ The shrewd criticism levelled at this doctrine by the Beduin is met by a reply v;hich evades the point either by referring the disaster to an act of God decreed and unavoidable, or by attributing the disease to the cause responsible for the first outbreak, and therefore not dependent on the infected camels. In either case this is yet another example of the inability of the Oriental to distinguish between a primary and a secondary cause.’ The comparative paucity of personal names in Muhammadan countries is due to the influence of traditions which express God’s approval of certain names, or the prophet’s taste in such matters. Thus Anas tells us that when Muhammad was in the market a man called out, ‘ Ho Abu-l-Oasim > ’ and the prophet turned towards him. ‘ I merely called this fellow,’ said the man, whereupon the prophet said • ‘ Call your children by my name, but do not use my kunya' ‘ God likes best the names 'Abd Allah and 'Abdu-1- Rahman.’ ‘ The vilest of names before God at the day of resurrection will be maliku-l-amlak (king of kings),’ ^ On this A1 Suyuti, quoted by Lane, Aiahtan Society, says- ‘A Haliini says, “Communicable oi contagious diseases aie six: small-pox, measles, itch or scab, foul breath oi putridity, melancholy (') and pestilential maladies, and diseases engendeied aic also six: lepiosy, hectic, epilepsy, gout, elephantiasis, and phthisis ” But this does not contiadict the saying of the prophet, “Thcie is no tiansition of diseases by contagion oi infection . .”, foi the transition heie meant IS one occasioned by the disease itself; wheieas the effect is of God, who causes pestilence to spread when there is intercourse with the diseased.’ Thus is lesponsibihty moved to the predestination of God. 124 Selections from Hadith An unsuccessful attempt on the part of Muhammad to change a name he did not like is recorded by Bukhari. Sa'Id b. A1 Musayyib related that his grand¬ father Hazn went to the prophet, who asked his name. ‘ Hazn,’ he was told. ‘ No, you are Sahl,’ said he. My grandfather said • ‘ I am not going to change a name my father gave me.’ Sa'id added: ‘From that time hardness in temperament has continued in my family.’ Women and Marriage. Much has been written on the status of women in Islam, and the theologian must decide how far responsibility for the present state of affairs rests, on the one hand, with Islam as a system, and with sinful human nature on the other. The hadith in this, as in so many other matters, reflect the thoughts of the best and the worst minds. For instance, Muhammad, as reported by 'Abd Allah b. 'Umar, tells us : ‘ The world, all of it is property,^ and the best property in the world is a virtuous woman.’ And again, as reported by Abu Huraira : ‘ A woman may be married for four things . her mone)?^, her birth, her beauty, and her religion. Get thou a religious woman (otherwise) may thy hands be rubbed in dirt I ’ On the other hand, Usama b. Zaid would have us know that the apostle said: ‘I have not left behind me a source of discord ^ more injurious to men than women.’ And Ibn'Umar. ‘A woman, a house, and a horse are bad omens.’ * The meaning of this word maia is a little doubtful. It might mean ‘ enjoyable ’ oi ‘ valuable ’. Professoi Margohouth, who leminds me of the reference to Sur. in. 12, inclines to agiee w-ith my rendering above. ^ film. The Ntfiaya explains fallan: mndillu-l-nasa 'an il-haqq, ’ a fattan is one who causes men to en from the Liuth ’. Selections from Hadith 125 As to the subordination of the wife to the husband: ‘A Muslim must not hate his wife. If he dislikes her for one trait let him find pleasure in another.’ ‘ If a man summon his wife to his bed and she refuse to come, so that he spends the night in anger, the angels curse her till morning.’ (Another version of this says . ‘ He who is in heaven is enraged against her till her husband is pleased with her.’) Lastly, a tradition—which must either be officially repudiated or for ever condemn the system which enshrines it—resting on the authority of Mu'adh: ‘ Whenever a woman vexes her husband in this world, his wife among the Iniris of Paradise says; “ Do not vex him (May God slay thee >) for he is only a guest with thee. He will soon leave thee and come to us.” ’ * Political power may sometimes be held by women, but the prophetic verdict on women in high places is recorded by Bukhari thus : ‘ When the apostle of God was informed that the Persians had made Kisra’s daughter their sovereign, he exclaimed: “ A people that entrusts its affairs to a woman will never prosper.” ’ The subordinate position of women in the religious life is likewise fixed by the Prophet’s utterance. ‘ He went out on the day of the victims and Bairam to the place of prayer, and passing some women he said ; “O company of women give alms, for I have seen that ' IL lb unly fan to say that this tiaditioii, which is lecorded by Ibn Maja and A 1 Tiniiidhi, is marked ghat lb by the lattei At the same time, it is a logical infeience fiom the Quran itself that if Muslims in paiadise aie to be giatified by the possession of hurts there will be no place for then wives of this world. A gieat point is made of this by the Chiistian disputant at the court of Ma’mun, see Pans MS. Aiabc, no. 70, fol. 7. 126 Selections from Hadith many of you will be inhabitants of hell,” “ Why?” said they. Replied he: “ Because you curse much and deny the kindness of husbands. I have not seen—despite your deficiency m intelligence and reli¬ gion—any sharper than you in captivating the mind of the resolute.” They said ; “What is the defect in our religion and intelligence?” He answered: “Is not the witness of a woman equal to half the witness of a man ? This is the defect in her intelligence. And when she is ceremonially impure she neither prays nor fasts. This is the defect in her religion.” ’ ^ Manners and Ctistoms. No more than a mere selection of the vast number of traditions enshrininsf the customs of the Arabs in the time of Muhammad and some of those which have grown up in the Muhammadan world in the centuries following the prophet’s death can be given here. Some of those selected will serve to show what a tremendous conser¬ vative force hadith has been through the centuries, preserving among the various nations of Islam the habits of primitive Muslims. It will be seen that the action of the modern Muhammadan in adopting Euro¬ pean dress marks not a mere change from an Oriental to an Occidental tailor, but a break with an apostolic past, similar in gravity to that made by Hellenistic Jews in the Seleucid era, and often entailing similar consequences." Others will show how customs un¬ known to early Muhammadans were borrowed from the superior culture of the Greeks and Persians, the memory of the old conservative Arab recording their ' Cf. Talmud, sub Niddah. “ E. Jerusalem wider the High Priests, pp. 35 fl. 128 Selections from Hadith shanks.” ’ More extravagantly Abu Huraira : ‘ The portion of the drawers below the ankles is hell fire * ’ ^ False hair is not to be worn, for Muhammad said: ‘ God curse the woman who wears false hair and the woman who ties it on.’ Gold rings are not to be worn, though silver ones are permissible. They should be carried on the little finger according to some authorities The following two hadith are of interest, in that popular custom proved too strong for them, and they are therefore abrogated [niansukJi). Asma bint Yazid; ‘ The woman who wears a golden necklace will have one of hell fire fastened to her neck on the day of resurrection.’ A similar threat is directed against gold ear-rings. Hudhaifa’s sister ; ‘ O women, can you not be adorned with silver ? Every one of you that is bedecked with gold and shows it shall be punished.’ The march of civilization bringing customs unknown in the simplicity of patriarchal Arabian society is admitted and accepted in the following. Anas said, ‘ I do not know that the prophet ever saw fine bread to the day of his death; nor did he see a goat baked (in its skin, adds the commentator).’ Sahal b. Sa'd said ; ‘ The apostle of God never saw sifted flour from the time God sent him forth on his mission until He took him to Himself; nor did he ever see a sieve.’ One of the edicts of the prophets which has had an incalculable effect on the culture, art, and architecture of the Muhammadan East is his ban on pictures. ‘ Angels will not enter a house containing a dog or pictures.’ 'Aisha relates that she bought a cushion on which were pictures, and when the apostle of God ^ Accoiding to the commentatoi it means the wearer will go to hell. See Lane, ME, p. 30. Selections from Hadith 129 saw them he stood at the door and would not enter. Seeing signs of displeasure in his face she said; ‘ O apostle of God, I repent unto God and his apostle. What have I done amiss ^ ’ He asked, ‘ What is the meaning of this cushion ?’ ‘I bought it for you to sit and recline on,’ said she. ‘Venly,’ he answered, ‘ the makers of these pictures will be severely punished on the day of resurrection, and it will be said to them, “ Bring to life the pictures you have made.” ’ ^ Again, ‘ Every painter will be in hell.’ It is said that a man came to Ibn 'Abbas and lamented that he had lost his livelihood, for he lived by his painting. What was he to do ? ‘ Woe to you,’ says he, ‘ if you must needs paint, then paint trees and objects that have not a spirit in them.’ There is little reason to doubt that this prohibition has been faithfully observed by Muhammadans. There are, so far as I know, but few paintings of the prophet in existence which can boast a moderate antiquity, and if Christian art provides an analogy it would have been the prophet himself that would have formed the subject of every devout painter. Love of colour and design has found an outlet in the direction indicated in the last tradition quoted. It is believed by Muslims that God has created a remedy for every disease. Probably a primitive view of the healing art is that which limits the patient to three prescriptions—cupping, purging, and caute¬ rizing. Ibn 'Abbas puts it thus : ‘ Cures are wrought ' One IS iiresistibly reminded m this hadith of the constant allusion m the Talmud to the difference between the eaithly artist and the heavenly designei. Cf. Berahoth loa and Megtlla 14a, where the woid lb the same {sur). 130 Selections from Hadith by three things • letting blood, drinking honey, and cautery; the latter I forbid my people.’ On the other hand, two hadith mention the occasions on which the prophet cauterized the wounds of his followers. Bukhari’s Kitabii-l-Tibb'^ contains two interesting hadith : («) 'Aisha is the speaker; ‘The prophet used to say to the sick, “ Bismillahi! ® The soil of our land with the spittle of some of us will cure our sick.” ’ (3) ‘The apostle of God used to say in a magical formula {fi-l- 7 'uqyah) -: “ Bismillahi ’ the soil of our land with the spittle of some of us will cure our sick by the permission of our Lord.” ’ Significant and interesting is the hadith which registers the protest of those who feel that the ‘ tradi¬ tion of the fathers ’ is becoming a burden and is without the authority it claims. 'Abd Allah b. Mas ud said . ‘ God has cursed women who tattoo and those who seek to be tattooed, those who pluck out hair,“ and those who make openings in their front teeth by way of coquetry, who alter what God has created.’ A woman came to him and said; ‘ I have been told that you have cursed such and such w'omen.’ He replied ; ‘ What can I do but curse those whom the apostle of God has cursed and those who are cursed in God’s ^ KieM, IV, p. 63. ^ I think that Floudas (iv, p. 79) has missed the point that the Bimillah in both these traditions is the mqya. See Lane, ME^ p. 258, and Zwemer (op. cii.^ p. 166). Cf. the lines__ wa)-(rai*aiin iamma allamat bi)-(maiiiqi talaqqaituha khauia-i-iadih'ati bii-qatii (ta)-qalat *ala du*l! qawiia wa-innani taii'atu jaibhiii sauta yahika min khalli Selections from Hadith 131 book ? ’ She said : ‘ But I have read what lies between the two tablets, and have not found a trace of what you adduce.’ He answered . ‘ If you had read it you would have found it. Have you not read, “ What the prophet has brought you receive; and what he has forbidden you avoid ? ” ’ (Sur. lix. 7 .) ‘ Yes, certainly,’ said she. ‘ Then verily he has forbidden this,’ was Ibn Mas'ud’s rejoinder. It will be seen that the significance of this tradition lies in the underlying argument. The test ‘ What the prophet has brought you ’ does not only refer to the Quranic injunction and revelation; it applies also to what the prophet said or was reported to have said on some occasion when he was admittedly not repeating the message of his heavenly visitant. VI BORROWING FROM CHRISTIAN DOCUMENTS AND TRADITION Muslims accuse one another of slavishly imitating Christians.—Imitation of miracles of Christ; of sayings, of parables.—Ascetics and Monks.—Logia of Jesus. . j Within a few years of the prophet’s death the ' i Muslims were masters of Syria, Mesopotamia and ;i Egypt, lands inhabited by nations which from a remote || antiquity possessed traditions of civilization and cul- 'I ture. Ai we have seen, Islam at this time was un- I developed both as regards theory and practice, and ! we should a priori expect to see in the traditional [ literature some traces of that borrowing from Judaism J and Christianity with which Muhammad in the pages of the Quran has long familiarized us. Nor is this expectation unrealized; for we find that many of the same speculations agitated the minds of Muhammadan theologians and thinkers before a rigid orthodoxy was enforced by the power of the sword as find expression in the writings of Christian theologians of that time. The broad tolerance of the early Umayyads pro¬ moted the freest intercourse between their followers and the Christians of their capital. We find Akhtal, a Christian, the official court poet, and John of Damas¬ cus and his father high in the councils of the caliph. So genial were the relations between Muslims and Christians that we find the latter moving unhindered Documents and Tradition 133 with the cross openly displayed on their breasts within the mosques of their Muslim friends. In such an atmosphere of freedom and tolerance theological dis¬ cussions must have abounded JTo this unhindered intercourse of Muslim and Christian theologians is due the similarity between many of the dogmas of Islam and Christianity. This, of course, was not the only channel through which Christian thought percolated to the Islamic mind; but it was one of the earliest, and one which has left a permanent mark on the thought and literature of Islam.’^ Down to Abbasid times there was evidently oppor¬ tunity for the exchange of ideas, as the Risala of A1 Kindi, written in the reign of A1 Ma’mun, proves. The hadith literature preserves a very large number of examples of this borrowing, ranging from the earliest and best-known doctrines of Islam, which were taken over from J cws and Christians, and are already incor¬ porated in the Quran, to those sayings attributed to the prophet which betray a knowledge of Christian writings. Muslim theologians w^ere not content to borrow the sayings of their predecessors in the counsels of God: they borrowed also events from the life of Jesus, attributing them to their own prophet. Muham¬ mad himself constantly insisted that he was not sent to work miracles. His miracle for all time was the ' The great toleiancc displayed towaids Jews and Christians duiing the first centuries is well illustiated in the saying lepoited by Abu Huraiia (Bukhaii); The People of the Book used to read the Toia in Hebrew and expound it in Arabic to the people of Islam. The apostle of God said. ‘ Do not believe the people of the book and do not disbelieve them, but say, “We believe in God and what he has revealed to us.” ’ 134 Borrowing from Christian Quran. This is the opinion held by the authors of the oldest hadith : the chapter Fadaihi-l-sayyidi-l-mursalin does not contain a single miracle of Muhammad’s ; on the contrary, there is the express statement of Abu Huraira that whereas the former prophets were given signs to induce the people to believe, Muhammad was given only the Quran, vthich nevertheless might secure him more followers than all that were before him. Naturally people who were familiar with many of the noblest writings of all time denied the claim of Muslims to possess a book of surpassing literary merit; and the polemical literature of the lime abounds in taunts that Muhammad could not have been a prophet because, unlike the Messiah and the earlier prophets of Israel, he worked no miracles. It is interesting to notice that apparently the only miracles said to have been performed by Muhammad and known to A1 Kindi are: the wolf and ox that spoke, the tree that moved towards the prophet; the shoulder of goat’s flesh, poisoned by Zainab bint Harith the Jewess, which called out that it was poisoned; and the miraculous production of water. Some, this writer says, the Ashabu-l-Akhbar reject altogether, while others are from reporters branded da'lf} A1 Kindi’s testimony to enlightened opinion on these miracles is worthy of note, because he wrote some years before A1 Bukhari’s collection was made, and he expressly refers (p. 6o) to the traditions in terms which imply that they were not written. Muhammadan apologists could not afford to allow their apostle to labour under the disadvantage appa- * He calls them Akhbarun bartdalun wa-kharafatu ‘ajdtz, ‘ witless fables and old wives’ tales’. Documents and Tradition 135 rent when his everyday mundane life was compared with the mighty works of Christ, which seem to have been believed without question. And thus the curious and interesting fact is that the later picture of Muham¬ mad approximates in tradition ever more closely to that of the Jesus of the gospels. No biographer, either ancient or modern, has succeeded in giving his readers an entirely satisfactory appreciation of the baffling personality of the great prophet of Arabia. His loyalty and treachery, abstinence and debauchery, wisdom and ignorance, mediocrity and inspiration, demand the pen of a Boswell. The most prejudiced among his followers or his enemies could hardly trace in the authentic record of Muhammad’s life the lineaments of the Prince of Peace. Yet this is what a certain group of traditionists and theologians have constructed. Weary of hearing of the acts of love and mercy, of supernatural power and forgiveness of 'Isa b. Maryam, they have made a Muhammad after his likeness. Not content with the picture of a courteous, kindly, and able man, famed as the possessor of all human virtues, the idol of his race, if he was to compete with the Messiah they must represent him as a worker of miracles. There is an unmistakable reference to the slavish imitation of Christians in the plaint put into the prophet’s mouth, ‘Verily you would follow the paths {sicnan) of those who were before you foot by foot and inch by inch so that if they went down a lizard’s hole you would follow them!’ ‘Do you mean the Jews and Chris¬ tians ? ’ said they. ‘ And who else ? ’ he answered. The most obvious imitation of the New Testament miracles is that based on the ‘feeding of the five 136 Borrowing from Christian thousand’ {John ii. i-ii). A large number of variants are extant. The version cited below is perhaps the most interesting: Anas said : ‘Abu Talha said to Umm Sulaim, “ The voice of the apostle of God sounded to me weak: I know he is hungry. Have you anything to eat?” “Yes,” said she, and bringing out some barley loaves she wrapped them in her veil. Then she put them in my hand, and wound the rest of the veil round my head, and sent me to the apostle of God. I brought them to him in the mosque where he was with the people. I saluted them, and the apostle of God said to me, “ Did Abu Talha send you with food ? ” “Yes,” said I. The apostle said to those who were with him, “ Arise. ’ And he went off to Abu Talha’s house, while I led the way and told Abu Talha, who cried, “O Umm Sulaim, the apostle of God has come with a company and we have nothing to give them to eat' ” She answered: “God and his apostle know best! ” So Abu Talha went forth to meet the apostle, and they came together. He said: “ Produce what you have, Umm Sulaim,” and she brought that bread, and the apostle ordered it to be broken, and Umm Sulaim squeezed a butter skin to season it. Then the apostle said grace. “ Call ten men,” said he; and they called them, and they ate and were well filled and went out. Then he said the same words again, and all the people ate and were well filled, and they were in number seventy or eighty men.’ ^ Sometimes this miracle takes the form of miracu¬ lously supplying water in the desert for a large number of men; and the detail is added that water ran from the prophet’s fingers in order to enable the people to ^ Mzshkdiy p. 529. Documents and Tradition 137 perform wudu. Most of these miracles will be found in the chapter Mujizat of the Mishkdt. Again, it is interesting to compare the acts of healing performed by the prophet with those recorded m the New Testament. Yazid b. Abu 'Ubaicl says: ‘ I saw the mark of a wound on Salma’s leg, and I said, “ O Abu Muslim, what is this wound?” He answered, “ It is a wound I received on the day of Khaibar, when it was said Salma is smitten to death. And I came to the prophet, who blew on the wound three times, and I have not felt it from that day to this.” ’ Cf. Mark vii. 33- There is a close parallel to the man possessed with an unclean spirit m the story of the woman with the demoniac son (bihi jinnatuii). The prophet takes hold of him by the nostril, crying, ‘ Come forth, for I am Muhammad the apostle of God.’ ’ The Companions of the prophet, like the apostles of the New Testament, enjoy some of the special privi¬ leges of their master; thus two of them were lighted on their homeward way at nightfall by a staff; ^ another foretells his death; and Abu Bakr’s food is miracu¬ lously increased.® The very clothes of Muhammad and his shorn hair have virtue to heal the sick and to 1 Op. at., p. 532. The stoiy, fathered on Ibn 'Abbas, of the boy possessed by unclean spirits who vomited, at the apostle’s touch, a thing like a black puppy, is reminiscent of the Syiiiic Acta Martynm rather than the Gospels. ® This lecalls somewhat similai stories of the greater Rabbis. It is hardly possible, without a systematic investigation of the hadith literature and the Talmud, to determine wliethei the bonowing has been fiom Judaism oi Christianity. This is a subject to which I shall recur elsewhere. =* Op. at., pp. 53(3 f 138 Borrowing from Christian cure those under the power of the evil eye. Cf Acts XIX. 12 . Controversy with Christians on the rival merits of Jesus and Muhammad may fairly be regarded as the origin of the pretended miracles, flatly contradicting the plain statement of the great Arabian and those of many of his immediate followers that he was not sent with power to work miracles. Whether the object of the inventors was to elevate their prophet to a position equal to that held by Jesus in the estimation of His servants, or whether it was to furnish themselves and their pupils with a messenger of God who satisfied a natural craving of the human heart for a visible manifestation of divine power, it is not our purpose to determine. There are good reasons for believing that deliberate imitation was resorted to for the reasons already given, and because the ashabu-l-hadith did not stop at ascribing the works of Christ to their prophet. His words and those of his apostles are freely drawn on and put into the mouth of Muhammad.^ It is unnecessary to do more than set out some of the sayings of Jesus which have been attributed to Muhammad, and leave them to speak for themselves. I. 'Abd Allah b. 'Umar. A man came to the prophet and said; ‘ O apostle of God, how often are we to forgive a servant ? ’ He remained silent. Then ^ Muhammadan critics quite frankly draw a cleai line between hadith of a legal and an edifying nature. They confess that where a pious motive underlies a tiadition there is not the same necessity for scrotimizing the isnad. Thus A 1 Nawawi says of a hadith of this kind, ^ it is weak, but one is delighted by it'; and Ahmad says that he deals gently with the genealogy of traditions concerning virtuous behaviour. Documents and Tradition 139 the man repeated the question three times, and finally he answered, ‘ Forgive him seventy times every day.’ Cf. Matt, xviii. 21. 2. Nu'man b. Bashir. The apostle of God said: ‘ Believers in their mutual compassion, love, and kind¬ ness are like the body. When it aileth in a member it summons all the body to it in sleeplessness and fever {muttafaq 'alaiki)J Another version from the same guarantor is: Believers are as one man. If a man’s eye pains him his whole body suffers, and if his head pains him he suffers everywhere (Muslim). Cf. i Cor. xii. 13-26 and Eph. iv. i6. 3. Abu Musa. The relation of believer to believer is as a building. One part strengthens another. Then (by way of illustration) he interlaced his fingers. Cf. Eph. ii. 21. 4. Ibn Masud. None will enter hell who has in his heart faith of the weight of a grain of mustard seed; nor shall any one enter heaven who has in his heart pride of the weight of a grain of mustard seed. Cf. Matt. xvii. 20. 5. Anas • God does not deprive a believer of his reward in the world to come for a good deed, though he has been recompensed on earth ; but an unbeliever is nourished in this world for the good deeds he has done for God, so that when he passes to the next world he has no good deed for which he can be rewarded. Cf. Matt. vi. 1-2. 6. Abu Huraira: There will go forth in the end of time men who will deceive the world in religion, they will appear to men clad in sheep skins for softness, their tongues will be sweeter than sugar, and their hearts are the hearts of wolves. God will say : ‘ Is it 140 Borrowing from Christian with me ye are careless, or against me ye are bold ? I swear by myself I will send against those men a punishment which will leave the wise man with understanding of the enigma.’ 7. Abu Huraira. Blessed is he who hath seen me, and sevenfold blessed is he who hath not seen me and yet hath believed in me. Cf. John xx. 29. Doubtless a search through the Six Books would reveal a large addition to the instances I have cited. To them may be added the examples quoted by Goldziher,^ which I have refrained from reproducing. The New Testament references are: Matt. v. 3; vii. 5 and 6; ix. 2-7; x. 16 ; xvi. 24 ; and xxii. 21. The chapter on the Excellence of the Poor^ contains a selection of sayings which amply illustrate the extent to which the ‘ other-worldliness ’ of the New Testament influenced some of the thinkers of Islam. Riches are in themselves evil t they are the portion in this life of those who will perish in the next: the poor will enter paradise five hundred years before the rich ; the world is a prison to the believer; all of which suggest an affinity in attitude and aspiration to the teaching of sections of the New Testament. Of the parables of Jesus which have been transferred to Muhammad we may cite the following: I. The Labourers in the Vineyard. Matt. xx. [-16. I bn 'Umar. Your age compared with the age of the peoples who were before you is as the time between afternoon prayer and sunset. You, the Jews, and the Christians, may be compared unto a man who employed labourers, saying, ‘ Who will work for me till noon for a qirat’’ The Jews worked till noon for a qlrat. ‘ Op. cii., pp. 384 ff. “ Mtshhai, ppl 438 if. Documents and Tradition 141 Then he said; ‘ Who will work for me from noon till afternoon prayer for a qlrat ? ’ The Christians did so. Then he said: ‘ Who will work for me from afternoon prayer to sunset for two qlrat?’ Ye are the latter. Have ye not a double reward? And the Jews and Christians were angry, and said: ‘ We have worked more and received less.’ God said ‘ Have I wronged you of your due ? ’ They said, ‘ No.’ He said : ‘ It is my grace. I give to whom I will.’ (Bukhari’s versions, see Ijara and Tauhid, differ considerably.) 2. The Wedding Guests Matt. xxu. i—10. Jabir. Angels visited the prophet while he was asleep, and said to one another ‘ There is a parable of this friend of yours, so propound a parable to him.’ But some said, ‘ He sleeps’; others, ‘ His eye sleeps but his heart is awake.’ So they said: ‘ He is like unto a man who built a house and made therein a feast, and sent forth one to bid men come. And those who accepted the invitation of the summoner entered the house and ate of the feast, and those who refused neither entered nor ate.’ They said: ‘ Explain it to him so that he may understand.’ Some said, ‘ He sleeps’; others, ‘His eye sleeps but his heart is awake.’ So they explained : the house is paradise, the summoner Muhammad; for he who obeys Muhammad obeys God, and whosoever disobeys Muhammad disobeys God, Muhammad being the dividing difference (yhry) between men’ (Bukhari). 3. The Sower. Matt. xiii. 3-12. Abu Musa. ‘The guidance and knowledge wherewith God has sent me is like unto abundant rain that falleth on earth, of which the good part receives the water and brings forth grass and herbage manifold. And part is high ground that retains the water wherewith God profits 142 Borrowing from Christian men in that they drink, water their beasts, and sow their seed. And some of the rain falls on another part which is flat ground, neither retaining the water nor bringing forth grass. The two first are like unto a man who understands God’s religion and the message God entrusted to me profits him, and he understands and teaches it And the last is like unto the man who does not honour nor receive God’s guidance with which I was sent.’ Many of the traditions quoted above found their way into the canonical collections through the same channel as the moral and didactic sayings current among the Arabs themselves, or among the Jews and other nations whose culture was so freely drawn on in the formative period of the history of Islam. These traditions circulated first as a kadlth mauqufa ^ (i. e. traceable only to a Companion or Follower). To gain a respectful hearing they required the stamp of the prophet himself. A missing name or two was all that was needed to make the chain complete, and this was supplied by the pious fraud who bore a special desig¬ nation Raffa, because he made the hadith marfiC^ carried back to the prophet himself. Nothing could be further removed from the point of view of the ordinary Arab of the Jahiliyya or of Islam than asceticism, as the formidable array of hadith con¬ demning it in all its forms clearly testify. Of these one example must suffice. Anas: ‘ Three men came to the prophet’s wives questioning them about his devotion ^ibdcLa). When they were told they were for despising slightly his ^ See Glossaly. Documents and Tradition 143 devotion, saying, “ Where do we come short of the prophet ? And God has pardoned his sins past and future.” One of them said: “ As for me I will ever pray by night.” The second said • “ I will ever fast by day and not break by fast.” The third : “ I will turn aside from women and never marry.” Then the prophet came to them, and said: “ Are ye they who speak thus? Verily I am the most God-fearing and pious among you, yet I fast and break my fast. I pray and sleep; I marry women. And he who turns away from my sttmia is none of mine.” ’ A certain tendency to asceticism was always latent in Islam from the days when Muhammad first pro¬ claimed the judgement of God one day to be pro¬ nounced against sinners, and the punishments of hell for those who lived without God in the world. Indeed reflections and meditations on the transitoriness of human life and a Day of Reckoning to come are not unknown in the poetry of the pre-Islamic period. But they are not of native origin : they arc to be ascribed to the influence of Christian monks and communities, and also to Jewish monotheists scattered over Arabia. The amazing successes of the Caliphs’ armies, bringing in their train an influx of wealth which, even at the present day would be thought stupendous, could not but turn men’s thoughts and ambitions towards worldly things. This tendency to covetousness and worldliness was apparent to, and condemned by, the prophet, ‘You desire the passing wealth of this world,’ he exclaims, ‘ but God desires the next world ’ (Sur. viii. 68 ). Ibn Sa'd furnishes us with details of the colossal fortunes bequeathed to their heirs by those reputed the holiest among the prophet’s associates ; thus Talha 144 Borrowing from Christian b. ‘Ubaid Aliah is said to have died leaving a hundred leather sacks each containing three qlntars of ingots.^ The early hadith are full of stories of the grinding poverty and want of the early Muhammadans. Talha’s father relates that when he and his friends complained to the prophet of their hunger they each took a stone from their bellies, and the prophet took two from his.^ It is not surprising if a people which in a generation had passed from the extreme of indigence to the height of wealth and luxury should show active dislike of those who taught the vanity of riches. Yet even so among a minority the ideal of Weitverneinung lived on. There was always a strife between those who fought for the gain of this world and those who strove 'ala-l- akhira. Abu Sa'Id A 1 Khudri is the mouthpiece of those who took the middle view that wealth in itself is harmless if it does not lead to avarice and extrava¬ gant display.® This was the view of the ordinary Muslim, who stood midway between the Ascetic and the Plutocrat. Probably the reason why asceticism provoked so much opposition and gave rise to so many hadith in its condemnation was that, like the doctrine of man’s free will, it was recognized that its immediate origin was Christian. Many of the hadith directed against asceticism, like ‘ There is no monasticism in Islam— ^ Erne schwere Ladung fur das Paiadies! Goldziher, Vorlesungen, ^ Theie are fiequent refeiences in hadith to the custom of tying stones on the belly to still the ciaving for food, and to enable men to walk upiight MishMt, p. 440 Hunger was the driving force behind the Aiab migration. See Caetani, Annah, 11, passim. Mishkdt, p. 431. Documents and Tradition 145 the monasticism {I'ahbaniyya) of my community is the J ihad bear the obvious stamp of anti - Christian polemic.^ The Christian monks had long been settled in Arabia. Muhammad in the Quran (9. 113 and 66. 5) speaks of them not unfavourably. And when the conquest and occupation of Syria, Egypt, and Mesopo¬ tamia brought Muhammadans into daily intercourse with monks and nuns, those to whom a life of prayer and meditation and poverty appealed were not slow to copy closely the practices of their Christian neighbours. These early Sufis drew from the New Testament the parables and sayings of Jesus which seemed to sanction and commend the ascetic life; and very early in their history a work full of thinly-disguised extracts from the Christians’ bible was circulated. Margoliouth writes of Abu ‘Abd Allah al I larith b. Asad al Muha- sibi (d. 243 A. H.): ‘ It is to be noticed that these sermons show evident traces of the use of the Gospel, as indeed the work on the “ Observation of God’s Claims ” commences with a repetition of the Parable of the Sower without dis¬ tinct mention of its source. The Keuprulu treatise, which is against hypocrisy, might be said to be an expansion of the doctrines of the Sermon on the Mount: and to the phraseology of the Gospels there seem to be some clear allusions : these may be due to infiltration or to actual study of the Gospels on the author’s part’ ^ An extremely interesting collection of Logia et * ‘In the eaily part of the third century it appeals that the Muslim ascetic was not easily distinguished from the Chiistian; and, indeed, they had much in common.’—Margoliouth, Early Development, p 141. ^ Transactions of the Third International Congiess for the History of Religions, 1, p. 292, Oxford, 1908. T 146 Borrowing from Christian Agrapha attributed to Christ by Muhammadan writers was made by Professor Asin/ who explains their origin thus. ‘Slowly and by degrees monasticism, an institution execrated by Muhammad,^ was evolved in the suc¬ ceeding centuries, and was developed to such a point that it lacked none of the essentials of Christian monas¬ ticism. ... Now from what seed could this mystical tree of monastic perfection grow in the arid soil of Muhammadanism ? No other source can be imagined than Christian monasticism, which was well known to the Muslims, and not unknown to the pre-Islamic Arabs. . . . Therefore it is not to be wondered at if, after the Christian institution of monasticism began to put forth roots among the Muslims, the example of Christian monks was imitated by the Muslims them¬ selves, and they at once endeavoured as far as possible to destroy the anti-monastic lineaments, so to speak, of Muhammad, both by forging traditions in which the words and deeds of Jesus are attributed to Muhammad, and by publishing the precepts and precedents, authen¬ tic or apocryphal, of Jesus, so that His authority might lend strength to their ascetic innovations.. . . Without ^ Logia ef Agrapha Bomim Jesu apud Moskmtcos scripiores, ascehcos praeserim^ usitafa , , . Michael Asin et Palacios {Patrologia Orientahs^ Tome xiii, Fasc. 3, Paris (ii„ d), p. 338). ^ It may be doubted whether this statement is altogethei justifiable* ^ Know ye that this woild's life is only a sport and pastime and show and a cause of vaingloiy amongjyou* (Son 57, 19), would suggest the advisability of withdiawmgTrom the affairs of this woild. Ven 27, ^ We put into the heaits of those who followed him (Jesus) kindness and compassion: but as to the monastic life (pahhdniyyd) they invented it themselves^ (cf. Rodwell, 9. 31), is hardly an execiation. But possibly Bn Asm is referring to some of the hadith quoted above. Documents and Tradition 147 doubt the Logia ascribed to Jesus by Muslim writers are connected with a settled (certd) Christian tradition among the Oriental churches, orthodox or heterodox, before the seventh century a. d. Now I do not say that this tradition is entirely free from error: indeed it has been corrupted by their traditionists , yet not inten¬ tionally, but rather from the accidents inseparable from all oral tradition. The simple choice of words, the ingenuous character of the narrative, full as it is of anachronisms, both as to time and place, point to the vehicle of transmission being not written but oral tra¬ dition handed on in the first place by the common people before it was recorded by theologians.’ The examples given below, quoted from more than a hundred collected by Asin, are all taken from A 1 Ghazalfs great work the Ihyaic. ^Uluvii-l-Dln. Ghazali lived in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, though the traditions, for the most part, are demon¬ strably centuries older. 1. Jesus said, ‘Do not hang pearls on the necks of swine. Verily wisdom is better than pearls, and he who despises it is worse than swine.’ Cf. Matt. vii. 6. A 1 Ghazali, Ih. I. 43. 4. 2. It is related that God revealed to Jesus ‘ If you worship me with the worship of the dwellers in heaven and earth and have not love in God^ and hatred in God, that will not profit thee aught.’ Jh. II. no. 15. The same in a somewhat different form is ascribed in no. 6 to ‘Abd Allah b. Umar ‘By God, though I fast all day without sustenance and rise spending the night in prayer and spend my wealth purse by purse ‘ For the Christian genesis of the expression fi-llah and hllah in tiadition, see MS, ii, p. 392. 148 Borrowing from Christian in the way of God, and when I die there is no love in my heart towards the people who obey God, nor hatred to those who disobey Him that will not profit me aught.’ Cf. I Cor. xiii. 1-3. 3. It is related that the devil appeared to 'Isa b. Maryam, and said; ‘ Say, “ There is no God but the God.’” He replied, ‘The saying is true, but I will not say it with your voice because it has ambiguity beneath the good.’ A cryptic synopsis of Matt. iv. 4. J esus said: ‘ Blessed is he who leaves present desire for a promise not present which he does not see.’ Ih. III. 48. 8: cf. John xii. 25. 5 The Messiah passed by a company of J ews, who cursed Him, but He blessed them. It was said to Him: ‘ They speak Thee evil and Thou speakest them well! ’ He answered; ‘ Every one spends of that which he hath.’ Ih. III. 123. 19. cf. Matt. xii. 34, 35 and Luke vi. 8 and 45. 6. It was said to Jesus: ‘Teach us one precept {'ilm) for keeping which God will love us.’ He answered: ‘ Hate the world and God will love you.’ Ih. III. 141. 10: cf. John xii. 25 ; xv. 18,19. Practically the same hadith is put in the mouth of the prophet by Tirmidhi and Ibn Maja on the authority of Sahal b. Sa'd. It reads thus: A man came and said: ‘ O Apostle of God, teach me a work the which if I accom¬ plish God and mankind will love me.’ He replied; ‘ Renounce the world and God will love you. Renounce what mankind possess and mankind will love you.’ ^ ^ Since I wrote this paragraph, I see that Goldziher ( Vorlesungen, p. 188) quotes this hadith as one of the ‘Forty Traditions’of Nawawl. Appaiently he is incorrect in saying ‘Der Spiuch findet sich nicht in Documents and Tradition 149 7. Jesus said: ‘The world is a bridge. Therefore cross it; do not dwell on it.’ ^ Ih. III. 149. ii. 8. ‘ When death was mentioned in the presence of Jesus his skin used to distil blood.’ Ih. IV. 325. 12. This remarkable tradition is evidently based on the agony in the garden described in Luke xxii. 44. 9. ‘ It is related that when Jesus the Son of Mary was born the devils came to Satan and said: “ To-day the idols are overthrown and their heads broken.” He said : “ A new thing has happened. Keep in your places.” So he flew unto the ends of the earth and found nothing. Then he found that Jesus had been born, and lo angels were encompassing him. And he returned unto the devils and said; ‘‘Verily a prophet was born yesterday. Never has a woman conceived or brought forth but I was present with her, except this. Therefore the idols despair of being worshipped after to-night. Nevertheless tempt the sons of men (to act) with haste and levity.’” 111.26.4. This is in keeping with the canonical tradition recorded by Bukhari that the only child untouched at birth by Satan was Jesus. den stiengern Sammlungen und blosz aus dem Traditionswcrk des Ibn Madscha nachgewiescn ’, if tlie compiler of the Mishkal is to be believed. The latter writes, ‘ lawaliu A1 Tirmidhl wabnu Maja’. ' ‘'riiis appears to me to be an agiaphum,’ Asin. The words occur m an insciiption on the gieat gateway of the mosque of Fathpui-Sikii erected by Akbai in i6or. VII SOME ASPECTS OF THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD IN TRADITION Our purpose is not to attempt to give a coherent biography of the Arabian prophet, or even to mention the principal incidents in his life. Material for this must be sought elsewhere.^ But simply because no survey of the hadith literature, however superficial, would be complete without some account of the impression it gives of the enigmatic personality of its great hero, a few hadith are translated to supplement what has gone before, and to show particularly how, with the passing of years, the fallible, human figure of Muhammad has faded into oblivion. The gulf between the prophet who is believed to have worked the miracles mentioned on page 136 and him who spoilt the date crop of Medina by his untimely interference with established custom could not have been bridged in one or two generations. Many of the hadith already cited will have shown the good sense, amiability, and liberality of the prophet; and the following further examples of the qualities which have ever endeared him to his fol¬ lowers must suffice. Rafi' b. ‘Amr al Ghaffari; ‘When I was a boy I threw stones at the Ansar’s date-palms, and so they brought me before the prophet of God. “ Boy,” said he, “ why * See especially the works of Caetani, Muir, Maigoliouth, Spienger, and others; also Ibn Sa'd and Ibn Hisham. did you throw stones at the date-palms?” “So that I might eat dates,” I said. “ Don’t throw stones,” said he, “ but eat the fallings.” Then he touched his head and prayed: “ O God, satisfy him with food 'Aisha : ‘A man asked permission to see the prophet of God, who said • “ Let him come in though he is of an evil tribe.” When the man sat with him the prophet showed him a bright countenance and conversed agreeably with him. After he had gone ‘Aisha asked ; “ How is it that you treated him so kindly when you had thus spoken of him ? ” He replied ; “When have you known me immoderate in speech ? The worst men in God’s sight on the day of resurrection will be those whom men forsake through dread of their wickedness’” (variant: harsh speech).’ Th.& Bddn-l- Mzisdh contains a pleasing notice of the prophet’s kindness to children and his fondness of jokes and raillery, which may be further illustrated from the story of his relation to his child-wife. 'Aisha said: ‘ The apostle of God returned from the raid of Tabuk (variant: or Hunain). Now her booth was protected by a curtain, and when the wind blew aside the edge of the curtain 'Aisha’s dolls were seen. “ What are these ? ” asked Muhammad. “ My dolls,” she answered. Then he noticed among them a horse with two wings of patchwork, and was told what the object was. “ A horse with two wings I ” he exclaimed. “ Have you not heard”, she replied, “that Solomon possessed winged horses ? ” 'Aisha, in relating the hadith, adds: “ Then he laughed so that I could see his molars.” ’ * Commentators differ as to the meaning of this last sentence. It reads rather like a protest against the autocratic bearing of the caliphs than a recommendation of courtesy to\t ards the wicked. 152 The Prophet Muhammad But their relations were not always so easy. There are frequent references to the domestic troubles of the prophet which sometimes scandalized his followers. We read of the anger of Abu Bakr when his daughter dared to scold the prophet in a voice that could be heard without. Exclaiming, ‘ I will not hear thee lift thy voice against the apostle of God,’ he seized hold of her to slap her face. But the prophet restrained him so that he went out in anger. When he had gone the prophet said, ‘ You see how I have delivered you from the man.’ ^ Abu Bakr remained unreconciled for some days. Then he called and found the pair at peace, and said, ‘ Include me in your peace as you included me in your quarrel ^ ’ The prophet answered, ‘We do! we do! ’ Another occasion of strife is connected with the dispute between Muhammad and his wives which has found its way into the Quran (Sur. 33. 51). Its guarantor is Jabir: Abu Bakr came asking to see the apostle of God, and found people who had been refused admittance sitting at his door. Abu Bakr was allowed to enter, and w^as followed subsequently by 'Umar. They found the prophet sitting, surrounded by his wives, gloomy and silent. 'Umar said: ‘I must say something to make the prophet laugh’; so he began : ‘ O apostle of God, if I see Bint Kharija asking me for money then I get up and throttle her' ’ The apostle of God said: ‘ These women about me, as you see, are asking for money.’ So Abu Bakr got up and throttled 'Aisha, and 'Umar treated Uafsa similarly, saying; ‘ Will you ask the apostle of God for what he does not possess?’ They said: ‘By God, we never ask him for anything he does not possess!’ Then he sepa- ' The commentators suppose the remark to be a jest IN Tradition rated himself from them for a month (variant: or twenty-nine days), when this revelation descended: ‘ O prophet, say to thy wives, if ye desire this present life and its braveries, come then I will provide for you and dismiss you with an honourable dismissal. But if ye desire God and his apostle and a home in the next life, then truly hath God prepared for those of you who are virtuous a great reward.’ ^ He told 'Aisha of this first, saying; ‘ I wish to lay a matter before you in the which I desire that you do not decide until you shall have consulted your parents.’ When she inquired what it was he recited the revelation to her. She responded : ‘ Is it about you that I am to consult my parents ? Nay, but I choose God and his apostle and the home in the next life. I ask you, however, not to inform any of your other wives of what I have said.’ His answer was, ‘ If any of them ask me I shall tell them, for God has not sent me to cause chagrin and sin, but to teach and to make (righteousness) easy.’ Probably nothing is more illustrative of the prophet’s greatness both among his contemporaries and with posterity than the fact that his reputation could sur¬ vive the publication of the following story by his wife Aisha: ‘ I was jealous of the women who gave them¬ selves to the apostle of God, and said, “ Does a woman give herself?” Then when God revealed; “Thou mayest decline for the present whom thou wilt of them, and thou mayest take to thy bed her whom thou wilt, and whomsoever thou shalt long for of those thou shalt have before neglected; and this shall not be ^ Sur. 33* 28-9. The translation is RodwclFs. The text has only the opening and the final woids of the veises. Cf. Mmr, p. 304, where the passage is connected with the scandal that galheied round 'Aisha 154 The Prophet Muhammad a crime in thee.” ^ I said, “ I see your Lord does nothing' but hasten to fulfil your desire I”In this context we may include the significant tradition of Anas recorded by A 1 Nasa'i, ‘After women nothing was dearer to the a^Dostle of God than horses ’" In a hadith of Umm Salma the prophet freely admits his fallibility; ‘ I am only mortal, and when you come disputing before me perhaps some of you are more eloquent in argument than others, and I give judge¬ ment according to what I hear. But whoso receives judgement in this way to the detriment of his brother’s rights let him not take it, for if he does I have reserved a place in hell for him.’ But the clearest possible recognition of Muhammad’s ignorance of everyday matters is to be found in the story of his interference with the process of fertilizing date-palms. Rafi' b. Khadij: ‘ The prophet of God came to Medina when they were fecundating the date- It must be counted unto the tradilionists for righteousness that this and the many other hadith so damaging to the piophet’s leputa- tion weie not expunged from the canonical collections. It would seem that the piophet’s character among the faithful was above criticism; otheiwise it is difficult to see how such traditions could have been toleiated in a community which claimed to have leceived a levelation from God. ® The contiadictory natuie of some of the hadith is well illustrated by the following sayings which claim to reflect the prophet’s preference in the mattei of horses; {a) Abu Qutada. The best horses are black with white foreheads and white upper lip. Then a black hoise with a white forehead and thiee white legs; then a bay with these markings. ( 3 ) Abu Wahab. A bay with a white forehead and white legs is the best. (f) Ibn ‘Abbas. Prospeiity goes with the sorrel. IN 1 R A DI T I O N palms/ and asked what was being done. It was replied that this was custom. “ Perhaps it would be better if you did not do it,” said he. So they left the trees as they were and the crop was deficient. When the people told him of this, he said: “I am only mortal. If I give you an order in the domain of your religion then receive it; but if I give you an order from my own opinion (r«f) then am I but mortal.” ’ There is also preserved the story of Muhammad’s unsuccessful negotiations with a Jew. The story comes from 'Aisha ‘ The prophet wore two thick Qitrl^ garments, so that when he sat down perspiring he found them oppressive. Now clothes had come from Syria to a certain Jew, so I said: “ If you were to send to him and buy (sc. on credit) two garments you would be more at ease.” So he sent, and the fellow said “I know what you want: you only want to go off with my money! ” The apostle of God said: “ He lies : for he knows that I am the most God-fearing and punctilious in money matters of all men.” In another hadith she repeats : “If you wish to cleave to me then be satisfied with the portion of a horseman in this world, and beware of sitting with the rich, nor think a garment shabby until it has been patched.” ’ ” Though the last is probably not a genuine hadith it ‘ Sc’c Maigohouth and Muu ui loc , and Duilun,/V^/p 403, for a desiciiplion of the process. ® The commentator e.'cplains this as‘a kind ofYaman gaunenl’. The Nihqya says it is a gaimcnt dyed led with tough coaise fringes, and offeis another explanation to the effect that it comes fiom Bahrain. ’ This tradition beais the warning A 1 Tuniidlii telaies it, and says, ‘This is a gJiatib hadith. We only know it from the hadith of Salih b. Hassan. Muhammad b. Isma'il (1. c. A 1 Bukhari) says the latter is niunkiru-l-hadiih’ See Glossary. points rightly to the poverty and privation in which the prophet and his friends lived, to which allusion has already been made on p. 144. The same authority (in Bukhari) tells us that the prophet’s family did not eat barley bread for two consecutive days during the whole of his life, a statement which is strengthened by Anas, who says that he went to the prophet with some barley bread and rancid dripping, and found that he had pawned his coat-of-mail to a Jew in Medina in exchange for barley for his family. ‘ Never did there remain overnight in the family of Muhammad a measure of corn or grain though he had nine wives.’ The various currents in Christian tradition, with which theologians are all familiar, represented by the Synoptic, the Apocryphal, and the Apocalyptic school, all have their counterpart in traditions which gather round the person of the founder of Islam. Some examples of the first have already been given, while to the second belong the stories of Muhammad’s miracles: the sun standing still, the splitting of the moon, and others which have already been mentioned. In the Apocalyptic hadith Muhammad stands out as the prophet of the end and consummation of all things, and as the powerful intercessor for his people with God. The following long hadith vouched for by Abu Huraira contains many of the prevailing ideas on these subjects: ‘ The Hour will not come till there is a fierce battle between two great forces both professing Islam ; and until nearly thirty lying Dajjals (antichrists) have been sent, each pretending that he is the apostle of God; until knowledge has been taken away and there are numerous earthquakes, till rebellions occur and commotions are frequent; till wealth be multiplied and IN Tradition abundant, and the wealthy will trouble him who receives alms and beg him to accept it, and it will be declined, for none need it, till men display arrogance in building, and one will pass by a man’s grave and say “ Would that I were in his place' ” till the sun rises in the west, and all men seeing it will believe. Then will none profit by faith who has not believed aforetime and acquired virtue by faith. And the Hour will come when men have spread out their garment between them and have not agreed on a price nor folded it up; when a man shall have taken away the milk of his camel and not have drunk it; when a man shall be plaistering his cistern and have put no water in it; while a man is lifting food to his mouth and before he can eat it.’ A characteristic difference between these Apocalyptic hadith and the literature as a whole is their great length. The tradition which records men’s need of an intercessor on the day of resurrection and the refusal of the office successively by Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, and the triumphant inter¬ cession of Muhammad for all Muslims, contains up¬ wards of three hundred words exclusive of the isnad. The average length of hadith on all the topics dealt with in the literature I should estimate at fifty words only. The eschatology of the traditions of Islam—the slaying of the antichrist, the descent of Jesus son of Mary from heaven to usher in a reign of peace, prosperity, and goodness—need not be discussed here. A tradition, hardly in accord with the general content of eschatological speculation, which seems to be deeply rooted in the Muslim mind is that of 'Abd Allah b. 'Umar, which the compiler of the Miskkdt says is 158 The Prophet Muhammad recorded by Ibn A 1 Jauzi in the Kttabu-l- Wifa: ‘Jesus son of Mary will descend to the earth, marry, and beget children. He will stay on the earth forty-five years, and then die and be buried in my grave. He and I shall arise in one grave between Abu Bakr and 'Umar.’ ^ One of the most interesting subjects in Muhammadan apocalyptic is the Mi'raj, or nocturnal journey of Muhammad to the heavenly mansions. On this inci¬ dent, which is referred to in an obscure passage of the Quran (Sur. 17. i), the reader may consult the interesting study of the learned Spanish Arabist Asin.^ No more striking example of growth and development within the field of hadith has yet been adduced. From the story of the prophet’s nocturnal journey in which he saw as in a vision the punish¬ ments of the wicked, the joys of Muslims and the felicity of martyrs, and finally Abraham, Moses, and Jesus awaiting him beneath the throne of God, there has grown up a large and extensive literature with which, in its latest form, the Occident has long been familiar in the pages of Dante Alighieri.' ^ Burton, Pilgrimage^ pp, 325 fF. It is popularly asserted that in the Hujra there is now spaie place for only a single grave, leserved foi *i&a bin Maryam after his second coming ’ ^ La Escaiologia Musulmana m la Divina Coinedia^ Madrid, 1919, and see my review m Theology, i, pp. 315-16. ^ Kamu-l- Ummdl, Cairo, 1312, vii. 248, no. 2835, and 280, no, 3089 APPENDIX A

In the following pages I have given some of the opinions of Muslim doctors on the subject of the caliphate. The subject is of gieatei impoitance in the political woik of the immediate future than almost any othei question in view of the fact that within the last two geneiations seveial millions of our fellow- subjects in India have prayed foi the Sultan of Turkey in the Khiitba, and It is becoming incieasingly impoitant that the place and office of the caliphate should be cleaily undci stood in the West, The extiacts which I have made fiom Muslim wiiteis will seive to show how foolish and mistaken it is foi European wiiteis to compare the caliphate with the papacy. In the sense that the learned and chaiming wiiter the Right Honouiable Ameer Ali wiites^ it is of course true, but the very cleat distinction between political and religious allegiance so familiar in Western states is flatly contiadicted by the Muslim thcoiy of the caliphate. The clearest and most scholarly exposition of the caliphate is to be found in the Muqaddtma of Ibn Khaldun, of which following is a free tianslation. The Caliph is the i epresentative of the giver of the leligious law {Sahibu-l-sharV'ati) in maintaming leligion and governing the woild. The office may be teimed the Khilafate or the Imamate indiffeiently. When the Caliph is called Imam he is, as it were, compared with the leader, whose movements in piayer must be imitated by the whole assembly. The gieat Imamate is a term often used of the Calip¥s office. He is called Caliph because he caliphs (i.e, succeeds or lepre- sents) the prophet; or ® the Caliph of Godoi more fully. * Infra^ p, 169, I have lefiained from comment. i6o The Caliphate Caliph of the apostle of God Many doctois took exception to the title khaltfaiu 4 ldh^ and lefused to admit its propiiety The appointment of an Imam is a matter of necessity fiom the point of view of law founded on the Ijma* of the Com¬ panions and Folioweis* Immediately on the death of the Piophet they took the oath of fealty to Abu Bakr and suuesideied to him the conduct of theii affairs Succeeding centuiies have followed this precedent^ and such imiveisal agreement indicates the necessity^ and sanctions the setting up, of an Imam. (Accoiding to the Mukazilites the sole raison d^itre of the Imam is to carry out the law: so that if the people were only righteous in their dealings theie would be no need for an Imam. These views are to be attributed to their hatied of the abuse of powei and position inseparable fiom human potentates.) Four qualifications necessaiily peitain to this office: Know¬ ledge, Justice, Capacity (or competence), and the power to exercise the senses and limbs which reflect the activities of mind and body. A fifth condition, namely, that its holder should be a membci of the tube of the Quiaish has been the subject of dispute.^ The fiist two qualities aie essential because the imamate is a leligious office [mansab diniy The thirds Capacity, implies couiage both in internal administiation and in war, statesman¬ ship, and leadership, and a knowledge of the political situation at home and abroad. Thus there is requiied of him the active exercise of mind and body so that he may defend religion and fight the enemy, and thereby fulfil the commands of the law and the claims of the public weal The fourth condition contains an important implication. It includes the power of unrestrained action. If the Imam loses his independence through captivity or similar restraint it is as though he had lost the use of his limbs and faculties. He cannot be Imam. On the other hand, if it is only a ^ Our author's ruler approaches the ideal, yet it is interesting to see how temporal power is, m theory at all events, indissolubly linked with the caliphate, or, as he expi esses it here, the imamate. IN Tradition i6i question of the loss of some of his poweis through the action of subjects who have not overtly levolted against his authority, and it is found that he acts according to the leqniremenls of law and justice, his imamate is to be allowed® But if not, Muslims may invoke the help of one to depose him and fulfil the duties of a Caliph. With legard to descent from the Ouiaish it must be admitted that the principle was accepted by the Companions on the day of A 1 Saqifa® The Companions met the claim of the Medinotes to the right to elect Sa'd ibn 'Abada by the words of the prophet, 'The Imams are fiom the Quraish’ (A 1 Aimatu min Quraishin), whereupon the Medinotes receded from theii position® Moreover, there is m the Sahlli the authentic tradition : ® This authority shall not cease in this tribe of Quraish/ and there are many other hadith to the same effect History relates how the Quraish at home dissi¬ pated their strength in luxury and idleness, while theii aimies fought battles in all parts of the world, so that failure to consolidate and conserve then resources made the buideii of the caliphate a task beyond their strength, and foieigneis came to be invested with supreme power® Now many doctors go so far as to deny the necessity of Quraishite biith as a qualification for an Imam, relying on the liteial sense of the woids of the prophet, * Heaiken and obey even if a slavering negro be set over you/ And again, ®Umai said, 'If Salim the client of Hiidhaifa weie alive, I would have made him ruler/ The first proves nothing, for it is only a supposition; and the second rests on the opinion of only one of the Companions, and is therefore not authoiita- tive® The great majority of Muslim doctors regard Quraish¬ ite biith as essential, and that one of that tribe must be Imam, though he be impotent to diiect the affairs of the Believers, But we may refute this by pointing out that the condition of capacity cannot be fulfilled in such a case® What then was the icason for the doctrine that the Imam must be of the Quraish? Every law has a definite object, and the object of this law was not only to honour the prophet as is X The Caliphate geneially believed. It was also to ensure the safety and well-being of the Muslim people. The Quiaish were formerly the noblest and bravest of the Arabs and best fitted to link together the wailing factions of the Arabian peninsula. No other tube would have been able to put an end to dissension and lead Muslims to victory The legislatoi then, declared that an Imam must be of the tube of the Quiaish because they weie obviously best equipped m eveiy lespect to maintain law and older. The Ouraishite domination was moie or less justified under the Umayyads and Abbasids. But if we recognize the principle that the legislator is not making laws for one time and one people, we shall see that the condition of ^ capacity^ at once applies. Applying, then, the motive uiideilying the dogma that the Imam must be of the tribe of the Quiaish;, we say that he who guides the destinies of the Muslim peoples, like the Quiaish of old, must be renowned for patriotism, influence and power: dominating his geneia- tioii he must be able to command the obedience of others, and unite them m the defence of the commonwealth. When God appointed the Caliph hi« repiesentative {ndihan 'an/m) Fie ordered him to seek his people's welfaie and to piotect them fiom disaster And it is certain that He would not entiust this task to those who weie impotent to fulfil it. At this point we may note that the Shfas* conception of the Imamate is quite diffeient. With them the Imamate is the foundation of Islam. It cannot even be supposed that the prophet suffered the Imamate to be dependent on popular sanction. He, say they, appointed *Ali; and though this assertion involves the branding of 'Umar and 'Uthman as usurpers they do not stop short of this folly. To suppoit their claim they advance ceitain traditions which are unknown to men learned in the sunna and the law. Most of them aie inventions {mand?!') or come fiom tainted soiuces {maftm ft tarlqi/n); or, if genuine, are not susceptible of theii coiiupt interpielations These proofs aie fiom ‘deal ' and ‘hidden' sources {jail wa khafl). Of the first ‘Who owns me as mastei has All as his master' is an example, of the second, IN Tradition we may mention their interpretation of the events at Mecca when the prophet sent Abu Baki to inform the people of the leveiation of the suratu 4 -baratt and afterwards sent 'Ali to read it This shows^ they aigue, that All took precedence of Abu Bakr. Such arc the aiguments on which they rely* The caliphate was converted into an impedal throne by the natural pressuie of circumstances. In The Sahlh we lead^ ^ God only sends a prophet when his people can defend him.’ The exponent of sacied law does not care for this spirit He piefers to lay stiess on the Qiiianic injunctions to avoid pride and woildly display: his eyes aie on the next world. Though he disapproves of imperial might he does not condemn it in its several activities, e.g, compelling respect for religion and securing the public weak The first four Caliphs displayed a dislike towaids liixmy and ostentatious display of state and pomp. But this was because they had one and all been inured to the privations of a desert life. They lived on the meanest food and amid miserable conditions. The conditions pievailiiig in the Umayyad times made it necessary for men to rally to the leigning prince to save the country from the horrors of civil war. The later princes of this line, it must be confessed, gave themselves up to gross and sensual pleasures till the people gave the kingdom to the Abbasids. Through the impiety of some of this race the kingdom was taken from the Arabs altogethei. Yet though the caliphate became a monarchy it retained its essential chaiacteristics for a long time. The ordinances of religion were enforced and men kept to the light paths. It was in the compelling foice imderlymg aiithoiity that the change was made. Whereas in the past it was religion, it came to be the power of paity passion ^asabiyyd) and the swoid. In the generation that followed the reign of A 1 Rashid nothing lemained of tli6 caliphate but its name, and that only while the racial pride i^asabiyya) of the Arabs siippoitcd it. With the subjugation of the Aiabs the caliphate died, and all authority was invested in the monarchy. Foreign monarchs in the East, it is true, ticated the Caliphs with respect from The Caliphate a motive of piety, but tliey^ claimed for themselves the titles and honorifics of the monai ch. A necessary preliminary to the installation of the Caliph is the bat^a 01 oath of allegiance tendered in the name of the Muslim people. He who makes the haia lecognizes the rights of the Caliph ovei the Muslims, and undertakes to obey all Ms orders whether they are agreeable to his own interests or not. He places his hand in the hand of the Caliph when pledging his faith to confiim the undertaking, Just as do buyers and selleis. In fact, the word bat'a is derived from bd^a^ to buy or sell, hence bat''a meant a mutual handtaking. ^ this is its meaning in ordinary and legal language, and, indeed, what is meant in the hadith by the bat'atu 4 -nabtyyi on the night of Aqaba and near the tree. So of the bat'a of the Caliphs and of the oath of the bat a. The Caliphs used to lequire an oath embodying a formal declaialion of assent to the compact. The bat'a now consists of a salutation modelled on the comt of Kosrocs s one must kiss the ground, the handj foot, or hem of the monai cMs garment Bat'a has thus lost its eailier meaning, though it still contains the idea of piomising obedience by a compact the essential idea of joining hands has been lost, the humble posture of the subject being a necessary concession to coiut etiquette and the dignity of the soveieign. So general has this form of bat'a become that it must be regaided as valid. As has been explained, the Caliph is the representative of the lawgiver, and acts for him in protecting religion and governing the world. The lawgiver’s leligious function is to compel men to observe their religious obligations, and it is liis duty to secure the temporal prospeiity of his subjects in his chaiacter of temporal luler. The religious power of the Caliph is exercised thiough peculi^ily Muslim offices which are subordinate to him. These are connected with public player, religious decisions, civil justice, the Jihad, or ^ Cf. the similar act when giving a pledge in Job xvii. 3, mi hu l^jadh! yittaqea*, and Prov. xvii: 18, xxii. 26. war against imbelieverSs^ and the police—all of which aie subordinate to the great imamate, which is the caliphate. The most exalted office of all is the Imamate in piayei. It is higher than the mulk or soveieign power in its essential nature, for the prophet’s appointment of Abu Bakr to lepie- sent him in piayei was taken by the Companions to carry with it the appointment to temporal supiemacy over the Muslim people^ Unless the latter were dependent on the former such an assumption would have been giouiidless. The goveinment of the gieat mosques pertains to the Caliph, though he may lefci it to the sultan, vizier, or qadi, so also the right of presiding at the five daily praycis, the Fiiday prayer, and those of the two gieat feasts and on eclipses and piaycis for lain. The first four Caliphs and the Umayyads jealously guaidcd their privileges of presiding at public player, but when the caliphate became absorbed in soveicignty, and the lulcis would not lecognizc othei men as their equals in matters icligious oi lempoial, they allowed others to leplacc them in presiding over public prayeis» The Caliph should appoint to the office of viuftt the most woithy scholar and legist, and himself exercise a pioper contiol over unwoithy aspiiants to that office. The Qadfs appointment is likewise subject to the caliphate. His office is to apply the decisions and principles of the sacred book and the mmm to the settlement of all disputes and actions between litigants. Originally this office was filled by the Caliph himself. 'Umai first delegated it to another. The functions of the qadi have been cnlaiged so as to include the adminisliation of the affairs of the insane, orphans, bankrupts, * * Tlic Mohammadan Common Law makes the fighting only A positive* injunction where there is a ^i^en^ral summons (that is, where the mfidels invade a Mussulman tcintoiy, and the Imam for the time being issues a general proclamation, icquinng all persons to stand foith to fight), lor in this case war becomes a positive injunction with respect to the whole of the inhabitants/— H&iaya or Guide , A Commen/aiy on MeJfuMulmm Laws, iianslaied by Chailes Hamilton, London, 1*791, vol. ii, Book IX, p. 141. The Caliphate the testamentary dispositions of Muslims, pious benefactions^ and so on. Foimerly the qadi was charged with the lighting of wrongs—a function which requiies the stiong hand of the magistrate to enforce Its decrees. Up to Ai Muhtadi the Caliphs exercised this function themselves, though sometimes they delegated it to theii qadis. Sometimes too the qadis were made leaders of bands to carry the jihad into enemy teriitory The office of chief of police is a religious function based on the religious law,^ His powers weie moie extensive than those of the qadij for he had power to act to pi event crime and oppiession. Later on the functions of these two offices weie absorbed by the sultan whether they weie confided to him by the Caliph or not. The duties of the police aie of two kinds, fiist^ to establish the guilt of suspected ciiminals, and to apply the legal penalties—mutilation or the lex tahoms (sometimes the holder of this office is called walt)^ and secondly those duties which peitam to the qadi in relation to the punishment of cvil-doeis. The office of htsba or local police carries with it a far- ranging commission. He may act m the public inteiest in putting down public abuses and offences against public safety or moials. The office of inspector of coinage {stkkd) is also religious, and is dependent on the caliphate. Certain offices have been suppressed or have fallen into desuetude, or have been absorbed into the temporal administration {sdrat sultdmy-^ yatmi). Of the lattei we may mention the government of the provinces, the vizirate, the supieme command of the army, and the collection and administration of the public revenues. Jihad has piactically ceased except in a few countiies, where ^ This passage fiom one of the great classic wiiters of Islam shows how meaningless such phiases as ‘the spiritual prerogatives’, oi ‘the purely religious attributes’, sound m Muslim ears. If the Chief Commissioner of Police is a leligious (dlin) office, what aie ‘puiely religious functions’, and by what word do politicians propose to translate * spiritual ’ in connexion with the Caliph’s jurisdiction ? IN Tradition it suivives it is for the most part dependent on the sultanate* Another office which has disappeared is the registry of sharlfs, set up to establish the veracity or otheiwise of those who claim to be descended fiom the prophet* The title Commander of the Faithful (amir ul imi^mtmn) pertains to the caliphate. It dates from the time of the fiist Caliphs* When Abu Bakr was proclaimed Caliph the Coni' panioEs and the rest of the Muslims hailed him as Caliph of the messenger of God* 'Umar in his turn was called Hhe Caliph of the Caliph of the messenger of Godh Obviously there was no end to such a title if it was to be indefinitely extended thus to each succeeding Caliph, and so it was decided to replace it by another title* The title amtr ul Mtiminm was adapted from one used of the army leadeis* In the Jahiliyya the prophet was called Amir of Mecca and Amir of the Hijaz, so that when one of the Companions hailed 'Umai as amir td mtimtnm the title was generally approved and adopted. Since then the title has been inherited by succeed¬ ing Caliphs, It is not without significance that leaders of lebeliion against existing authority such as the Shi'as and Abbasids at fiist adopted the title Imam, and after they were secure in the government claimed the title * Commander of the Faithful The title properly was a sign that its possessors reigned ovei the Hijaz, Syiia, and Traq, the native land of the Arabs; and though each Abbasid Caliph had a distinct name they all bore the title amir ul mtiminm. So also did the Fatimids of Africa and Egypt. The Umayyads of Spain followed theii ancestors in not adopting titles like the Abbasids. They did not assume the title Commander of the Faithful because they Could not hope to obtain possession of the caliphate, and because they did not hold the Hijaz, the ciadle of Islam. But m the beginning of the fourth century when *Abdu-l- Rahman came to the throne he took the title A 1 Nasir li Dm Allah with tlic honorific amtr ul mtimmln^ being moved to do this by reports of the humiliations to which the Caliphs of the East were subjected. Cut off from all communication with the outside world, they were insulted and even blinded and muidered. His example was followed by his successors until ruin overtook the Arab caliphate. The Caliphs in Cairo and Morocco and the petty kings of Spain all suffered dishonour and contempt from theii subjects, and with the degradation of the caliphate went the essential unity of Islam. Our next extract is fiom the Hiistory of the Caliphs \ wiitten by Jalaliid-Din A 1 Siiyiiti (849-91 i)d It is mteiesting to observe that he refuses even to mention the descendants of *Ubaid Allah al Mahdi, who assumed the title of Caliph in 1396, on the ground that the assumption of the title was illegal for many reasons, of which he thinks it sufficient to mention that he was not of the tribe of the Quraish. Moreovei, Al Suyiltl devotes some pages to discussing the question as to whether the caliphate as an office ever existed in the mind of the prophet at all. The two shaikhs, he says, have lecoided regarding'Umar that he said when he was stabbed, * Weie I to name a successor then verily he named a successor who was greater than I (i.e. Abu Bakr). And weie I to leave you without one, then veiily he also hath left you so who was gi eater than 1/ The authority of Hiidhail ibn Shiirahbil is quoted to lefute the claim of the Alids that Muhammad bequeathed the caliphate to 'AlL But the objection is raised, ‘ Why then was not *Ali the immediate successor of Muhammad lathei than Abu Bakr ? ’ Writing of the fall of the caliphate lie says: 'Things came to such a pass that nothing remained of the caliphate in the provinces but the name, after it had been that in the time of the children of 'Abdii- 1 -Mahk b. Marwan the Khutba was read in the name of the Caliphs in all the regions of the earth, the east and the west, the right hand and the left, wherever the true believer had been victorious, and none in any one of the provinces was appointed to hold a single office ^ Tr. by Major H» S. Jairett, Calcutta, 1881, pp. 2 ff. {Bibliotheca Indica^ xii, Seiies III). IN Tradition except by order of the Caliph. Regarding the immoderate lengths to which things went, veiily in the fifth centmy in Spain alone there were six persons who assumed the title Caliph; A! Siiyiitfs account^ of the temporary restitution of the caliphate in Caiio after the death of Musta'sim at the hands of Hiilagu illustrates the threefold qualification required of an aspirant to the caliphate^ namely, descent from the Quraish, public election and homage, and temporal power. * He lode through Cairo, and subsequently certified his family descent through the chief Kadi Tajii-hDin b. Bmt A 1 *Azz, and he was then acknowledged Caliph. The first who swore alle¬ giance to him was the sultan, next the chief Kadi Taju-l-Din . . . and lastly the nobles accoiding to their degree. This occurred on the 13th Rajab (la May, ia6i)„ His name was impressed on the coinage and lead in the Kliutba, and he received the surname of his brother, and the people rejoiced. He rode in procession on the Fiiday, beaiing the black mantle, to the mosque in the citadel He then mounted the pulpit and preached a discourse in which he extolled the nobility of the house of *Abbas, blessed the Caliph and the Muslims, and prayed befoic the people. Next lie proceeded to the cere¬ mony of the bestowal on the sultan of the robe of honour usually granted by the Caliph and the diploma of investiture. A pavilion was erected without the walls of Cairo, and the Caliph and the sultan rode to the pavilion on Monday 4th Slia'ban, and there were present the nobles, kadis, and prime with the dress of honour, . , ; Lastly, we may cite the views of a learned and distinguished Indian writei of to-day on this question:^ ^ Until the rise of the house of'Abbas theie was little or no diffeience between the assertors of the light of the Alilii-lBait to the pontificate and the upholders of the right of the people to elect their own ^ Op, aly p 563. The Spirit o/Jslam^ by Ameer Ali, Sjed, Calcutta, 1902, pp, 288 f!'. y 2Ul The Caliphate Spiritual and temporal chiefs. , . . The Church and State were linked together: the Caliph was the Imam—temporal chief as well as spiritual head. The doctois of law and reli¬ gion weie his seivants. He piesided at the convocations, and guided their decisions. Hence the solidarity of the Sunni chinch. . » . The question of the Imamate, 01 the spiiitiial headship of the Mussalman commonwealth, is henceforth the chief battle-ground of the two sects. The Shfas hold that the spiiitual heiitage bequeathed by Muhammad devolved on *AlI and his descendants. They naturally repudiate the authority of the Jamaat (the people) to elect a spiritual head who should supeisede the rightful claims of the Prophet's family. . . . According to the Sunnis the Imamate is not restricted to the family of Muhammad. But no one can be elected to the office unless he is a Qmaishite/ In a note the author writes- ^There is a great difference of opinion, howevci, on this point. Ibn Khaldun, being a Yemenite himself, maintained that it was not necessary for the Imam to be a Quraishite; and many Sunni doctois have held the same view. The Sultans of Tuikey have since the time of Salim I, the father of Sulaiman the Magnificent, assumed the title of Caliph. They base their title upon a lenunciation of the Caliphate and Imamate in favour of Salim by the last Abbasid Caliph of Egypt.' They also hold that the Imamate is indivisible, and that it is not lawful to have two Imams at one and the same time. As Christianity could yield obedience to but one Pope, so the Muslim world could yield obedience to but one lawful Caliph. . „ As formerly, the Ummayads, the Abbasids, and the Fatimids reigned contemporaneously at Grenada, Bagdad, and Cairo; so at the present day the sovereigns of the house of Kajar and Osman possess the dignity of Caliph at Teheian and Constantinople, and the rulers of Morocco in West Africa. It must be said, however, that the Sultan of Turkey, the custodian of the two holy cities^ and the holder ^ The Sultan is no longer the de facto Guardian of the Ploly Places IN Tradition of the insignia of the Caliphate—the bannerj the sword^ and the mantle of the Prophet—has the best claim to the dignity.'

A TRANSLATION OF THE KITABU™L»QADAR FROM THE SAHIH OF AL-BUKHARl The following translation of the Kttdbu-l-Qadar will show the general chaiacter of the liadith lileiature, and illustrate the vaiious matteis already discussed in this volume. By the kind pel mission of the Royal Asiatic Society it is reproduced (with the omission of the ciitical and historical notes that accompanied it) from my article ^Fiee Will and Piedestination in Islam' in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for January, 1924? PP* 4^-6^. The Book of Predestination ^ I. Bab concerning Predestination. Abul Walid Hisham ibn 'Abd il Malik informed us (saying): Shu'ba informed us (saying): Sulaiman al A'mash told me as follows: I heard Zaid ibn Wahb on the authority of 'Abd Ullah ^ say: The Apostle of God (may God bless and foi HM. King Husain, the Amli of Mecca, recovered this office when the Tuiks were doven fiom the Haiamain. He is a Shaiif of the Hashimite line. ^ Kitabul Qadar 82. £e reaml des Tradiiiom Mlakom^ianes^ par Abou Abdallah Mohammed ibn Ismail el Bokhan, pubhd par M. Ludolf Krehl, continud par Th. W. Juynboli, Leyden, 1908, voL iv, p. 251. » i c. Ibn MasTid. The isnad will be omitted m future, only the name of the original guarantor being given. A Translation of preseive him/ for he is the Veracious and the Verified) told me as follows: Veiily (each) one of you is assembled in his mother^s womb forty days; then he becomes a clot for a similai peiiodj and then a lump of flesh for the same period. An angel is sent to him and given four commands with reference to his sustenance^ the duration of his life, and he is to be wietched or happy. By Allah ^ each onc^ of you may do the woiks of the people of hell so that between him and it theie lieth but a fathom or a cubit, and that which has been written shall oveicome him^ and he will do the works of the people of paiadisc and shall enter therein. And veiily a man may do the works of the people of paradise so that between him and it there lieth but a fathom or a cubit^ and that which has been written shall oveicome him^ and he will do the woiks of the people of hell and shall enter therein. (Vaiiant. Adam [i. e Ibn Abi lyyas] said . ‘ except a cubit') ( 6 ) Anas ibn Malik. The prophet said God commands an angel concerning the womb. The angel says* Lo, Lord, a drop! a clot! an embryo ^ And when God wills to decree its creation the angel says: Is it to be male or fehiale, wietched or happy, and what is to be its sustenance and duration of life, O Loid^ In the mother's womb the answer is written. a. Bab. The pen is diy (that wrote) according to the (fore)- knowledge of God, and the saying ® According to (fore)- knowledge God leads him astiay’ (Sm. xlv, v. And Abu Huraira said: ' The Prophet said to me, The pen is dry (that wiote) of what will befall thee" ' Ibn 'Abbas said: With legard to the words laM sabiqtma (Sun xxiii, v. 63) the meaning is that those who hasten after good deeds happiness has hastened unto them. (^) Imian ibn Husain. A man said : 'O Apostle of God, are those (destined) to paradise known fiom those (destined) to hell?’ Wes,’leplied he The man answered: 'Then of what use are deeds of any kind ? ’ He answered : ' Every one ^ The customary blessing on Muhammad will be omitted throughout the book. - Textual variant, or ' a man ’ of you. m THE KiTABU-L-QaDAR does that for which lie was cieated oi that which has been made easy foi him/ 3. Bab« ^ God knowetli better what they would have done/ (a) Ibn ®Abbas said: The Prophet was asked about the children of idoLitors (pms/in/cm). He replied : ^ God knoweth better what they would have done/ ( 5 ) Abu Huraiia “ The Apostle of God was asked about the offspring of idolaters. He leplied 'God knoweth better what they would have done/ (c) Abo Huraiia The Apostle of God said ' None is boin but in the religion of Islam. It is his patents who make him a Jew or a Chiistian just as you breed cattle. You do not find maimed cattle unless you yourselves fiist maim them/ They said , ' O Apostle of God, have you considered the case of him who dies as a little child ^ ’ He answered: ' God knows belter what they would have done' 4, Bab. ' The command of God is destiny predestined' (Sill, xxxiiij V 38). (a) Abu Hmaiia. The Apostle of God said ^ A woman shall not ask that her sistci be divorced so that she may enjoy her shaic of conjugal rights. Let her marry, for verily she shall have what has been decieed foi her ^ (i) Usama. I was in the company of the prophet when the mcssengci of one of his daughters came—Sa'd and Ubay ibn Ka% and MUadh weie with him at the time—to report that her son was at the point of death. He sent word to her: 'To God belongeth what tie taketh and to God beiongeth what tic giveth. Every one (departeth) at the appointed time. Let her therefore be patient under bereavement and earn the rewaid of patience/ (<:) Sa*idu“l KhudiL The Prophet said: Every living soul whose coming forth into the world has been written by God must come into being. (d) Hudhaifa. The prophet preached us a sermon in which he spoke of everything that will happen until the hour of the resurrection/ He that knoweth it knoweth it; and he that is igiioianl of it is ignorant thereof. If I sec a thing which I have A Translation of forgotten I shall recognize it just as a man knows the face of an absent acquaintance and recognizes him when he sees him» (e) "AH. We weie sitting with the prophet who had a stick with which he was wiiting on the ground. He said: ®Theie is not one of you whose resting place in hell or paradise has not been written/ Whereupon one of the people said ® Then may we not (abandoning effort) trust in (our destiny), O Apostle of God ^ ^ He replied: ‘ No! Do (good) works for eveiything has been made easy/ ^ Then he read (Sui. xcii, V, 5 ) . ' He that giveth to the needy and feareth/ &c. 5. Bab. * Works (aie to be judged) by their results/ (<^) Abu Huraiia said: We were present with the Apostle of God at Khaibar when he said of one of those who were with him and professed Islam. * This fellow is one of the people of hell/ When battle was joined the man fought with the utmost biaveiy, insomuch that he was covered with wounds and disabled. One of the Companions of the prophet came up and said * ® O Apostle of God, do you see that the man you said was one of the people of hell has fought with the utmost bravery m the way of God and is covered with wounds/ The Piophet replied: ^NeverthelesSj he is one of the people of hell/ And while some of the Muslims were on the point of doubting, lo the man, in anguish from his wounds, put forth his hand to his quivei, plucked out an anow, and pierced his throat therewith. Some of the Muslims then ran to the Apostle of God and said: ' O Apostle of God, God has con¬ firmed thy saying. So-and-so has pierced his throat and killed himself/ The Apostle of God said . * 0 Bilal, rise and pioclaim: Only believeis shall enter paiadisc. Verily God strengthenetli this religion with an impious man/ (b) SahL The prophet looked at a man who did most service to the Muslims on a raid he made in company with the prophet, and said: ^ He who would see one of the people of hell let him look at this fellow.' So one of the people followed him—now he was the most violent of men in con¬ tending with the idolaters—until he was wounded, when he * Or prepared. See Al-Ntkaya in loc. proceeded to hasten his death by putting his sword point to his breast so that it came out between his shoulders. The man quickly went to the prophet and said ^ I beat witness that thou art the Apostle of God^’ He said: ®Biit why?* The man replied ‘'Thou saidst of So-and-so^ He who would see one of the people of hell let him look at this fellow/* Now he was one who did the Muslims most serviccj and thou knewest that he would not die thus. And when he was wounded he hastened his death by suicide,* Thereupon the prophet said ® Verily the slave may do the works of the people of hell when he is leally one of the people of paradise. And he may do the works of the people of paradise when he Is really one of the people of hell Actions aie to be judged by theii results/ 6. Bab A vow delivers a slave to fate. (a) Ibn 'Umar. The prophet forbade vows, saying: ^ Verily they cannot frustrate anything though something is extracted from the avaricious thereby.* { 6 >) Abu Huiaira. A vow brings nothing to a son of man that has not been decreed for him. Neveitheless, a vow does precipitate a man towards (his) destiny, and it has been deciecd that something shall be exti acted from the avaricious thereby. 7. Bab. Theie is no power and no might save in God. (a) Abu Musa. We were raiding with the Apostle of God, and whenever we climbed or ascended a height or went down into a valley we lifted up our voices and shouted, ® Allah Akbar! * The Apostle of God approached us and said: * Restrain yourselves, O men. Foi ye do not call to one who is deaf or absent, but ye call to one who hears and sees/ Then he said* *0 *Abd Allah ibn Qais, I will teach thee a saying which is one of the treasures of paradisCi There is no power and no might save in God.** * 8. Bab. The Piotected is he whom God protects fasama) (in Sun xi, v. 45, the woid 'asima is the equivalent of mani'a)« Mujahid said; saddan (in Sur. xxxvi, v« 8, ' we have placed before and behind them an obstacle * means) a barrier against A Translation of the truth They repeatedly fall into eiior« The word dassaha (Siir, xd, V, 10, in ^Miserable is he who has coirupted it' [ie. the soul] means) aghwaha misled» (a) Sahdu 4 Khiidri, Every one who is appointed Caliph has two kinds of intimates one advises him to do good and incites him thereto j the othei suggests and incites to evil The protected is he whom God piotects. 9. Bab. It is a necessary lot of (the people) of a city which we have destroyed that they shall not leturn (Sun xxi, v, 95), None of thy people will believe save those who have already believed (Sun xi, v. 38), ^ And they will beget only impious unbelieveis' (Sun Ixxi, v» (a) Ibn Abbas. The word hiirn in Abyssinian means wajaba. ( 5 ) Ibn 'Abbas. Nothing seems to me more insane than Abii Huraira's report that the Prophet said ^ God has written eveiy man’s poition in adulteiy. It must certainly befall Now it is adultery of the eye to gaze, it is adulteiy of the tongue to utter (the thought thus engendered); the appetite longs and desires and the body consents or denies ’ (Here follows the isnadic authority for the hadith of Abu Huraira to which Ibn Abbas takes exception.) 10. Bab. We have made the vision that we showed thee a cause of dissension for men (Sur« xvii, v. 62,), (a) Ibn Abbas. This is the vision of the eye which the Apostle of God was shown when he was conducted on the night journey to the temple of Jerusalem, tie said: ‘The tree which is cursed in the Qiiian’' is the tree of A 1 ZaqqQm. 11. Bab, Adam and Moses argued before God (to Hun belong might and majesty). (a) Abo Huraiia. The Prophet said. ‘Adam and Moses were arguing, and Moses said : “ 0 Adam, thou art our father. Thou hast biought loss upon us and caused us to be excluded from paradise/' He replied: “ O Moses, God chose thee by His word and wrote for thee with His hand. Do you blame me for a matter which God decreed concerning me forty years before He created And Adam confuted Moses THE KiTABU-L-OaDAR thiee times/ (The same tiaditioii is repoited with a change of two names hi the mtei mediaiies between Abu Huraira and the compiler) 1%. Bak None can withhold what God giveth* (a) Wan ad, the client of Ai Miighira ibn Shu'ba, Mu'awiya wrote to Al Mughiia as follows: ^ Write for me an account of what you heaid the prophet say at the end of the piesciibed piayei/ Al Mughiia then dictated to me. heard the piophet say at the end of the presciibcd player, “There is no God save God alone; he is without associate O God, theie IS none that withholdcst what Thou givest and none that givelli what Thou withholdcst, and good foitune will not piofit the foitunale in place of Thee.'” Iba Juiaij said *Abda told him that Wan ad told him of this ' Then', said he, I after¬ wards went on a mission to Mii'awiya and hcaid him laying commands on men in accoi dance with these woids.' 13. Bab. He that takctli lefiige in God from the misciy that ovcitakctli him and fiom the evil of fate. And God's Word: ^Say. I take refuge in the Loid of the Dawn fiom the evil He hath created ’ (Sur. 113) (a) Abu Hiiiaira. The piophet said : ‘ Take lefiige m God from giievous adversity, from misciy that oveitaketh, fiom evil fate, and from the leviling of enemies.’ 14. Bab. (God) inteivenes between a man and his heait (Sur. viii, v. ^4). (a) 'Abd Ullah. The piophet used often to take an oath ^ No, by the Reverser of heaits ! ’ (d) Ibn *Umar. The prophet said to Ibn Sayyad: ^ I have a riddle to ask of thee.’ He replied : ‘ Smoke/ The prophet said * ^ Go away, for thou shall not exceed thy measure {qadr)' 'Umar said: ^ Give me permission to strike off his head!’ The piophet replied - ^ Let him alone. If it is he (the Dajjal) you cannot do it, and if it is not he then you will gain nothing by killing him/ 15. Bab. Say'Nought will befall us save what God has written for us’ f wiitten’ here means) '‘deciecd’ (Sur. ix, V. 51). Mujahid said: (In Sur. xxxvii, v. 162, the word) 2b T1 z lyS The Kitabu-l-Qadar bifatinln means bimudillin (ye are not able to) seduce means ^ lead astray ^ save those of whom God has wiitten that they shall burn in Gehenna* ^ He decreeth and guideth’ (Sun Ixxxvii, V. 3) means 'He decieeth misery and happiness and He guideth the sheep to their pastuies ^ {a) 'Aisha said that she asked the Apostle of God about the plague. He leplied. 'It is a punishment which God sends against whom He wills. And God makes it a mercy to believeis. Theie is not a servant in a plague-stricken count!y who remains therein without removing thence in patient belief, knowing that nought will befall him save what God has wiitten foi him, but leceives the leward of a maityr/ 16 Bab, We should not be guided aiiglit were it not that God guideth us (Sui. vii, v. 41). Had God guided me, venly I had been of the godly (Sur. xxxix, v, 58), {a) A1 Baia ibn 'Azib. I saw the piopliet on the 'day of the Tiench ’ helping us to lemove the eaitli, saying the while • ' If God weie not our Guide, then wc should stiay Fiom His stiaight paths and should not fast noi pi ay. Then keep us stiong and calm in dangei’s hour, Stablish oui feet by Thy almighty powei The idolatois have wrong’d us, we sought peace, But they, lebelling, fight and will not cease.’

Anieei Ali, The Spirit of Islam^ Calcutta, 1902, Arnold, Sir T. W. The Preaching of I slam ^ London, 1913® Asm et Palacios, MichaeL Logia ef Agiapha domini Jesu apud Mas- lemicos scriptores^ ascetic os praeserhm^ usitata . . » Pairologia Oneniaks^ Tome xiii, Ease 3, Pans (n. d ). —" La Escatologia Musiilmana en la Divina Comedia^ Madrid, Abii Baud Smtan, Cairo, 1280, Ibnu-l-Alhii. Nihdya^ Cano, 1311. 2 vols 'Ala-al-Dm A! MuttaqL Kanzii-l- Ummdk Haidarabad, 1894. A! Bukhan. Le Recueil des traditions viahomelanes, ed L. Kiehl and T. Juynboll, Leyden, 1908 Bui ton, Sii R* F. Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to ALMadimh and MeccaL 2 vols,, London, 1915-19, Bevan, E. Jerusalem under the High Priests, Cambridge, 1910. Caetani, Piince L. Annah deli Islam, Milan, 1905 Cheragh Ain A Critical Exposition of the Popular Jihad, Calcutta, —— The Proposed Political . . Pforms m the Ottoman Empire and other Muhammadan States Doughty, G. Arabia Deseria, Cambndge, 1923, Drivel, S. R. A Critical ... Commentary on Deuteronomy, Edinburgh, Goldalier, L Muhammadanische Studien, Halle, 1889. -- Voflesungeu uher den Isla 7 n, Heidelberg, 1910. Guillaume, A, Piedestination and Free Will m Ishm, JPAS, Jan*, Plamiiton, Charles. The Iledaya, or A Commentary on the Mussulman Laws, London, 1791* Houdas, O. et Marcais, W, Les Traditions tslamiques iradmiespar . , 4 vols. Paris, 1903-14. Ibn Hanbal. Musnad, Cairo, 1890. Jairett, IL S. History of the Caliphs (Bibliotheca Ind ica, xii, Sei les III), Calcutta, 1881. i8o Bibliography of Works cited /A SB /on? nal of the A stake Society of Bengal, JA OS, Journal of the A met lean Oriental Society, JA, Journal Asiatiquc JR AS Journal of the Royal Asiatii Societv, Ibn Khaldiin Muqaddima, Beyiout A! Kindi Risata, London, 1880 LanCg E. W. The Manners and Customs of the Mfodern Egyqjtians^ London, 1917 - Arahtan Society in the Middle Ages, London, 1883, Lammens, H. lltudes mr le legne dii cahfe Omayade Moawia Beyiout, ic)o6 A! Mas iidl. Lcs Brairus TOr, iextt et tradiation, pai S. Baibiei dc Meynaid* 9 vols. Paris, 1861-77 Macdonald, D B Development of Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence, and Constitutional Theory, London, 1903 Ibn Maja Snnan, Delhi, 1282. Margoliouth, D. S, The Early Development of Muhammadanism, London, 1914 - Aluhammad and the Rise of Islam, London, 1905* Muir, Sn W Infe of Muhammad, icvi&ed by T. H. Wen, Edinburgh, - Annals of the Early Caliphate, London, 1883. Nicholson, R A. J Literary History of the Arabs, London, 1907. Noldeke, T,-Scii\vally Geschichic des Qorarn, Leipzig, 1919. Ibn Qutaiba, MukhtalifiMhadiih, Caiio, 1317* A 1 Qastallani. Irshddu-SSari, Bulaq, 1305. 10 vols. Abu Quna. Mujddala, MS. aiabe, No 70, Bibliothbque Nationalc. Rodwell, M. The Quran, London, 1861. Al Suyuti, TafikkuDKlmlafa, Cairo, 1305 Sprengei, A Das Lehen mid die Lchre des Mohammad 3 vols. Berlin, 1861-5. - Dictionary of Technical Calcutta, 1862. Ibn Tabataba. At Fahhrl, Cairo, 1280. Tayloi, C. W. Sayings of the Jewuih Fathers, Cambiidge, 1897 Talmud Babli Vilna Wustenfcld* WafaydiuSAydn of Ibn Kkalhkdn. Waliu-LDln Abu Abd Allah. Mishkdiu 4 -Ma\db 2 h, Bombay, 1880. Zwemei, S. M. The Influeme of Animism on Islam, London, 1920, ZDMG. Zeitsckrift der deuischen morgenlaniischcn GcscUschaft A GLOSSARY OF THE MORE COMMON TECHNICAL TERMS USED IN THE HADITH LITERATURE az2z. Precious. An authentic tradition coming fiom two Companions. ddtf. Not fulfilling the leqmred conditions. fard Sqq gharil\ g/iarld. Authentic, but resting on the aiithoiity of only one Companion. /lasan. authoiity, with a slight fault tjmdit, Rcferimg to many things mahfuz One of two suspicious traditions which has a slight advantage over its iival. manqid. Handed down by tradition mamukh, Abiogatcd maqhuL Reieived ful^ling all conditions maqluk Known to have come fioi^.a person otliei than the m-disanf lepoilei maqliL An isndd which is mteimpted^^r mt off, 7 mrdud A tiachtion fiom a doubtfui\ouice which contradicts a tiadition of good standing. mfir/u, Recoid of a word oi deed of the pi-pphet lepoited by the Companion who hcaid oi saw it. mdffif Weak, yet known because it is confiimed by another. maskkilr, A tradition vouched for by moie than two Companions. ?nmuln\ False. ?nauqiif. An jsfiad going back to the Companions, but stopping short of the prophet. mdallai An isndd or text with a hidden fault. mtiallaq Suspended^ i. e. without the name of the Companion muhham. Coming from one of whom one knows nothing but the name miidah An isndd imm which a name has disappcaied. fnudallas. A Uadition falsely asenbed to an eaily authority. tmidraj, A gloss or obseivation inserted by one of the first leporteis of the liadition miidkirab, A tradition in which a word has become misplaced, added, OI suppressed, oi suffeied any kind ol derangement. mukhialif. Two tiaditions which arc m apparent contiadiction, but which can be leconciled. munkar. A tiadition of weak aiithonty contiadicted by a weakei one.

munqata\ An isnad fiom which a name has disappeared. vmrsaJ, A text without imdd^ or one with an incomplete tsnad^ or without the name of the Follower vmmhhaf An isndd in which a name is badly wiitten; or, a text in which a woid is badly wiitten, mnsalsai With a chat 7 t of authorities leaching back to the prophet. mushkal. Of doubtful authority mmnad. A tiadiLion \i^hose isndd goes back to the piophet. A col¬ lection of such supported tiaditions. mustafid. See ^naskhur, mntdk\ A tradition similar m import to another one going back to the same auihonty. mniawatir Repoited by numerous authorities. vmtqin. Accurate repoi ter. miitiafaq 'alaihi. Received by Bukhari and Muslim. mnitamL A tradition with an uiiintenupted midd ndsihh. Abrogating. One who leports a tiadiiion. saluh. Genuine, fulfilling all conditions. shadhdJu Exceptional. A tiadition of good authority yet in conflict with anotliei snndarly attested. shahid. A tiadition from a Companion hearing witness to or con- filming one from anothei Companion. tariq. The route^ 01 repoi ters, by which the tradition has come. thiqa. Trustworthy reporter.

p. 23. The earliest extant musnad is that of Abu Baud Siilaiman al- Tayalisi (133-203). His authorities were AI-Thauri, Shifbaj Hisham and others. It is recorded by one of his contemporaries, Muhammad b Minhal al-Darir, that he proved him guilty of falsely propagating tradi¬ tions m the*name of Ibn 'Aun. Al-Tayaiisi’s most celebrated pupil was Ahmad b. Hanbal. This note is based on al-Sam'ani, Kitdbu l-Amdb^ (G’lbb facsimile) 1913, p. 374 and I owe the reference to Dr. Nicholson. p 68, !. 1:7. ‘spread their wings ovti'" taddu ajmhatahd U-tdlibiA-tlm^ see Ntkdya, vol I, p. 182, under janatu I prefer this, the last of many explanations offered by the commentators. An abridged form of this hadith will be found on p. 4 of Derenbourg’s edition of Al-Fakhn^ M. Amar (Histoire deh dynasties musnlmanes, Fans, 1910, p. 3) rendeis : ^the angels lower their wings to cany the seeker after knowledge*; this, I suppose, is implied by Ibnu- 1 -Athir when he explains: ‘ wita*an lahu id ha masha,’