Orientalist Doubts Concerning the Prophetic Sunnah: Their Advocates, Their Evidence, and Their Refutation — A Critical Study (6)

شبهات المستشرقين حول السنة النبوية القائلين بها، أدلتهم، تفنيدها. دراسة نقدية

Orientalist Doubts Concerning the Prophetic Sunnah: Their Advocates, Their Evidence, and Their Refutation — A Critical Study (Part Six)

Researcher: Sami Manshur Muhammad Saif

Translated by: Reza Ervani bin Asmanu

This paper, “Orientalist Doubts Concerning the Prophetic Sunnah: Their Advocates, Their Evidence, and Their Refutation — A Critical Study,” is included in the Science of Hadith Category

الشبهة الثالثة: ادعاؤهم أن نقد المحدثين للحديث اقتصر على نقد الإسناد ولم يشمل المتن. فهم يزعمون أن علماء المسلمين لم يتجاوزوا أبداً نقد السند إلى نقد المتن، وأن نقد المتن ترك من دون عناية، يقول كاتاني^(٢): “كل قصد المحدثين ينحصر ويتركز في وادٍ جدبٍ مجهل من سرد الأشخاص الذين نقلوا الرواي، ولا يشغل أحد نفسه بنقد العبارة والمتن نفسه..”،

The Third Doubt: Their claim that hadith criticism by the hadith scholars was limited to criticism of the chain of transmission and did not include criticism of the text itself. They allege that Muslim scholars never moved beyond scrutinizing the isnad to examining the matn, and that textual criticism was left without proper attention. Leone Caetani¹ stated: “The entire concern of the hadith scholars is confined and concentrated in the barren and obscure field of listing the individuals who transmitted the reports, while no one concerns himself with criticizing the wording and the text itself.”

والمحدثون والنقاد المسلمون لا يقتصرون على الدفاع أو التحليل النقدي للسنة إلى ما وراء الإسناد، بل يهتمّون عن كل نقد للنص، إذ يرونه احتقاراً لمشهور الصحابة، وقتيلاً لمنظر على الكيان الإسلامي^(٣).

The author rejects this portrayal, arguing that Muslim hadith scholars and critics did not restrict their defense and critical analysis of the Sunnah to the isnad alone. Rather, they also paid close attention to criticism of the text itself and to indications within the content that could reveal problems in a report.²

ويقول المستشرق “شاخت” مؤيدًا كاتاني: “إن العلماء المسلمين أخفوا نقدهم لمادة الحديث وراء تقدمهم للإسناد نفسه”^(٤).

The Orientalist Joseph Schacht, supporting Caetani’s view, also stated: “Muslim scholars concealed their criticism of the substance of hadith behind their emphasis on the isnad itself.”³

ويقول “غاستون ويت” كاتب مقال (الحديث) في التاريخ العام للديانات: “وقد درس رجال الحديث السنة بإتقان، إلا أن تلك الدراسة كانت موجهة إلى السند ومعرفة الرجال والتقائهم وسماع بعضهم من بعض”^(٥).

Gaston Wiet, the author of the article “Hadith” in General History of Religions, stated: “The scholars of hadith studied the Sunnah with precision, but that study was directed toward the chain of transmission, identifying the narrators, determining whether they met one another, and establishing whether they heard from one another.”⁴

وهدف المستشرقين من هذه الشبهة ما يفهم من كلام “غاستون ويت” لقد نقل لنا الرواة حديث الرسول صلى الله عليه وسلم مشافهة، ثم جمعه الحفاظ ودونوه، إلا أن هؤلاء لم ينقدوا المتن، ولِذلك لسنا متأكدين من أن الحديث قد وصلنا كما هو عن رسول الله من غير أن يضيف إليه الراوي شيئاً عن حسن نية في أثناء روايتهم الحديث، ومن الطبيعي أن يكونوا قد زادوا شيئاً عليه في أثناء روايتهم، لأنه كان بالمشافهة”^(٦).

The purpose behind this doubt, as understood from Gaston Wiet’s statement, is to suggest that the narrators transmitted the hadiths of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ orally, after which the hadith masters collected and recorded them, but without subjecting their texts to criticism. On this basis, they argue that we cannot be certain that a hadith reached us exactly as it came from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, without a narrator adding something to it — even unintentionally or in good faith — during oral transmission. They therefore assume that additions would naturally have entered the reports because the transmission was oral.⁵

تفنيدها:

Refutation

إن أوهى شبهة تمسك بها المستشرقون ولاكها في مؤلفاتهم هي زعمهم بأن المحدثين المسلمين لم يعنوا بنقد المتن، ويدرك من لديه أدنى اطلاع على كتب علوم الحديث ومصطلحه أن هذا الادعاء ما هو إلا محض كذب وافتراء، وإن أُحسن الظن بمن قال بهذا الرأي فيقال: إنه ينم عن جهله العميق بعلم مصطلح الحديث،

The author regards one of the weakest claims repeatedly advanced by Orientalists in their writings as the assertion that Muslim hadith scholars paid no attention to criticism of the matn. Anyone with even a basic familiarity with books on the sciences and terminology of hadith, he argues, will recognize that this claim is unfounded. At the most charitable interpretation, he says, such a view reflects a profound lack of knowledge of the discipline of mustalah al-hadith.

ومن الأدلة على اهتمام علمائنا السابقين بنقد السند والمتن على حد سواء هي النقاط التالية:

Among the evidences demonstrating that earlier Muslim scholars paid attention to criticism of both the isnad and the matn are the following points:

To be continued in the next part, in sha Allah

Source: Alukah

1. Leone Caetani (d. 1926 CE) was an Italian Orientalist from an aristocratic family. He studied at various universities and traveled extensively in the East, particularly to India, Persia, Egypt, and Syria. He mastered Arabic and Persian and wrote in Italian a work on Islamic history that was translated and discussed by many Muslim scholars. See: Ghayat al-Tahqiq, vol. 1, pp. 323–327.
2. See: al-Istishraq wa Mawqifuhu min as-Sunnah an-Nabawiyyah, p. 263.
3. See: ar-Radd ‘ala Jawami’ al-Mustashriqin, Abdullah al-Khatib, p. 163.
4. See: as-Sunnah Qabla at-Tadwin, Muhammad ‘Ajjaj al-Khatib, p. 254.
5. See: Ibid., same page.