Chapter 72. The Book and the Tradition: Quran, Hadith and the Problem of Sources

Islam rests on two textual pillars: the Quran, held to be the literal Word of God recited by Muhammad, and the sunna, the Prophet’s words and deeds transmitted as hadith. How each took shape, and how far either can serve as a historical source, is one of the most contested questions in the study of religion. This chapter sets the traditional account (Armstrong, the Sourdels) against Hoyland’s source criticism, the non-Muslim apocalypses and the polemics, and ends with the “uncreated” Quran.

The Recitation: revelation piece by piece

Armstrong emphasises that, “unlike the Torah … revealed to Moses in one session on Mount Sinai, the Koran was revealed to Muhammad bit by bit, line by line and verse by verse over a period of twenty-three years” [Armstrong, A History of God, #68999, ch. 5 “Unity: The God of Islam”]. Because Muhammad “could neither read nor write”, he “recited it aloud, the Muslims learned it by heart and those few who were literate wrote it down”. “Some twenty years after Muhammad’s death, the first official compilation of the revelations was made”, with the longest suras first; it was meant “not … for private perusal but for liturgical recitation” [Armstrong, #68999, ch. 5]. In her shorter history she gives the revelation period as “the next twenty-one years” after 610 [Armstrong, Islam: A Short History, #53062, “The Prophet (570-632)”].

The library’s Romanian Quran comes with a critical introduction by its translator, Silvestru Octavian Isopescul (1910), which states the borrowing question plainly: “Undeniably, Judaism and Christianity were the principal sources of Muhammad’s teaching”, and “the only new teaching relative to Judaism and Christianity … is the teaching that Muhammad is the messenger of God” [Coranul, #40773, Introducere III; translated from the Romanian].

Uthman’s codex and its opponents

The Muslim tradition credits the third caliph, Uthman (644-656), with the standard text. Armstrong places it among the grievances that brought him down. The soldiers resented his nepotism, and “the Quran-reciters, who knew the scripture by heart and had become the chief religious authorities, were also incensed when Uthman insisted that only one version of the sacred text be used in the garrison towns, and suppressed variants, which many of them preferred, but which differed in minor details”. In 656 mutineers from Fustat killed him and acclaimed Ali, opening the First Fitnah. Armstrong records that his critics held that “Uthman had failed to live up to the standard of the Quran” [Armstrong, #53062, “The Rashidun” and “The First Fitnah”].

Hitchens gives the fuller traditional story in order to attack it. Under Abu Bakr, “pieces of paper, stones, palm leaves, shoulder-blades, ribs and bits of leather” were given to Zaid ibn Thabit; others credit Ali or Uthman, who had Zaid unify the texts and sent standard copies to the provinces. “Outdoing Athanasius, Uthman ordered that all earlier and rival editions be destroyed.” Hitchens adds that the undotted, unvowelled script enabled “vastly different readings even of Uthman’s version”, and that “the Arabic words written on the outside of the Dome of the Rock … are different from any version that appears in the Koran” [Hitchens, God Is Not Great, #65383, ch. 9 “The Koran Is Borrowed from Both Jewish and Christian Myths”]. For the mainstream academic background on the recension and early manuscripts see [Wikipedia: History of the Quran].

Hadith, isnad and al-Shafi’i

The second pillar formed later. Armstrong defines ahadith as traditions of the Prophet’s teachings and actions “not in the Quran”, recorded by companions and family [Armstrong, Islam, #68695, Glossary]. Law-making drove their systematisation. Against Malik ibn Anas (d. 795), who relied on Medinan practice, al-Shafi’i (d. 820) based all jurisprudence on hadith. Shafi’i insisted that “each hadith had to be reliably supported by a chain (isnad) of devout Muslims leading directly back to the Prophet himself. The isnad must be stringently examined, and if the chain was broken or if any one of its ‘links’ could be shown to be a bad Muslim, the hadith must be rejected” [Armstrong, #53062, “The Abbasids: The High Caliphal Period”]. The law was political: both Malik and Shafi’i “had taken part in Shii uprisings against the early Abbasids” before Harun’s court patronised them [Armstrong, #53062].

The Sourdels’ Romanian glossary defines the Tradition as the reports of the Prophet’s and the Companions’ words and deeds “constituting the SUNNA”, and adds that “the Tradition is therefore one of the sources of theology as well as of law”. The science of Tradition “developed above all in the tenth century, the epoch in which the canonical collections were composed which thenceforth carried authority in the SUNNI world and which are six in number”, the first being “that of al-Buhari” [Sourdel & Sourdel-Thomine, Civilizaţia Islamului clasic vol. III, #12462, glossary “Tradiţia”, citing vol. I pp. 167, 178-179, 232; translated]. Al-Bukhari was “born at Bukhara and died near Samarkand in 870” [Sourdel, #12462, entry “al-Buhari”]. Hitchens uses the same figures polemically. Bukhari “died 238 years after the death of Muhammad”; of “three hundred thousand attestations he accumulated … he ruled that two hundred thousand of them were entirely valueless”, reducing the total to “ten thousand hadith”. Citing Goldziher via Reza Aslan, he says many hadith were “verses from the Torah and the Gospels, bits of Rabbinic sayings, ancient Persian maxims”, even “the Lord’s Prayer” [Hitchens, #65383, ch. 9].

Hoyland’s warning: compilers as authors

Hoyland supplies the scholarly model behind such doubts, and he does so without polemic. Drawing on rabbinic studies, he argues for “several stages in the process of editing before the emergence of a final redaction”. Early works such as Ibn Ishaq’s biography and Malik’s compendium were then “incorporated, whole or in part, into later compilations, or else redacted anew”. “This activity goes under the guise of compilation/transmission, but at each stage there is omission, addition and reworking of material. Thus the distinction between compiler/transmitter and author is frequently illusory” [Hoyland, Seeing Islam as Others Saw It, #55061, ch. 2 “The Nature of the Sources”, “Redactional Identity and Unavowed Authorship”, pp. 34-37]. Fixed texts “with very few exceptions” did not antedate the ninth century [Hoyland, #55061, p. 37]. At the level of single reports: “An individual narrative unit (khabar/hadith) reporting some incident or saying, though its integrity and factuality appear guaranteed by a chain of transmitters going back to an ear- or eyewitness, will be subject to rewording and reshaping in the interests of sundry literary, juristic and socio-political concerns” [Hoyland, #55061, p. 38].

He also blurs the line between Muslim and non-Muslim material. Jews and Christians were tutors and aides to Muslims; “converts, especially among the literary elite, must have introduced something of their native traditions into their newly adopted religion”; and books “circulated across confessional lines” [Hoyland, #55061, ch. 2, pp. 32-33]. Hoyland adds a caveat: he is “not denying that there was influence and borrowing”, only “doubting that enough groundwork has been done as yet to allow determination of its nature” [Hoyland, #55061, p. 34 n. 8].

Outside texts: apocalypses reacting to Islam

The non-Muslim apocalypses are datable external witnesses to how Islam was perceived. The Syriac Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius, composed “most likely in North Mesopotamia … around the year 690”, narrates the “last millennium … in which the kingdom of the Persians will be uprooted, and in which the sons of Ishmael will come out from the desert of Yathrib”. They are “a chastisement in which there will be no mercy” for Christian sins. Then “the king of the Greeks will come out against them in great anger” and the Last Emperor lays his crown on the Cross at Golgotha. The author never grants the Ishmaelites a “kingdom”, “only … ‘the chastisement of the sons of Ishmael'”. [Hoyland, #55061, ch. 8 “Apocalypses and Visions”, “Ps.-Methodius”, pp. 263-267]. The Bahira apocalypse, later fused with the legend of the monk Sergius-Bahira’s “initiation of Muhammad into monotheism and writing for him of a scripture”, allegorises Arab dynasties as beasts before a Christian king “dressed in green” restores the churches [Hoyland, #55061, ch. 8 “Bahira”, pp. 270-273].

Polemic, eschatology and the uncreated Word

The anonymous How All Religions Are False and Harmful begins its Islam chapter from the doctrine that Muhammad was “the last messenger of Allah” and that “there cannot therefore be any falsehood or error in Quran”. It then sets out “Falsehood of Islam” and “Contradictions in Islam”. It traces Abrahamic eschatology to Persia: biblical composers “came into contact” with Zoroastrianism “after Persian ruler Cyrus defeated Babylonians and released Israelites from the captivity in 539 BCE”, and “might have studied Zoroastrianism favorably” [How All Religions Are False and Harmful, #78476, chs. 2 and 4]. The book presents itself as a polemic against all religions; its Persian-origin thesis echoes the transmission theme of earlier chapters.

Eschatological hadith remain living texts. The Signs Before the Day of Judgement (held in the library inside a larger compiled PDF collection) sorts the traditions into lesser and greater signs: “After the lesser signs of the Hour appear and increase, mankind will have reached a stage of great suffering. Then the awaited Mahdee will appear; he is the first of the greater, and clear, signs of the Hour” [The Signs Before the Day of Judgement, #68072, “The Greater Signs of the Hour”]. Negru summarises the tradition that the Mahdi “will announce his presence in the city of Mecca between the corner from Ka’ba and the place of Abraham”, opposed by al-Dajjal and the Sufyani, and argues that “Islam eschatology copies to a great extent Christian eschatology”, differing in that Jesus’s return is secondary [Negru, A History of the Apocalypse, #62383, Part I].

The final step from scripture to theology came under the Abbasids. Armstrong describes “a new type of devotion, which had first emerged at the end of the Umayyad period but only achieved prominence during the reign of Harun al-Rashid. It was similar to the Christian devotion to Jesus, since it saw the Quran as God’s uncreated Word, which had existed with him from all eternity, and which had, as it were, taken flesh and human form in the scripture”. The Mutazilites were “appalled”, since the doctrine “seemed to make the Quran a second divine being”. Its adherents, the ahl al-hadith, taught that “the rank and file must obey the caliph” [Armstrong, #53062, “The Abbasids”]. Her chronology records the later state inquisition (mihnah) that tried “to enforce Mutazilah views over those of the more popular ahl al-hadith, who are imprisoned for their doctrines”, and names Ahmad ibn Hanbal as “a hero of the ahl al-hadith” [Armstrong, Islam, #68695, Chronology].

Key points

• Armstrong describes the Quran as a “Recitation” revealed piecemeal over 21-23 years, memorised and recited liturgically, and first compiled about twenty years after Muhammad’s death.
• Uthman imposed a single text and suppressed variants; the reciters’ anger fed the mutiny of 656 and the First Fitnah.
• Al-Shafi’i (d. 820) made hadith the basis of law and required an unbroken isnad of devout Muslims; one bad “link” invalidated a report.
• The Sourdels place the composition of the six canonical Sunni collections, beginning with al-Bukhari (d. 870), “above all in the tenth century”, and treat sunna as a source of both theology and law.
• Hoyland argues that transmitted reports were reworded and reshaped “in the interests of sundry literary, juristic and socio-political concerns” and that compilers were often authors.
• Christian apocalypses (Pseudo-Methodius c. 690, Bahira) read Islam as divine chastisement awaiting a Last Emperor.
• Hitchens, the Coranul translator and #78476 argue for Jewish, Christian or Zoroastrian sources; Hoyland says borrowing’s nature is not yet determined.
• The doctrine of the “uncreated” Quran, popular under Harun al-Rashid and compared by Armstrong to the Christian Logos, set the ahl al-hadith against the Mutazilites.