Gardens of the Righteous — Page vii
FOREWORD. It has long been recognised by western scholars how valuable is the vast corpus of Hadith (sc. the sayings of the Prophet, his companions, the early Caliphs and other leading Muslim scholars) for the study of early Islam. The pioneer efforts of the great Hungarian orientalist Ignaz Goldziher now available in English as Volume II of his Muslim Studies (London 1971) - demonstrated how much light these traditions threw on the religious development of Islam and on the political and sectarian disputes of its first three, formative centuries. . Subsequent scholars like the late Joseph Schacht have examined critically the body of Hadith and have corrected some of the misconceptions which had arisen over its historical interpretation; the results of these inquiries were embodied in his difficult but very significant book, The Origins of Muhammadan. Jurisprudence (Oxford 1950). . Yet the average Muslim believer knows the Hadith not as a historical document, but as a fundamental element in the vital fabric of his faith, which has been second only to the direct revelation of God in the Qur'an itself. For the. Muslim community, the Hadith has traditionally provided a norm of conduct and behaviour in the ethical sphere, and a source of legal prescriptions in the practical one, a means of following the sunna or example of the Prophet and of the generations of pious, early Muslims, as-salaf as-salihun. Where the Qur'an has not been explicit, the Hadith has often supplied guidance, providing an intermediate source of knowledge between the text of the Holy Book itself and the ratiocinations of the religious lawyers, the fuqaha', who had recourse, when all else failed, to such principles as analogical reasoning and personal judgement. . However, it is not easy for the Muslim today, even if he be a native Arabic speaker, to read the Hadith; the language is archaic and at times difficult, and indeed, philologists and grammarians of the classical period came to regard the. Hadith as a valuable quarry for rare words. Although many translations of. Hadith collections, or of selections from it, have been made into the other great. Islamic languages like Turkish, Persian and Urdu, there are few available in western European languages. The most important of these is the French translation by O. Houdas and W. Marçais of the Sahih of Bukhari, as Les traditions islamiques (Paris 1903-14, 4 vols. ). Also, various of the anthologies of. Islamic religious and devotional literature in translation devote some space to the Hadith: especially valuable here is the section on Tradition in the late. Arthur Jeffery's A Reader on Islam (The Hague 1962), pp. 79-250. . The present book provides a translation by Muhammad Zafrulla Khan (who has already given us a translation of the Qur'an, The Quran, Curzon Press,. London 1971) of the Riyad as-Salihin, literally "Gardens of the Righteous”, vii