Hadith studies

Hadith studies is the academic study of hadith, (i.e. what most Muslims believe to be a record of the words, actions, and the silent approval of the Islamic prophet Muhammad as transmitted through chains of narrators).^[1] While Muslim religious scholars had developed a practice aimed towards parsing between reports about Muhammad to determine which ones are authentic (and therefore legally and ethically actionable) and inauthentic, known in tradition as the hadith sciences, academics have begun to approach hadith from a secular point of view which did not assume any legitimate hadith had been successfully passed down. At least one major difference complaint Western scholars had with the traditional hadith sciences was that it was almost entirely focused on scrutinizing the chain of transmittors (isnad) rather than the actual contents of the hadith (matn), and that scrutiny of isnad cannot determine the authenticity of a hadith.^[2]

^ An Introduction to the Science of Hadith, translated by Eerik Dickinson, from the translator's introduction, p. xiii, Garnet publishing, Reading, U.K., first edition, 2006.
^ N.J. Coulson, "European Criticism of Hadith Literature, in Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: Arabic Literature to the End of the Umayyad Period, editor A.F.L. Beeston et al. (Cambridge, 1983) "[the authentication of hadith] was confined to a careful examination of the chain of transmitters who narrated the report and not report itself. 'Provided the chain was uninterrupted and its individual links deemed trustworthy persons, the Hadith was accepted as binding law. There could, by the terms of the religious faith itself, be no questioning of the content of the report; for this was the substance of divine revelation and therefore not susceptible to any form of legal or historical criticism"

[1] An Introduction to the Science of Hadith, translated by Eerik Dickinson, from the translator's introduction, p. xiii, Garnet publishing, Reading, U.K., first edition, 2006.

[[183]-Coulson-2] N.J. Coulson, "European Criticism of Hadith Literature, in Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: Arabic Literature to the End of the Umayyad Period, editor A.F.L. Beeston et al. (Cambridge, 1983) "[the authentication of hadith] was confined to a careful examination of the chain of transmitters who narrated the report and not report itself. 'Provided the chain was uninterrupted and its individual links deemed trustworthy persons, the Hadith was accepted as binding law. There could, by the terms of the religious faith itself, be no questioning of the content of the report; for this was the substance of divine revelation and therefore not susceptible to any form of legal or historical criticism"

[1]

[2]