Analysing Muslim Traditions

Classical orientalist studies of Hadith generally fell under the studies of the origins of Islam. Hence, the primary focus of these studies was to prove the origins and provenance of Hadith. With the absence of any sources contemporary to the Prophet, Western scholars’ attitude towards the corpus of Hadith was sceptical. For them, in contrast to the Muslim view of Hadith, every tiadith was deemed to be a forgery until it can be proven otherwise. Scholars discarded the Muslim approach to Hadith verification as being too formalistic and based only on external criteria (isnad). Hence, they devised their own methodologies for verifying the authenticity and origins of Hadith. Harald Motzki suggested that it is not prudent to wholly do away with the chain of narrators as a careful study of these chains can tell us a lot about the provenance of a tiadith. Rather, the chain of narrators should be studied in tandem with the text of a tiadith, which Motzki calls the isnad-cum-matn approach.