Muhammad and The Jews — Page 21
INTRODUCTION of the isniid than that customary in the preceding period". 1 Both of them had their shuruf (conditions) and if a Tradition did not comply with those conditions it was not included in their collection. Robson, discussing degrees of authority in Traditions points out that Muslim scholars like Mul)ammad b. ~ Abd Allah al-Naisabiiri put first on their list those which were given by both Al-Bukhari and Muslim2. This, in fact, is a general view not limited to al-Naisaburl. But the criticism of the If adith does not apply to the Traditions quoted in this study. Traditions concerning legal and juristic subjects, though they may not always be obvious, have not been used. The Traditions, which might have been fabricated under Umayyad or Abbasid influence are not relevant to our research. Similarly Tradi- tions concerning the Shi~i-Sunni differences are suspect and do not concern us. Most of the criticism by classical and Western scholars is aimed at such Traditions. My attitude, therefore, in dealing with the Ifadith material has been identical to that of Montgomery Watt who says : In the legal sphere there may be some sheer invention of traditions, it would seem. But in the historical sphere, in so far as the two may be separated, and apart from some exceptional cases the nearest to such invention in the best early historians appears to be a 'tendential shaping' of material. . . in as much as many of the ques- tions in which the historian of the mid-twentieth century is interested are not affected by the process of shaping, there should be little difficulty in obtaining answers to his questions from the sources. 3 Wherever no motive can be ascribed, or wherever a If adlth is not directly involved in a controversy of the sub ject under study I am inclined to depend more on it than on our three maghii zi sources. Guillaume's remarks on the subject are pertinent in this connection : A man who laboured sixteen years on the compilation of his corpus, who sought the aid of prayer before committing a tradition to writing and who interro- gated over one thousand sheikhs living in places so distant as Balkh, Merv, Nisapur, the principal towns of Mesopotamia, the Hijaz, Egypt, and Syria, deserved well of his co-religionists. . . The man Bukhari has always been immeasurably greater in the popular estimation th an Muslim, and the tendency has been for the work of the former to take precedence of the latter. The one is prized for its range over the whole field of fiqh and the strictness of the shurlit or rules for determining the trust- worthiness of riiwfs, while the other is preferred for its more concise treatment 1 Goldziher, Muslim Studies, Vol. II, p. 227. 2 Robson, The Muslim World, Vol. XLI, p. 32. 3 Montgomery Watt,. Muhammad at Mecca (Oxford, 1968), p. 13. 21