Goerke, Andreas

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     Edinburgh Research Explorer                                      Jonathan A. C. Brown: Hadith: Muhammad's Legacy in theMedieval and Modern World. (Foundations of Islam.) xii, 308 pp.Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2009.Citation for published version:Goerke, A 2010, 'Jonathan A. C. Brown: Hadith: Muhammad's Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World.(Foundations of Islam.) xii, 308 pp. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2009.' Bulletin of the School of Orientaland African Studies, vol 73, no. 3, pp. 534-536. DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X10000467Digital Object Identifier (DOI):10.1017/S0041977X10000467Link:Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research ExplorerDocument Version:Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of recordPublished In:Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African StudiesPublisher Rights Statement:Goerke, A. (2010). Jonathan A. C. Brown: Hadith: Muhammad's Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World.(Foundations of Islam.) xii, 308 pp. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2009. £19.99.Bulletin of the School ofOriental and African Studies, 73(3), 534-536doi: 10.1017/S0041977X10000467General rightsCopyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s)and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise andabide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.Take down policyThe University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorercontent complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright pleasecontact openaccess@ed.ac.uk providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately andinvestigate your claim.Download date: 28. Apr. 2017Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studieshttp://journals.cambridge.org/BSOAdditional services for Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies:Email alerts: Click hereSubscriptions: Click hereCommercial reprints: Click hereTerms of use : Click hereJonathan A. C. Brown: Hadith: Muhammad's Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World. (Foundations of Islam.) xii, 308 pp. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2009. £19.99. ISBN 978 1 85168 663 6.Andreas GörkeBulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies / Volume 73 / Issue 03 / October 2010, pp 534 ­ 536DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X10000467, Published online: 29 October 2010Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0041977X10000467How to cite this article:Andreas Görke (2010). Review of Jonathan A. C. Brown 'Hadith: Muhammad's Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World' Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 73, pp 534­536 doi:10.1017/S0041977X10000467Request Permissions : Click hereDownloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/BSO, IP address: 129.215.149.98 on 19 Aug 2013rests on assumptions, but these have to be made explicit and have to be more per-suasive than in this part of the study.Even after discarding some material due to these methodological problems, thesecond part still provides a fascinating collection of data and information on phar-macists and how they were perceived by contemporaries. The author argues on thisbasis that texts in different genres saw pharmacists with distrust and that they con-sequently underlined the need to control and regulate the production and trade ofdrugs. However, this argument still leaves an important part of the material unac-counted for and one would have wished for a more thematic organization of thispart instead of the rather schematic division according to source genres. As it stands,too much of the information is not analysed and in some sections the book reads likea list of sources pertinent for the study of pharmacists and pharmacology. The pro-blem of a rather fragmented second part is compounded by the fact that part 1 andpart 2 are effectively two independent studies that are hardly linked and that hardlyspeak to one another. The author has displayed great skill in collecting all the infor-mation and in putting these into a well-written and eloquent study and the fourappendixes (on manuscripts of the Minhāj al-dukkān, the recipes collected in thiswork, its tests for verifying material medica, and its medico-pharmaceutical termi-nology) demonstrate the author’s command of the material. However, this studydeserved more time and more effort in constructing a coherent whole.Konrad HirschlerJONATHAN A. C. BROWN:Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World.(Foundations of Islam.) xii, 308 pp. Oxford: Oneworld Publications,2009. £19.99. ISBN 978 1 85168 663 6.doi:10.1017/S0041977X10000467H˙adīths – the narrations of the words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad – arevitally important in understanding Islamic religion and culture. While the Quranis the highest authority, the h˙adīths form the backbone of Islamic law and havehad the greatest impact in forming Islamic culture.While the significance of h˙adīth in almost every field of Islamic learning isreadily acknowledged, this is not reflected in the scholarly literature. There are sev-eral good introductions to the Quran; there are also a couple of good introductions tothe life of the Prophet Muhammad, but when it comes to the h˙adīth, introductoryworks are almost non-existent. H˙adīths are usually either treated briefly in introduc-tions to Islamic law, or discussed in specialized journal articles which are notintended for and are even barely comprehensible to non-specialists. Even somebooks claiming to be introductions to the h˙adīth require much prior knowledge.The book under review here could help fill a gap. The author sees it as an “intro-duction to the hadith tradition, its collection, its criticism, its functions in Islamiccivilization and the controversies surrounding it to this day” (p. 5). Its organizationreflects this overview approach: after a short introduction including an overview ofthe basic terminology, the next two chapters cover the emergence, transmission andcollection of prophetic traditions and the development of h˙adīth criticism. The fol-lowing chapters discuss the differences between and common features of Sunni andShiite h˙adīth and the functions of prophetic traditions in different fields of Islamic534 R E V I E W Sculture. After a chapter on Western debates on the authenticity of h˙adīth the bookdiscusses early modern and contemporary Muslim debates on prophetic traditions.Chapters 2 and 3 account for almost half of the book’s volume. Chapter 2 providesan overview of the emergence and development of prophetic traditions and the relatedliterature. It shows how prophetic traditions were transmitted, how forgeries came intobeing and how the different kinds of h˙adīth collections and related works developed. Itdraws attention to the limited regional distribution of h˙adīths in the earliest times andto the changing role of prophetic h˙adīth in the course of the first centuries of Islam.Chapter 3 presents a likewise coherent and plausible account of the emergence anddevelopment of h˙adīth criticism. The author points to the different methods of eval-uating h˙adīths through the ages, and to the difficulties of applying later terminologyand methods to the times of the first h˙adīth collectors and critics. Drawing on his ownresearch, he explains why Muslim h˙adīth critics were seemingly preoccupied with thestudy of the paths of transmission of the h˙adīths to the exclusion of their contents. Acase study on the criticism of a certain h˙adīth shows in an exemplary manner howh˙adīth critics may try – and have tried – to judge a h˙adīth based on the study ofthe different narrations of the h˙adīth and the transmitters involved (pp. 113 ff.).The result, however, is telling: as the case involves a couple of transmitters of dubiousreputation and others deemed trustworthy, the critics come to different results. Somedeem the h˙adīth authentic (s˙ah˙īh˙), others deem it good (h˙asan), and yet others estab-lished (maʿrūf). This is in fact a frequent phenomenon: Muslim h˙adīth critics haddifferent views regarding the reliability of certain transmitters and paths of trans-mission, and in general they did not offer detailed explanations for their judgements.Chapter 4 examines prophetic traditions in Shiite Islam, providing a solid over-view of the Imami and Zaydi h˙adīth traditions, showing what distinguishes themfrom Sunni h˙adīth and explaining why h˙adīth literature and sciences developeddifferently from Sunni h˙adīth. While focusing on the Imami Shiite h˙adīth traditionis justified since this is the most important Shiite group, one wonders why theZaydis receive attention in contrast to other groups such as the Ismailis.The next three chapters deal with the functions of h˙adīth in different parts ofIslamic culture. The first, dealing with the function of h˙adīth in Islamic law andlegal theory, is the longest and most instructive, since h˙adīth plays a vital role inIslamic law, while its function in theology and Sufism is far less important. Theauthor provides vivid examples of Muslim jurists’ differing attitudes towardsh˙adīth, explaining how they tried to deal with seemingly contradictory h˙adīths orconflicting views between Quran and h˙adīths.The following chapter provides an overview of Western h˙adīth criticism andreactions from both Muslim and Western scholars. It summarizes importantWestern works on h˙adīth and identifies four main stages of Western criticism: theOrientalist approach, the philo-Islamic apology, the revisionist approach, and theWestern re-evaluation. The compact and necessarily terse presentation of this chap-ter might be difficult to follow for non-specialists, and the author’s illustration of theisnād-cum-matn-analysis of h˙adīths (pp. 228 ff.) is barely comprehensible even forthose familiar with this technique.Chapter 9 sketches attitudes towards h˙adīth in contemporary Muslim scholarship.The classification into four different approaches (Islamic modernism, modernistSalafism, traditionalist Salafism and late Sunni traditionalism) may seem arbitraryand unfamiliar, as the author readily admits (p. 243). Nevertheless, the chapterdemonstrates the wide range of opinions and attitudes towards h˙adīth prevalent inthe contemporary Muslim world.Each chapter concludes with helpful suggestions for further reading(confined to works in English). There is also a useful glossary of technicalR E V I E W S 535terms which at least partly explains the changing use of these terms over thecourse of time.The book is well written and offers a coherent picture of the development of thefield of h˙adīth, but puts much confidence in the reliability of the biographical tra-ditions. The author tries to treat h˙adīths in a “neutral” or “objective” tone (p. 197),and to confine the question of authenticity to ch. 8 (pp. 15–6, 69). Despite this aim,authenticity remains an unspoken issue throughout the book. For instance, accountsof ʿĀlī’s or ʿĀ’isha’s critical statements on some h˙adīths (pp. 70 f.) are taken as evi-dence for the companions’ cautious attitude, although these statements may well belater ascriptions. The same is true for Abū ʿIs˙ma’s conceding to having invented tra-ditions (p. 73): how do we know if this tradition was indeed a confession of AbūʿIs˙ma and was not invented to discredit him? And how can we establish whetherthe story of Mālik acknowledging that a tradition was genuine but was unknown tohim before (p. 27) is true or invented in support of this tradition? Other examplescan easily be found. Although there is no reason to distrust all traditions, the problemthat not only prophetic h˙adīths but also biographical traditions might have beeninvented is not touched upon. The emerging picture, however coherent and conclusivemay seem, will probably not convince scholars with a more sceptical attitude.One may also disagree with some of the author’s assessments. Thus, claiming thatthe later caliphs ʿAlī b. Abī T˙ālib and ʿUmar b. al-Khat˙t˙āb rank “among the least pro-lific hadith transmitters” (p. 20) seems odd, since both transmitted more than 500h˙adīths, placing them among the top twelve h˙adīth transmitters (of more than a thou-sand companions who are said to have transmitted traditions from the Prophet). Theclear distinction the author makes between direct transmission (“I heard the Prophetsay”) and indirect transmission (“the Prophet said”) (p. 19) to account for discrepan-cies in the number of traditions a companion allegedly transmitted seems likewise pro-blematic, as different versions of the same h˙adīth in different collections often differwith regard to the vocabulary used. The presentation of Western criticism of h˙adīth isnot unbiased and does not do justice to scholars more sceptical than the author inregard to the authenticity of the Muslim tradition. The author points to achievementsof the Muslim h˙adīth critics, their efforts in identifying forgers, their focus on findingcorroboration, etc., which indeed counter the arguments of Juynboll and others thatforgery went largely unnoticed. But the existence of, for instance, multivolumebooks identifying the names of those who obfuscated transmissions only provesthat the problem was known. What it does not tell us is how effective the h˙adīth criticsin fact were. How many forgeries went unnoticed, and how many reliable trans-missions were wrongly deemed to be forgeries? We simply don’t know. But the dif-fering assessments of Muslim h˙adīth critics, which we have seen above, suggest that amore cautious attitude would seem to be appropriate.This critique notwithstanding, the book provides a clear introduction to the fieldof h˙adīth and its function in Islamic law and society and conveys a vivid picture ofhow Muslim scholars past and present dealt with h˙adīths.Andreas GörkeDAVID JAMES:Early Islamic Spain: The History of Ibn al-Qūt˙īya.(Culture and Civilization in the Middle East.) xvii, 174 pp. Abingdon andNew York: Routledge, 2009. £70. ISBN 978 0 415 47552.doi:10.1017/S0041977X10000479536 R E V I E W S

Jonathan A. C. Brown: Hadith: Muhammad's Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World. (Foundations of Islam.) xii, 308 pp. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2009.

Andreas Görke

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