Page 195 - History of The Quranic Text | Kalamullah.Com

THE MUSLIM EDUCATIONAL METHODOLOGY 175

of Hammad's students and you are the eighteenth." Musa wondered
what he intended to do with all these readings and he replied, "Hammad
b. Salama committed errors and his students compounded a few more to
his. So I want to distinguish between Hammad's mistakes and those of his
students. If I fmd allof Hammad's pupils committing a mistake unanimously,
then the source of the mistake is Hammad, If I find the majority saying
one thing, and a lone student saying another, then that student isresponsible
for that particular error. In this way I can distinguish between his mistakes
and those of his students.t''"
Following this protocol enabled Ibn Ma'In to grade the various students
and determine their individual competence. Such was the fundamental basis
for assessing hadith. narrators and placing them into categories. Ibn Ma'in
did not invent thismethod nor was he the firstto apply it, but asfar as I know
he was the first to express it clearly. In fact this scheme was in usage from the
time of Caliph Abu Bakr, and though there was a difference in the quantity
of documents cross-referenced, the quality of these efforts remained.P

C. CLASSIF1CATION OF NARRATORS
The pairing of 'adl and sound knowledge with a person earned him the
general title of 'trustworthy' (~). Among the muhaddithin some graded more
specifically by using these traits to establish twelve categories: the highest
being imam (r\..): leader) and the lowest kadhdhiib (yIJs: habitual liar). This
emphasis on the ranking of narrators necessitated access to the biographies
of the transmitters involved,and to accommodate this a new science evolved,
al-Jar~ wa at-Ta(dil (J....l.d J eftl), offering a massive biographical library
which ran into thousands of volumes.P'

ii. The Unbroken Chain

As the narrator's trustworthiness is the first prerequisite for accepting a
report, so the presence of an unbroken chain is the second. This chain is
the isniid. Establishing the value of any isniid first involves a study of the
participating transmitters' biographies (in our previous example, persons
A,E, and C); once they pass the checks on morality and sound knowledge we
are ready to judge the isndditself. We must confirm that the individuals

24 Ibn Hihhan, Mqjri1~fn, vii:11a.
25 Al-A'zami, Hadith Methodology, pp. 52-53.
26 I:IajIKhalifa, Kashf a?:'-Zuniin, ii:1095-1108.