Yeah im no expert, but there are surely plenty of critical scholars you could read in the examination of history.
But heres a few ones.
Independant sources, are the sources independant from each other and how well do they correspond in describing an event? Consider the gospels depiction of John the Baptist and Josephusâs depiction of John the baptist, both say he was a baptiser, both say he was loved by the people and both say he was killed by Herod.
Embarresment, a source is more realiable if it is embarressing to the writer. We might consider the gospel authors saying women saw the empty tomb first and proclaimed it to the apostles. Women in first century judaism and in that time in general were not considered valuable witnesses, there are jewish prayers from that time that have the man thank God for not being a woman or a gentile.
Time frame, how close is a document seperated from the event it is writing about? We can consider Josephus writing about the later part of the first century being born about 3- AD and writing about the jewish wars both ancient and just before his time, specifically the destruction of the temple.
Bias, a source should be treated with suspiscion because of the intent of the author. This goes for virtually everything in history, virtually every writing ever made, no one is ever free of bias, including ourselves but we must take that into consideration when forming an opinion.
Archeology, this should be a self evident standard. If we have a plaque describing the name Pontius Pilate from the first century as a prefect or some other title, i forget what it is, its pretty good evidence there was an important guy called pontius Pilate.
Now those are some basic ideas of history as I understand it, there are far more deeper levels of criticism and analysis which require a field of knowledge I have no idea about. But these have seemed like decent principles for the amature historian who thinks he knows what heâs talking about.
Prophet Muhammad and his disciples were historical figures, I am unaware of any historian who denies this. Prophet Muhammad wrote letters to various people, that have been documented.
Now I ask, what is the science of hadith? It has something to do with chains of narration, how do you chase those chains back to the original source? I suspect you can only rely on the written records, in which case we need to ask when these things were penned, how long are they seperated from the events?
The science of hadith is a complex system. While describing it as a mere system of verifying narrator seems simply if put in that way.
Muslim tradition is predominately an oral tradition, much like the early Jewish and Christian traditions, which transformed into both an oral and written tradition. Precedence is given to oral over written in the Islamic tradition even in modern times among traditional Sunni Muslim scholars.
The
science of hadith is really complex, so much so that I stopped perusing the study of it, because it was too overwhelming for me.
From what I studied, there are
two parts to a hadith.
The chain of transmission (the narrators- isnad), and the matn (the text).
Each chain has various gradings depending on various things.
- Ahad (Lone transmission) and Mutawatir (Mass transmission)
- Sahih (rigorously authenticated), Hasan (Well Authenticated), Daef (Weak) and Mawdu (Fabricated)
- marfoo (cut) Musnad (complete)
There are probably like 20 different classifications (I donât remember them all), just for the chain of transmission, and about the same for actual text itself.
How it was narrated
Then there is how each narrator related it, written, spoken (There are 8 different ways a narrator can narrate the hadith.- maybe more or less, I donât remember exact)
Bio for each narrator
Then there is how good the narrator memory was, (which can be broken into various phases usually memory was good while younger, however when got older memory became weaker). Thus need to determine when the person narrated such as hadith.
Then there is how trustworthy was the narrator, ,was he known to make mistake, was he honest but known to make some mistakes, honest, but made no mistakes, dishonest.
So you have a list of narrators, and various scholars have researched each narrator, and they are given a grading.
So scholar 123 considers narrator xyz to be reliable
but scholar 234 considers narrator xyz to be unreliable because of this that and the other.
So then scholars 987 may say, scholar 123 was exact in his research therefore xyz is reliable.
then scholar 231 may say, narrator xyz is reliable in terms of memory but unreliable because his son use to alter his books.
So then scholar 694 may say, therefore anything coming from narrator xyz would be consider fabricated because his son altered his books, and therefore the only narrations that is acceptable from narrator xyz is only acceptable if it can be verified by another narrator who is reliable.
So each narrator, will have detailed criticism about them. And that is for one narrator.
And there may be any where from 10-30 narrators for one hadith. And there are about 1,000,000 all together. There are about 100,000 (Sahih) authentic hadith with repetition and then there are about 10,000 authentic hadith without repetition.
It is a very detailed science.
So that is just the
science of hadith.
Then you have the
usuli scholars, who determine how the different types of hadiths can be used.
Some types of hadiths can be used for history, and good works, but cannot be used for legal rulings. And then you have hadiths that can be used for legal rulings but cannot be used for theology.
there are a lot of considerations. it is pretty complex.
ANd what I have said, does not do that subject justice.
