Ashāb al-hadīth

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Commentary by Mohammed bin Abdul Hadi al-Sindi on the famous traditional collection of Abū Dāwūd as-Sidschistānī

Ashāb al-hadīth ( Arabic أصحاب الحديث, DMG aṣḥāb al-ḥadīṯ ), also called ahl al-hadīth or traditionarians , are the followers and advocates of the Islamic traditionalism traced back to the Sunna of the Prophet Mohammed . This is why they are also called muhaddithun / Sing.muhaddith محدث, محدثون / muḥaddiṯ, muḥaddiṯūn  / 'traditionalists, narrators'.

8th and 9th centuries

The rapid growth of traditions ( hadith ) and their written fixation in the 9th century influenced the formation of Islamic jurisprudence, the second real source of which after the Koran has just become the Sunna of the Prophet. The opponents of this current, the adherents of the subjective doctrine ( Raʾy ), were called ahl al-raʾy ; they were mainly in Iraq, where the teaching of Hanafi was widely represented. But even Mālik ibn Anas , the school founder of the Malikites of Medina , who is considered to be the most influential representative of ashāb al-hadīth in early jurisprudence, used the subjective doctrine and justified it in the current legal practice ( ʿamal ) of the Medinese without resorting to the Prophet's Sunna . His immediate successors and later followers of the Maliki school of law shaped the legal doctrine mainly according to the Raʾy with the attempt to bring it into harmony with the Hadith, the Sunna of the Prophet. The best example of this is the Mudawwana of the Kairouan scholar Sahnūn ibn Saʿīd († 854), which was considered a manual of Maliki legal doctrine for centuries; this extensive collection covers all areas of jurisprudence in the form of responsa ( masa'il ), i. H. the individual legal questions are answered with recourse to the Raʾy- oriented doctrines of the old representatives of the school. The ashāb al-hadīth are only a marginal phenomenon here and are only mentioned in those traditions that Abd Allah Ibn Wahb († 812), representative of the traditionalists in Egypt, passed on to his disciple Sahnūn. Only Ahmad ibn Hanbal († 855) and the orthodox-dogmatic school of law he founded were able to give the Hadith followers unlimited influence on the Hanbalisite legal doctrine.

During the time of the Mihna (833-849), the Ashāb al-hadīth were pushed into the background politically. The Abbasid caliph al-Maʾmūn and his two successors al-Mu'tasim bi-'llāh and al-Wāthiq bi-'llāh relied entirely on the rationalist theology of the Muʿtazila and persecuted well-known representatives of traditionalism such as Ahmad ibn Hanbal. At that time, however, criticism of the hadith business came not only from the rationalists, but also from circles of the ascetics, who saw it as a form of false, outward piety. For example, the ascetic Bishop Bishr ibn Harith al-Hafi (d. 845), who was revered by al-Maūmūn and who had dedicated himself to learning hadith for a long time, at the end of his life refrained from passing on hadiths and advised the other traditionalists to use theirs Traditions “ to pay zakāt ”, d. H. to implement at least 2.5 percent of what they self-satisfied teaching.

Later development

In general, it has been observed several times and shown in research that legal scholarship has not adopted the traditional material that has existed since the 9th and 10th centuries without reservations. Rather, the aim was to follow the raʾy of recognized lawyers in law schools or to follow the legal practice recognized in a particular region. In many cases, the latter even had priority over the Prophet's Sunna; and what was considered a recognized legal practice for the Malikites in Medina, lost its validity in the Maliki scholars of al-Andalus ( Andalusia ) - to name an example.

In the great legal compendia of the Islamic Middle Ages - apart from the Hanbalites like Ibn Qudama and Ibn Qayyim al-Gauziyya - almost nothing can be traced back to the earlier influence of ashāb al-hadīth .

literature

  • Gotthelf Bergsträsser: Beginnings and Character of Legal Thought in Islam . In: Islam . tape 14 , 1925, pp. 76-81 .
  • Johannes Fück: The role of traditionalism in Islam . In: Journal of the German Oriental Society (ZDMG) . tape 93 , 1939, pp. 1-32 .
  • Ignaz Goldziher: Muhammadan Studies . tape II . Niemeyer, Halle 1890, OCLC 309999948 , p. 77 ff .
  • Joseph Schacht: The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1967, ISBN 0-19-825357-5 .
  • J. Schacht: Art. Ahl al-ḥadī th . In: The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition . Volume I, p. 258.

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Cf. F. Meier: Art. Bi sh r al-Ḥāfī. In: The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition . Volume I, pp. 1244a-1246b, here p. 1244b.