Hadith Commentary: Continuity and Change

Edited by Joel Blecher, and Stefanie Brinkmann

Series: Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Scripture and Theology

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Publication Date: May 18, 2023

Pages: 312

ISBN: 9781474461047

Explores key texts and critical themes of hadith commentary

• Represents a milestone for the field: the first-ever edited volume on the important subject of hadith commentary
• Presents diverse case studies of hadith commentaries across time, place and sect
• Delivers new insights into themes of Islam and politics, Islamic mysticism, Islamic law, Islamic philosophy and the digital humanities
• Offers cross-disciplinary models of cutting-edge methods in textual studies from a group of international scholars

Hadith commentary has been a central site of Islamic intellectual life for more than a millennium, across diverse periods, regions and sects. This is the first volume of scholarly essays ever collected on the key texts and critical themes of hadith commentary. The book unfolds chronologically from the early centuries of Islam to the modern period, and readers will discover continuities and changes as a group of international experts offer illuminating studies of Sunnis, Shi‘i and Sufis who interpret and debate the meaning of hadith that spans a wide terrain: Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, India, and further. The volume also models a variety of methodological approaches, including social history, intellectual history, the study of religion, and digital history. By highlighting both differences and commonalities as the practice of hadith commentary circulated across distant eras and lands, this volume sheds new light on the way Muslims have historically understood the meaning of Muhammad’s example.

Table of Contents

• Introduction: What is Hadith Commentary?
  by Joel Blecher and Stefanie Brinkmann
• Part I: Formations and Developments in the Early and Middle Periods

1. Between Philology and Hadith Criticism: The Genre of Sharḥ Gharīb al-Ḥadīth
   by Stefanie Brinkmann
2. The Hermeneutics of al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā: The Interpretation of akhbār al-āḥād in Kitāb al-Amālī
   by Ali Aghaei
3. ‘Blessed are the Strangers (ghurabāʾ)’: An Apocalyptic Hadith on the Virtues of Loneliness, Sadness and Exile
   by Youshaa Patel
4. Sufi Contributions to Hadith Commentary
   by Samer Dajani
5. Ibn Rajab’s Commentary on al-Nawawī’s Forty Hadith: Innovation and Audience in the Jāmiʿ al-ʿulūm wa-l-ḥikam
   by Mohammad Gharaibeh
6. The Words of the Imām beyond Philosophy and Tradition: Shīʿī Hadith Commentaries in the Ṣafavid Period
   by Sajjad Rizvi

• Part II: Modern Recollections and Reimaginings

7. Contesting Ḥanaf ī Thought in a Twentieth-century Turkish Hadith Commentary
   by Susan Gunasti
8. Debating Authority and Authenticity in Modern South Asian Hadith Commentaries: Muḥammad Zakariyyā Kāndhalawī’
   by Awjaz al-masālik and Ali Altaf Mian
9. ʿAllāma Ṭabāṭabāʾī and Exegetical Hadiths in al-Mῑzān: A Contemporary Imāmī Commentary on Hadith?
   by Shadi Nafisi
10. Studying Hadith Commentaries in the Digital Age
    by Maroussia Bednarkiewicz, Aslisho Qurboniev and Gowaart Van Den Bossche

• Afterword: More Comments, Further Questions
  by Joel Blecher

About the Editors

• Joel Blecher is Associate Professor of History at the George Washington University in Washington, DC, the author of Said the Prophet of God: Hadith Commentary Across a Millennium(University of California Press, 2018), and co-translator of Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī’s Merits of the Plague (Penguin Classics, 2023). His other writings have appeared in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Islamic Law & Society, Oriens, and several edited volumes. His work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Library of Congress, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
• Stefanie Brinkmann is Research Fellow at the “Bibliotheca Arabica Project” at the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig. Trained in Arabic, Persian, and Roman Studies, she had acting professorships at the universities of Freiburg and Hamburg, and was member and principal investigator of a number of manuscript projects. She has published in the fields of manuscript studies, especially on hadith manuscripts, material culture in hadith, and classical Arabic poetry.

Source: Edinburgh University Press

Author: Nael Abd El-Rahaman

University: McGill University

Date of Award: Winter 2023

Abstract:

This thesis is primarily a study of the concept of Hell in Islam as it was imagined by early Muslims. Hell in Islam has received limited attention by Muslim and Western scholars of Islam, even though it occupies an important place in the events of the Day of Judgment and in the minds of those interested in learning about the Day of Judgment according to Islam.

The relative lack of information about Jahannam, particularly in languages other than Arabic, is among the reasons for the paucity of literature by Western scholars. This study provides information about Jahannam and takes on the task of giving Jahannam the attention it deserves. A general view of Jahannam in Islam will be introduced as well as its topography, its inhabitants, and the types of punishments used in it. In addition, the issue of its permanency will be discussed.

This investigation will focus on the thoughts of the first three generations without introducing later understandings, beliefs, or imaginations. Therefore, it will set aside what is currently said about Jahannam and examines what early generations said about it.

Nael Abd El-Rahaman argues that authentic hadith did in fact reflect early Muslims’ understanding of Jahannam. Therefore, the study will substantially rely on what was said by the Prophet related to Jahannam in addition to what is written in the Qurʾān regarding it. As hadith serves as a lamp to shed light on the way early Muslim perceived Jahannam, this study will address methodological and terminological issues related to hadith and discuss how the methods of early hadith critics proved to be reliable in hadith authentication processes.

In relation to the issue of hadith authenticity, the study will introduce and explore what later came to be the science of Uṣūl al-Hadith and its related genera. It will also touch on the problem of tadlīs (concealing the defects in a hadith) and how hadith critics were aware of it.

Furthermore, because Western scholars generally agree that early hadith critics limited their authentication of hadith to examining isnād (the chain of narrators), the study will also discuss matn or naṣṣ (text) criticism, in particular during the early period of Islam, by providing examples of such criticism applied by al-Ṣaḥābah.

Read the full text HERE.

Source: McGill University