Page 188 - History of The Quranic Text | Kalamullah.Com

168 THE HISTORY OF THE QUR'ANIC TEXT

and so" or "The Prophet said so and SO". It is also natural that anyone
gaining such second-hand information, in reporting to a third person, would
disclose his original source along with a full account of the incident.
During the fourth decade of the Islamic calendar these rudimentary
phrases acquired importance because of thefitna (0: disturbance/revolt
against the third Caliph 'Uthman, who was assassinated in 35 A.H.) raging
at the time. They served as a precautionary step for scholars who, becoming
cautious, insisted on scrutinising the sources of all information." Ibn Skill
(d. 110 A.H.) says, "Scholars did not inquire about the isniid [initially], but
when thefitna broke out they demanded, 'Name to us your men [i.e. the
hadidi': narrators]'. Asfor those who belonged to ahlas-sunna, their hadiths
were accepted and as for those who were innovators, their hadiths were
cast aside."?
Towards the close of the first century this practice had bloomed into a
full-fledged science. The necessity of learning the Qur'an and sunna meant
that for many centuries the word 'ilm (~: knowledge) was applied solely
to religious studies,'? and in those eager times the study of ~di"thgave birth
to ar-nhla ( ;;,1..)1: the journey in pursuit of knowledge). Deemed one of the
essential requirements of scholarship, we can gauge its importance from
a remark by Ibn Ma'In (d. 233 A.H.) that anyone who limits his studies to
his city alone and refuses to journey, cannot reach scholarly maturity. II
Evidence for the transmission of 'dm in this manner comes from thousands
of hadiths bearing identical wordings but stemming from diverse corners
of the Islamic world, each tracing its origins back to a common source -
the Prophet, a Companion, or a Successor. That this congruity of content
spread across so wide a distance, in an age lacking the immediacy of modern
communication means, stands testimony to the validity and power of the
isniid system. 12

8 The recent research of Dr. 'Umar bin Hasan Fallata shows that even up to 60
A.H., it is difficult to find a fabricated ~adrth on the authority of the Prophet [al- H7a¢'u
.fi al-Ifadrth, Beirut, 1401 (1981)].
9 Muslim, $~0, Introduction, P: 15;see also al-A'zarni, StudiRs inEar(y Hadith literature,
p.213.
10 Al-A'zami, Studies in Early Hadith literature, p. 183.
11 Al-Khatib, ar-Rihla, Damascus, 1395 (1975), p. 89.
12 Al-A'zami, Studies in EarlyHadith literature, p. 15, hadith no. 3 (Arabic section).
Not all hadithsspread so widely. On the other hand, thousands of books have been
lost which would presumably have provided evidence for the spread of information
on a much larger scale.