ports and then, understanding and practicing them.
I also said:
In latter generations people became lax and negligent in the first task, and even for the first time began to strip the texts of ḥadīth from their isnād chains. In doing that, they removed the contents from the very sources upon which they rested and which determined their veracity. So their treatment of the Qurʾān and Sunnah became the same as that of the era of the Companions, with the difference being that the Companions had combined two similar matters, while these latter generations were combining two conflicting matters. The earlier ones were correct while the latter were mistaken.
They asked: Can you clarify that further?
Ḥadīth as Sacred Texts
The fifth century saw the rise of the new practice of treating the ḥadīth reports like sacred texts rather than historical reports, especially when Imām Muḥy al-Sunnah Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥusayn b. Masʿūd b. Muḥammad al-Farrāʾ al-Baghawī (433—516 AH) authored his book al-Maṣābīḥ stripped from isnād. Initially those who were lazy accepted that, and then the scholars followed suit, until stripped books began to multiply and the damage became grave. Ḥadīth now began to be taught as texts that were similar to the Qurʾānic text. Ḥadīth students and their teachers focused only on the ḥadīth contents and their meanings, while deeming their isnāds cumbersome and forgetting their critical role. They were less concerned with verifying authenticity, and did not distinguish between ḥadīth texts and the Noble Qurʾān, whose verses were clear and whose text was free of the need for verification.
They said: This was actually a way of making things easier for the beginners, who would then further their studies by examining the Sunan works of Abū ʿĪsā, Abū Dāwūd and others along with their chains, and then move on to the two Ṣaḥīḥ collections and the Muwaṭṭaʾ.
This pathway of study was not the correct one for them, because they had studied those ḥadīth without verifying their weakness or authenticity, until these reports had become established and sanctified in their minds. And when they eventually did get to a study of the foundational books of the Sunnah, the matter of verification was already lost for them, such that they treated all these reports with sanctity and reverence. Among the masses, they perpetuated reverence for all that was spread in the name of ḥadīth and hastened to accept all such reports, even those that were slightly weak, contradictory, extremely weak, and even false and fabricated. These reports began to fill their pages and books and adorn their speeches and words. Even great scholars fell into this, and very few were those who managed to be protected from this.
Part of their reverence for these treasure troves of narrations was not fully accepting the notion of weakness or conflict in these reports. They resorted to accepting the veracity of every weak, conflicting and defective report—even fabricated ones—clinging to the multiplicity of their routes of transmission as justification. Everything ultimately became muddled, to the extent that weak reports became deemed as sound (ḥasan and ṣaḥīḥ). Anomalous, conflicting (shādh) reports became sound (maḥfūẓ), and rejected (munkar) reports became accepted (maʿrūf). They even became accommodating towards fabricated and baseless reports instead of regarding them as detested or loathsome.
They asked: So what is the correct method for studying ḥadīth?
Qurʾān as Sacred Text, Ḥadīth as Historical Reports
The correct method is that which was practiced by the Successors and those that came after them until the fourth century, which was to receive ḥadīth with its two essential and inseparable parts:
- The study of its isnād (chain of narrators): To not approach ḥadīth as philosophy but as historical reports, which are always referenced to their sources whose veracity is then investigated thoroughly. Historical reports are never accepted until you fully examine them in order to separate the sound from the baseless ones.
- The study of its matn (text): to examine the content