Authenticity of Islamic Sources according to Non-Muslim Scholars

 

The first to systematize the criticism of historical narratives and establish rules for it were Islamic religious scholars. They were compelled to take great care in dealing with the sayings and actions of the Prophet to comprehend the Quran and administer justice. They asserted, "It is nothing but revelation revealed; what is recited from it is the Quran, and what is not recited is the Sunnah." They diligently engaged in collecting, studying, and scrutinizing the traditions enriching the field of history with enduring principles that remain in both their essence and foundation to be respected in scholarly circles to this day

- Asad Rustum, Mustalah al-Tarikh, Page 7

And with more admiration and appreciation, it is noteworthy what the scholars of hadith have achieved over the centuries in this field. Here are some excerpts from their compilations presented in Their own words, acknowledging their meticulous scholarly precision and contribution to historiography

- Asad Rustum, Mustalah al-Tarikh, Page 61



But though the theory of the Isnad has occasioned endless trouble owing to the inquiries which have to be made into the trustworthiness of each transmitter, and the fabrication of traditions was a familiar and at times easily tolerated practice, its value in making for accuracy cannot be questioned, and the Muslims are justified in taking pride in their science of tradition.

- David S. Margoliouth, Lectures on Arabic Historians, Page 20



From an early date Muslim scholars recognized the danger of false testimony and hence false doctrine, and developed an elaborate science for criticizing tradition. “Tradition science,” as it was called, differed in many respects from modern historical source criticism, and modern scholarship has often disagreed with the evaluations of tradition scientists about the authenticity and accuracy of ancient narratives. But their careful scrutiny of the chains of transmission and their meticulous collection and preservation of variants in the transmitted narratives give to medieval Arabic historiography a professionalism and a sophistication without precedent in antiquity and without parallel in the contemporary medieval West. By comparison, the historiography of Latin Christendom seems poor and meager, and even the more advanced and complex historiography of Greek Christendom still falls short of the historical literature of Islam in volume, variety, and analytical depth.

- Bernard Lewis, Islam in History, Page 105




It may be truly affirmed that of al known legislators and conquerors, not one can be named, the history of whose life has been written with greater authenticity and fuller detail, than that of Muhammed.

- John Davenport, An Apology for Mohammed and the Koran, Chapter 1



But in Mohammedanism everything is different; here, instead of the shadowy and the mysterious we have history. we know as much of Mohammed as we do even of Lither and Milton. The mythical, the legendary, the supernatural is almost wanting in the original Arab authorities, or at all events can easily be distinguished from what is historical. 

- Bosworth Smith, Mohammed and Mohammedanism, Page 14



Muslims have transmitted to us everything the Prophet did during those days, whether small or great, with precision and detail. Even today, Muslims regard this pilgrimage as a model to be followed in the proper performance of the sacred rites.

- Carl Brockelmann, History of the Islamic People, Page 66



If this is the case with the ancient myths of the Arabs, then what of their reports recorded in books — reports upon which the genealogists in the early period of Islam were unanimously agreed? At that time, narrators would not accept a report except after verifying it through a sound chain of transmission, owing to their habitual practice of scrutinizing Prophetic traditions and similar religious reports in that era. The Arabs are therefore considered among the nations most rigorous in verifying narration and most meticulous in preserving what they transmit, especially in the early period of Islam, due to their reliance on memory and their neglect of writing, for reasons we have explained in the third volume of our book History of Islamic Civilization.

- George Zidan, تاريخ التمدن الإسلامي, Volume 3



The Quran is complemented by the Sunnah, which is a collection of hadiths that concern the actions and expressions of the Prophet. Here we find what he used to do and his manner of conduct toward various life situations. These hadiths that constitute the Sunnah were derived from memories and oral transmission, or were transmitted from them and subjected to rigorous criticism. Through this method, several collections of hadiths were compiled. One of those collections that is relied upon, Sahih al-Bukhari, mentions ten thousand hadiths from an original 300 thousand hadiths that were collected. The Sunnah remains the binding complement to the Quran and is constantly referred to whenever it becomes necessary to settle disputes not addressed in the Book.

- Jacques Risler, La Civilisation Arabe, Pate 39



Accepting, as we have good reason to accept, the sayings of Mohammed recorded in the books of Traditions as substantially authentic.

- A.J Arberry, The Holy Koran, Page 31-32



There is something about hadith studies that seduces its students. The sheer mass of the field—the commentaries, biographical dictionaries, supplementary studies, its seemingly precise terminology, seeming specificity and facticity—draws scholars to it like a giant gravitational field, and keeps some of them there for their entire careers... Around these collections hadith scholars—the muhaddithun—created a vast apparatus of commentaries, as well as reference works that identified and assessed those whose names are found in the isnāds: who was this Abu Sālih Dhakwān; when did he live; where did he travel; could he possibly, in fact, have met and transmitted hadith to Sumavy; did he have a good memory, good hearing; was he of sound moral character; was he theologically sound; and from whom, in turn, did he learn hadith. These supplementary works envelop the hadith in masses of additional data, making precise, adding, confirming, and augmenting it so that one either is intimidated from studying hadith at all or neglects that corona around the hadith and treats it as freestanding scholarship—or, even, gives over one's life to mastering its detail and nuance.

- Kevin Reinhart, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Page 413-414



The glory of the literature of the Mohammedans is its literary biography. There is no nation, nor has there been any which like them has during twelve centuries recorded the life of every man of letters. If the biographical records of the Musalmans were collected, we should probably have accounts of the lives of half a million of distinguished persons and it would be found that there is not a decennium of their history, nor a place of importance which has not its representatives.

- Aloys Sprenger, Ibn Hajar's biographical dictionary of persons who knew Mohammed, Vol 1, Page 1



The hadiths were classified principally on the basis of the quality of Isnad. The transmitter should be adil. That is, he should be known for scrupulous observance of the ordinances of the religion: prayer, fasting, pilgrimage and support of the poor. He must also avoid all intoxicants. He should be sober in manner and manly in his social conduct. He must, therefore, have the reputation of being truthful and honest in all his dealings. He should be known to have applied himself to the study and collection of Hadith and be strictly accurate in reproducing precisely what he had personally acquired from those from whom he transmits. He ought, by preference, also to be competent in arabic, proficient enough to appreciate which type of words or particles affect the meaning and nuance what he passes on-that is, if he is one of those who transmits hadiths according to the sense, as opposed to the strict letter. In the interests of accuracy, verbatim transmission is to be preferred. If he is among those who transmits from a book, his information will be accepted only if he had memorised his hadiths, precisely as he heard and he did not have to rely upon his text. This point is often misunderstood. The Hadith group were not opposed to the use of books. But they insist on two provisions: that people were aware of the pitfalls presented by the Arabic script itself; and so a man must actually have heard what he transmits from the person from whom he transmits, and transmit only from those he had heard, rendering himself to precisely what he had heard without embellishment and without omission.

- John Burton, Introduction to the Hadith, Page 110



The traditions of Muhammad as transmitted by his Companions and their Successors were, as a rule, scrupulously scrutinised at each step of the transmission, and that the so called phenomenal growth of Tradition in the second and third centuries of Islam was not primarily growth of content, so far as the hadith of Muhammad and the hadith of the Companions are concerned, but represents largely the progressive increase in parallel and multiple chains of transmission.

- Nabio Abbott, studies in Arabic Literary Papyri, Vol 2, Page 2



It is a well-known characteristic of Arabic literature to supply a chain of authorities (isnād) for statements made about the past. This feature, by no means confined to works of Tradition, serves the purpose of documentation in what would appear to be the strictest manner, for one is presumably taken right back to first-hand evidence. In Tradition the isnād is of vital importance, as without it traditions are considered worthless. Indeed, the isnād is said to be half the science of Tradition, because each tradition has two parts, the text (matn) and the isnād which guarantees it.

- Harald Motzki, Hadith, Page 163



I have no new evidence to add to the massive repertoire of existing material, and nothing in my methodology here is unconventional. In fact, I shall – insofar as an author can minimize the divide between his sources and his reader – let the traditional position speak for itself. Once that position is clarified and defined, we will be able to conclude that traditional Muslim scholars have already solved the problem for us, and that we have needlessly expended much scholarly effort because we have not listened carefully to what these scholars have for so long been telling us.

- Wael Hallaq, Authenticity of Prophetic Hadith: A Pseudo Problem, Page 77