Inna hādhā ’l-ʿilma dīnun fa-’nẓurū ʿamman taʾkhudhūna-hu: religion, knowledge of transmitters, and the tyranny of the high isnād
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Pavel Pavlovich [1]
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[1] Sofia University
Sofia University
Bulgaria
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- Localización: Jerusalem studies in Arabic and Islam, ISSN 0334-4118, Nº. 52, 2022, págs. 211-272
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
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Resumen
The tradition inna hādhā ’l-ʿilma dīnun fa-’nẓurū ʿamman taʾkhudhūnahu (“This knowledge is religion; therefore examine those from whom you learn it”) has been widely attested in ḥadīth literature since the third/ninth century. Its chains of transmission (isnāds) mostly converge on the early Baṣran authority Muḥammad b. Sīrīn (d. 110/728). Concerned with uprightness (ʿadāla) as a foremost attestation of transmitter reliability, the ʿilm-as-dīn tradition may offer a glimpse into the formation of ḥadīth criticism and the science of transmitters(ʿilm al-rijāl), which has been a contested issue in recent ḥadīth scholarship. In this essay, I examine the origin and transmission history of the ʿilm-as-dīn tradition, based on a method of ḥadīth scrutiny, known as isnād-cum-matn analysis. I argue that, despite the apparent multiplicity of isnāds carrying the tradition, many of them are either weak or impossible to ascertain. Rather than Ibn Sīrīn, the earliest possible disseminator of the tradition is the Baṣran client (mawlā) ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAwn (66–151/686–768). In the second part of the article, I observe that most of the tradition’s isnāds were shaped under the sway of the conception of highness (ʿuluww al-isnād), which requires that the fewest number of transmitters intervene between a ḥadīth collector and the original speaker or a key figure above the level of the original speaker.
