Alsiraj Official Website
Sayings (Hadiths) of Prophet Muhammad
Reports in biographies and commentaries
European criticism of hadith has often mixed up hadith with the reports met with in, the biographies of the Holy Prophet and in the commentaries on the Holy Qur’an. No Muslim scholar has ever attached the same value to the biographical reports as hadith narrated in the above-mentioned collections.
On the other hand, all Muslim critics recognize that the biographers never made much effort to sift truth from error. Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal sums up the Muslim point of view as regards the trustworthiness of the biographical reports when he declares that the biographies “are not based on any principle" (Mau. p. 85), and Hafiz Zain al-Din ‘Iraqi says that “they contain what is true and what is false."
In fact, much of the adverse European criticism of hadith would have been more suitably levelled at the biographical reports, and the same is true of the reports met with in the commentaries which are still more unreliable. Many careless commentators confounded hadith with Jewish and Christian stories, and made free use of the latter as if they were so many reports.
As Ibn Khaldun, speaking of the commentaries, says: “Their books and their reports contain what is bad and what is good and what may be accepted and what should be rejected, and the reason of this is that the Arabs were an ignorant race without literature and without knowledge, and desert life and ignorance were their chief characteristics, and whenever they desired as mortals do desire to obtain knowledge of the cause of existence and the origin of creation and the mysteries of the universe, they turned for information to the followers of the Book, the Jews and such of the Christians as practiced their faith. But these people of the Book were like themselves, and their knowledge of these things went no further than the knowledge of the ignorant masses... So when these people embraced Islam, they retained their stories which had no connection with the commandments of the Islamic law, such as the stories of the origin of creation, and things relating to the future and the wars, etc. These people were like Ka’b Ahbar, and Wahb ibn Munabbah and ‘Abd-Allah ibn Salam and others.
Commentaries on the Holy Qur’an were soon filled with these stories of theirs. And in such like matters, the reports do not go beyond them, and as these do not deal with commandments, so their correctness is not sought after to the extent of acting upon them, and the commentators take them rather carelessly, and they have thus filled up their commentaries with them" (Mq. I, p. 481, ch. ‘Uhzm al-Qur’ctn).
Shah Wali Allah writes in a similar strain: “And it is necessary to know that most of the Israelite stories that have found their way into the commentaries and. histories are copied from the stories of the Jews and the Christians, and no commandment or belief can be based upon them" (Hj. p. 176, ch. I’tisam bi-1-Kitab).
In fact, in some of the commentaries, the reports cited are puerile nonsense. Even the commentary of Ibn Jarir, with all its value as a literary production, cannot be relied upon. Ibn Kathir’s commentary is, however, an exception, as it contains chiefly the hadith taken from reliable collections.
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