What is the principal Muslim sacred text?
In about the year 610, Muhammad began to deliver orally the messages he believed were of divine origin. His “recitation” (qur’an) of the revelation was initially held in memory by his followers, and, according to traditional accounts, was not produced in full written form until some years after Muhammad’s death in 632. Scholars distinguish between the “Meccan period” (610–622) and the “Medinan period” (622–632), and they note various significant differences in the tone and content of the revelations from one to the other. What began as “an Arabic recitation” retained that name even after it was written down, and the resulting book is still known as “The Recitation” or Quran.
How have Muslims preserved the teachings of Muhammad? Is the Hadith literature anything like the New Testament Gospels in which the words of the founding figure are enshrined?
Second only to the Quran in sacred authority are the “sayings” of Muhammad, enshrined in a large body of literature called Hadith. The Hadith literature is similar to the Gospels to the extent that it preserves the words and deeds of the religious founder. But the two sources are very different in a number of ways. First of all, the four Gospels developed as conscious literary-theological endeavors. Their authors (or schools of thought associated with individuals whose names the Gospels bear) carefully designed works that would convey the meaning of Jesus’s life from a particular perspective. They include many things Jesus is reported to have said, but those sayings are woven into the fabric of a larger narrative structure. They depended a great deal on oral reports, to be sure, but the written record was complete by about seventy years after Jesus’s death.
The Quran (sometimes spelled Koran or Qur’an) is the holy book of Islam. It was delivered orally by the Prophet Muhammad as divine revelation.
How did the process of formalizing “tradition” about Muhammad unfold?
A remarkable enterprise known as the “search for Hadith” took scholar-collectors across the central Islamic lands, interviewing countless individuals known for reliable powers of recollection. But collecting was not the end of the process. Scholars then subjected the material to intense scrutiny, inquiring into the background and trustworthiness of every individual named among the “chains” of transmitters (isnad) associated with each saying. Analysis of such personal characteristics as veracity, intellect, uprightness, and devotion, along with other data concerning the times and places individuals had lived, allowed scholars to classify transmitters as part of the emerging “science of men.” A single weak link in a chain would indicate an unreliable Hadith.
What were the first major results of the “search for the Hadith”?
By the end of the ninth century, a group of six major collections had come to be regarded as authoritative among Sunni Muslims, each containing thousands of sayings with assessments of their reliability. There are dozens of others, as well, and Shi’i Muslims also developed several major collections of their own. Like the Gospels, the Hadith are considered divinely revealed. But whereas Muslims consider the Quran the direct literal word of God, the Hadith represent content of divine origin couched in Muhammad’s own unique expression.
Who were the Companions of the Prophet and why are they important?
Muslims have long known their tradition’s earliest stalwart and exemplary figures as the Companions (sahaba [sa-HAA-ba]) of the Prophet. Classical sources from biographical dictionaries such as Ibn Sad’s Greater Book of Generations identify fifty or sixty as the most intimately acquainted with the Prophet. Tradition credits some with being key sources of oral tradition, and thus with preserving the Sunna of the Prophet. Representing high Muslim ideals, the Companions are listed prominently among religious authorities following Muhammad in Quranic interpretation.
Did the Hadith material come into being in as short a time as the Quran?
The record of Muhammad’s words and deeds evolved more gradually. For several generations at least, Muslims hesitated to put the words into writing, perhaps out of concern that the words of the Prophet be kept separate from the Word of God in the Quran. Some Hadiths were written down, but memory of Muhammad’s sayings and actions remained alive largely through oral transmission, recollections passed on from one generation to another. Curiously, the early Muslims sought to remember not only what Muhammad had said and done, but who transmitted the material as well. Some members of local communities came to be known as particularly important living repositories of the tradition. Several generations along, religious scholars were becoming increasingly concerned that the living link might eventually weaken to the breaking point. So toward the end of the eighth and beginning of the ninth century, nearly two hundred years after Muhammad’s death, traditionists mounted a vast concerted effort to gather all available evidence of the living record.
Are there any important honorific distinctions among the Companions?
Of the total group, tradition further identifies a group of the “Ten Blessed Companions,” among whom are the Four Rightly Guided Caliphs, Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali. The remaining six are: Zubayr ibn al-Awwaam, Abd ar-Rahman ibn Awf, Sad ibn Abi Waqqas, Sayyidina Said ibn Zayd, Talha ibn Ubaydallah, and Amr ibn Abu Ubayda. The Companions included, naturally, the elect cadre of first converts to Islam, but eventually embraced a much broader variety of people. Beneath the retrospective listing of Companions that began to take shape some seventy to eighty years after Muhammad’s death (632) lies a skein of inter-related criteria that characterize an authentic Companion. In addition to having “seen” the Prophet, Companions were ranked first in terms of chronological order in conversion (the earliest known as the sabiqun, SAA-bi-koon, the predecessors). Other criteria included, for example, accompanying Muhammad in the Hijra to Medina (622), fighting in the Battle of Badr (624), participation in the treaty of Hudaybiya (628), or presence among the early converts in Medina known as the Prophet’s “Helpers” (Ansā r, an-SAAR). A host of other qualifications, mostly related to pin-pointing date of conversion, include participation in the battles of Uhud and the Ditch, for example, and relatively late conversion to Islam during Muhammad’s visit to Mecca after the Muslims reclaimed it in 630. These were such signal events in the life of Muhammad and the early community that participation in them became roughly analogous to the presence of leading first-generation Christians at major moments in Christ’s life.
Christians talk about an “apostolic age” that extended beyond the lifetime of Jesus. Do Muslims have anything similar, a kind of idealized period that lives on as a time uniquely informed by the spirit of the founder?
Islamic tradition early on developed an intense interest in the importance of direct links to the Prophet. First generation Muslims, who had enjoyed the great blessing of living in Muhammad’s presence, came to be called the Companions (sahaba, sa-HAA-ba). Their authority in matters of religious judgment ranks second only to that of the Prophet. In matters of dispute about how to interpret the Quran and sayings of Muhammad, the views of the Companions became the first recourse. As a group, the Companions have come to be revered much as Christians revere the apostles of Jesus. Christians need only recall how eager Paul was to establish his rank among the apostles, even though he had never met Jesus, to appreciate the importance of such a socio-religious classification.
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