Josef Horovitz
[39] WITH A PEOPLE as given to storytelling as the Arabs it was a matter of course that the stirring events of the Prophet's life should become the subject of popular narrative very quickly. The tales would relate independent episodes to the listeners, and it is even possible that they combined single events into a cycle of narratives. Scholarly ardour also awoke early, and addressed the subject matter no later than six or seven decades after the Prophet's death. There were only a few of the Prophet's Companions alive at that time, but the stories of those who had been present at the great events lived on in their families and tribes. These narratives were now collected and compared with one another. Together with the written sources, namely lists and documents, they would form the basis of chronologically ordered accounts. The original and genuinely Arab element in the Prophet's biography comprises the maghāzī. These are similar to the ayyām al-'arab, which had been the focus of general interest in pre-Islamic times. In the other parts of the sīra foreign influences, especially the example of the legends of saints among the ahl al-kitāb, play an important role. These influences determined the outline of the whole genre, while its only trace in the maghāzī are a few interpolated passages.
There is a close relationship between sīra and ḥadīth, in their content as well as in their form.1 Yet they have grown into two distinct branches of Muslim scholarship. It is true that the sīra's aim is mainly to narrate and edify, and that ḥadīth [40] is meant to assist in determining the practice to be followed. Still, there is much in the sīra that could be of importance to teachers of the law, and historical and edifying elements make up a considerable part of ḥadīth compilations. In fact the subject matter that both are presenting is to a large extent the same. There cannot be many traditions in Ibn Isḥaq (apart from the introduction) or al-Wāqidī for which parallels could not be found in the muṣannaf and particularly in the musnad collections. However, the principles according to which the subjects are arranged and classified differ. The classification according to subject or origin, which is used in the muṣannaf and musnad collections of ḥadīth, is contrary to the biographical arrangement of the sīra, which seeks to unify the subject matter. In the ḥadīth literature every tradition stands independently and does not need to be considered in connection with others. In the sīra every single piece of information becomes relevant only when it is fitted into the larger context. The formal similarity of the two kinds of literature appears most clearly in their use of the isnād, which appears well established in the oldest works of ḥadīth literature as well as in the sīra. In Mālik's Muwaṭṭa', the isnād is compulsory for all the traditions, even though nearly a third of the isnāds are either not traced back to the Prophet but to one of his Companions, or have links missing from the chain.2
It is not quite so easy to determine Ibn Isḥāq's relationship with the isnād. Firstly, we do not have his work in its original form, and the hope of finding the original is decreasing after it has been revealed that even the manuscript in Constantinople contains nothing but Ibn Hishām's recension.3 However, the loss is not as great as has frequently been assumed.4 Ibn Hishām always explicitly marks the changes he has made as such, and he points out his own additions. He only undertakes omissions silently, but there he explains the principles [41] according to which he undertakes them.5 Moreover, a portion of these missing passages has survived in al-Ṭabarī and elsewhere. The quotations from Ibn Isḥāq in these works can serve as an aid for checking Ibn Hishām's methods. Consequently we are able to imagine what Ibn Isḥāq's work must have looked like originally, and to define his attitude towards the isnād. He leaves much without accounting for its origin, and in many passages his informants are only mentioned in general terms.6 Yet the number of passages in which his informants are mentioned by their names is considerable. It certainly is higher than Wüstenfeld's list leads us to assume, but this has already been criticised by Fischer as being incomplete.7 Those documents that had survived in writing Ibn Isḥāq quotes without any reference to their origin, and of the large number of poems quoted, only a few are actually attributed to their transmitter.8 While it would of course be erroneous to believe that Ibn Isḥāq considered the documents to be spurious, it may be assumed that his attitude towards many of the included poems9 was similar to that which Thucydides adopted towards the orations ascribed to his generals. In other words, the documents did not need the testimony of isnād. The poems, on the other hand, almost never laid claim to originality. They owed their inclusion in the oeuvre to Ibn Isḥāq's consideration of the sensibilities of his literary friends and the aesthetic expectations of his audience.
It is probable that there was a commonly accepted version of the Prophet's biography at the time, on which Ibn Isḥāq would have based his work, as on a kind of Vulgate. This may survive in the anonymous [42] passages of Ibn Isḥāq, or in those passages whose origin is only mentioned in a very general way. Ibn Isḥāq only mentions names in cases where his teachers or other authorities took responsibility for their stories. Consequently the oldest parts of the sīra would be the anonymous passages that had essentially been taken from the popular version of the Prophet's biography. Attempts to substantiate or even change popular stories by taking them back to their sources are certainly older than Ibn Isḥāq, but they were still in process at the time when Ibn Isḥāq was arranging his material. While the method of adducing authorities for every single piece of information was beginning to take hold, it was still possible to include narratives that were not supported by authorities. Of course, the form of Ibn Isḥāq's isnāds does not yet conform to the requirements of later theory. However, the difference between Ibn Isḥāq and al-Bukhārī in this respect is not quite as significant as it appears in Caetani's studies.10 Al-Bukhārī does occasionally use expressions like ḥaddathanī ba'ḍu ikhwāaninā, ["one of our colleagues told me"],11 or ḥaddathanī al-thīqa, ["a reliable source told me"],12 and Ahmad ibn Ḥanbal does not hesitate to give as his informants rajulun mina l-muhājirīn, ["a man of the Muhājirūn"], rajulun lam yusammā, ["an unnamed man"], or rijāl yataḥaddathūn, ["some men who related"].13 Furthermore, collective isnāds, where the names of all those informants, who essentially told the same story, are prefaced to that story, are not a peculiarity of Ibn Isḥāq's style, as Caetani assumed. Instances of these are found in al-Bukhārī14 as well as in Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal.15 The situation is similar regarding references to written testimony.16 There are examples of this in al-Bukhārī and Aḥmad ibn Hanbal as well.17
[43] While Ibn Isḥāq uses the isnād, where he uses it, essentially in the same form it has in the recognised ḥadīth compilations, the number of irregularities and errors is much higher. Still, he is by no means the first to use the isnād. Not only Mūsā ibn Uqba,18 who is only a little earlier, but also Ibn Isḥāq's teacher al-Zuhrī, are familiar with it. Goldziher remarked upon the fact that al-Zuhrī uses collective isnāds,19 This is of particular importance in the present context, because it is unlikely that collective isnāds would appear unless simple isnāds had been in use for some time. We may conclude that the isnād is older than al-Zuhrī, but it will hardly be possible to determine exactly how much older. It is debatable whether 'Urwa ibn al-Zubayr, one of al-Zuhrī's most important sources, used it. Sprenger tried to prove that the isnāds attributed to 'Urwa ibn al-Zubayr are spurious.20 However, he overlooked the fact that the passages he was dealing with are by no means the only ones where isnāds are attributed to 'Urwa.21 There are fragments of letters by 'Urwa dealing with questions asked by the Umayyad caliph 'Abd al-Malik concerning earliest Islamic times.22 In these fragments, which survive in al-Ṭabarī and elsewhere, 'Urwa does not mention any of his informants by name. This, however, is not conclusive, as it is quite possible that he may have refrained from naming his sources in his letters, yet considered it necessary in other writings. It is not really important, after all, what 'Urwa's personal attitude towards the isnād was. What is important is whether the isnād was in use among the generation of learned compilers of tradition that came before al-Zuhrī, and it seems to me that it is impossible to doubt this. Indeed, we may assume that the isnād [44] first appeared in the literature of ḥadīth no later than the last third of the first century after the hijra.
Is the isnād an invention of Arab scholars? Caetani realised that it could not have originated in Arabia,23 but did not suggest any other place for its origin. The historical literature of classical and oriental antiquity does not have a corresponding feature. The only other possible origin lies in the literature of Jewish tradition, which also has a highly developed system of adducing authorities. This system is so similar to the isnād that we only have to put the two side by side in order to see the Jewish origin of the isnād.
The relation between ḥadith and Qur'ān is similar to that between Jewish oral and written traditions. Just as these two are accorded the same importance, so Islam since early times has claimed ḥadīth, or at least those parts that contain the Prophet's decisions, to be of divine origin like the Qur'ān. It is likely that this development took place under the influence of Jewish theory,24 especially as there are echoes in the actual ḥadīth of the status accorded to oral teachings in Judaism.25 The law had been revealed orally to Moses, and the question of who had handed down the knowledge between Moses and the teachers of the Tannaitic age was asked early in Judaism—indeed, centuries before the isnād appeared and developed the function of tracing transmitters back to the Prophet. The well-known passage Ābọt I.1 stands as especially indicative evidence for the entire content of the oral law:26
Moses received the law at Sinai and handed it down to Joshua; Joshua handed it down to the elders; they passed it on to the prophets, who in turn told the men of the Great Synagogue.
Here we have only the ṭabaqāt, to use the Islamic term. In Aböt I.2-12 [45] we find the names of the authorities alternating with their most representative sayings. The chain of these authorities goes from Simeon the Just and Antigonus of Sokho to the four "pairs" and hence to Hillel and Sham-mai. Besides this support for all the contents of oral law, there is similar testimony in other passages for single traditions from Mosaic times. The following is taken from Peā II.6:
Nahum the scribe says, I have heard this from Mēashā, who received it from his father, who received it from the couples, who received it from the prophets as a law given to Moses on Mount Sinai, stating that he who sows his field with two kinds of wheat, etc.
Once the principle of authenticating the contents of the tradition by adducing the names of the transmitters had been established, it did not for long remain restricted to traditions from Mosaic times. In the practice of the school it was also applied to the sayings of authorities from the Tannaitic and Amoraic ages. While the number of sayings from "oral doctrine" whose chains of transmitters have survived is small, Talmudic literature contains a vast abundance of similar chains of names of informants who relate the sayings of later authorities.27 There are by no means only opinions on legal questions to be introduced in this way. There are sayings of the most varied contents and also—and this is of particular interest to the present context— narratives. Among the informants we not only find scholars, but members of different classes and, especially in the context of events that take place within the family, women. Thus the story about the fate of Rabbi El'āzar's body is introduced in the following way: "Rabbi Samuel Bar Naḥmēnī said, Rabbi Jonātān's mother told me that Rabbi El'āzar's wife told her.... "28 It is not possible to imagine a closer parallel to the way in which, for example, 'Ā'isha's sayings are introduced.
[46] There is no lack of sentences offering theoretical support for the practice of the school. "He who says a word in the name of him who first said it will bring redemption to the world", is quoted repeatedly.29 In confirmation of this it is added30 that Rabbi Jōḥanān was angry when Rabbi El'āzar recited a tradition in the academy without mentioning him as his source. Furthermore, everyone is requested to strive to trace a tradition back to the earliest possible source: "If you can trace a tradition back to Moses, then trace it back."31 The sense of responsibility of those who quote traditions is challenged: "He who repeats a tradition after the words of him who uttered it first must imagine himself standing face to face with the au-thor."32 The satisfaction someone feels even after death when he is cited as the authority for a quoted utterance is described as follows: "Everyone in whose name a sentence is spoken in this world moves his lips in the grave."33 On the other hand there are terrible consequences to be faced if one invents sayings: "He who says a word he has not heard from his teacher will cause the Shekhīnā to withdraw from Israel."34
We have to regard the practice of Jewish schools in Talmudic times as the example after which the system of isnād was introduced into Islamic tradition. Once the principle of authentication by adducing a chain of transmitters had been established, formal similarities developed. On the other hand, it was only natural that in the course of Islamic development peculiarities appeared. Still, there are certain expressions that would not have been the obvious choice, and here we may recognise borrowings from Hebrew language usage. The use of shahida and its derivatives in the terminology of [47] the isnād,35 for instance, recalls the use of hē'īd in the literature of the Jewish tradition. There are many examples of this in the tract Eduyōot, which was named after these "testimonies". The term ḥadīth musalsal describing an uninterrupted chain of transmitters is certainly formed in analogy to shilshēl shemū'ā,36 and silsila corresponds to Hebrew shalshelet in compounds like shalshelet yuḥasin arid shalshelet ha-abot.37 Bāb, meaning chapter, whose Hebrew origin has already been recognised by Fränkel,38 is specifically a loan from the language usage of the literature of Jewish tradition. Bāb is not yet found with this meaning in Ibn Isḥāq, who uses expressions like amr, dhikr, qiṣṣa, sha'n, and khabar. Finally, isnād in its literal meaning recalls the Jewish asmakhtā, which has a tradition "lean on" a verse in the Bible in which an intimation of this tradition is found. However, "leaning on" the person of the informant is too far removed from "leaning on" a verse in the Bible for this instance to be considered a borrowing.
So far we have only seen Islam as the receiving party, but it is possible that, once the whole system of isnād had been borrowed from the literature of the Jewish tradition, it reflected back on Jewish literature through Islamic isnad scholarship. Thus despite the wealth of informants' names in Talmudic literature there is not a single attempt at chronological arrangement in pre-Islamic times. The first surviving attempt at chronological arrangement of informants is the Seder tannāim wa-amōorāim, composed after ad 885.39 It is followed by the letter of Gāön Sherirā, written in the last third of the tenth century. The oldest Arabic work in the field of isnād criticism, on the other hand, was written around the middle of the eighth century.40 As the Jewish writings mentioned were composed in the Islamic domain, it is reasonable to ascribe this budding interest in history to Islamic influences.
1Cf. also the remarks of Henri Lammens, Le berceau de l'Islam (Rome, 1914), vii.
2Ignaz Goldziher, Muhammedanische Studten (Halle, 1888-90), II, 218.
3Josef Horovitz, "Aus den Bibliotheken von Kairo, Damaskus und Konstantinopel (Arabische Handschriften geschichtlichen Inhalts)," MSOS 10 (1907), 14-15.
4E.g. by Lammens, Le berceau de l'Islam, vii n. 1.
5Ibn Hishām, Sīrat Rasūl Allāh, ed. Ferdinand Wüstenfeld (Göttingen, 1858-60), I.1. 4, 5-11.
6In such phrases as qālū, dhakarū, dhukira lī, kamā dhakara ba'ḍdu ahli l-'ilm, fīmā yadhkurūn, fīmā yaz'umūn, za'amū, ḥaddathanī man aṭīqu bihi, ḥḥaddathanī man lā at-tahim, ḥaddathanī man shi'tu min rijāli qawmī ["they said", "they mentioned", "it was mentioned to me", "as a certain learned man mentioned", "as they mention", "as they claim", "they claim", "one I trust told me" (reading athiqu for the German text's aṭīqu), "one beyond suspicion told me", "those I wished to consult from the men of my tribe told me"].
7August Fischer, "Neue Auszüge aus ad-Dahabî und Ibn an-Naǧǧâr," ZDMG 44 (1890), 401-44.
8For example Ibn Hishām, I.1, 108.
9 Cf. Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist, ed. Gustav Flügel (Leipzig, 1871-72), 92: wa-yuqālu kāna yu'malu lahu al-ash'āra wa-yu'tā bihi wa-yus'alu an yadkhulahā fī kitābihi fī l-sīra fa-yaf'alu fa-ḍdammana kitābahu mina l-ash'āri mā ṣāra bihi faḍiḥatan 'inda ruwāti l-sht'r, ["It is said that poems used to be made up for him and brought to him with the request that he include them in bis book on the sīra. He did so, thereby introducing into his book poems that rendered it a disgrace in the eyes of the tradents of verse."], and Muḥammad ibn Sallām al-Jumaḥhī, Tabaqāt al-shu'arā', ed. Joseph Hell (Leiden, 1916), 4, where in line 10 awtā is to be read.
10Leone Caetani, Annali dell'Ishm (Milan, 1905-26), I, 32 §13 (Introduzione).
11 Al-Bukhārī, Al-Jāmi' al-ṣaḥīḥ, ed. Ludolf Krehl and Th.W. Juynboll (Leiden, 1862-1908), Adhān no. 7.
12 Ibid., Nikāḥ no. 123.
13Martin Hartmann, "Die Tradenten erster Scliicht im Musnad des Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal," in MSOS 9 (1906), [167],
14 Shahādāt no. 2; Ifk no. 1; Shurūṭ no. 15; Jihād no. 66; Maghāzī no. 36; Tafsīr on 24, 12; Aymān no. 17; I'tiṣām no. 26; Tawḥīd nos. 35 and 57. With the exception of two, all these passages contain fragments of the ḥadīth al-ifk, which is a narrative ḥadīth.
15 Ignaz Goldziher, "Neue Materialien zur Litteratur des Überlieferungswesens bei den Muhammedanern," ZDMG 50 (1896), 474, also from ḥadīth al-ifk.
16Caetani, Annali, I, 34, §14 n. 4 (Introduzione).
17 Al-Bukhārī, Adhān no. 153, Jurn'a no. 11, Zakāt no. 53, Ḥajj no. 110, Tibb no. 26. On Ahmad ibn Ḥanbal cf. Goldziher, "Neue Materialien," 475.
18Eduard Sachau, "Das Berliner Fragment des Mûsâ ibn 'Uḳba. Ein Beitrag zur Kenntniss der ältesten arabischen Geschichtsliteratur," Sitzungsberichte der Königlichen Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1904, no. 9, 445-70. Wahb ibn Munabbih, on the other hand, does not mention his informants in the Heidelberg fragment; cf. C.H. Becker, Papyri Schott-Reinhardt (Heidelberg, 1906), I, 8-9.
19Goldziher, "Neue Materialien," 474; cf. also my "Zur Muḥammadlegende," Der Islam 5 (1914), 44. All the references in n. 14 above can be traced back to al-Zuhrī.
20Aloys Sprenger, Das Leben und die Lehre des Mohammad (Berlin, 1869), I, 339-40.
21Cf., for example, al-Wāqidī/Wellhausen, index s.v. 'Urwa [463]; Ibn Sa'd, Kitāb al-ṭabaqāt al-kabīr, ed. Eduard Sachau et al. (Leiden, 1904—40), [1II.2, 31]. Al-Wāqidī gives a list of the authorities who seem to have been 'Urwa's sources.
22Al-Ṭabarī, Ta'rīkh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk, ed. M.J. de Goeje et at. (Leiden, 1879-1901, I, 1180, 1284, 1633-34, 1770; Ibn Hishām, I.2, 754; al-Wāqidī/Wellhausen, 263. Cf. Caetani, Annali, I, 30-31 §11 (Introduzione); II, index s.v. 'Urwa.
23Caetani, Annali, I, 30 §10 (Introduzione).
24Ignaz Goldziher, "Kämpfe um die Stellung des Ḥadīt im Islam," ZDMG 61 (1907), 864.
25 Ibid., 865.
26The Ābōt of Rabbi Nātān mention further links in the chain.
27Cf. the posthumous work by Wilhelm Bacher, Tradition und Tradenten in den Schulen Palastinas und Babyloniens (Leipzig, 1914). The chains are of different lenghth; there are some with no less than eight links, e.g. Nedarim 8a.
28 Bābā mesīa 84b.
29 Abot VI.6 et passim.
30Yebāmōt 96b.
31 Yerush. Qiddushin 61a et passim.
32 Ibid.
33Sanhedrin 90b et passim.
34Berakot 27b.
35Besides the passages from al-Bukhārī, Muslim, and Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal quoted in Goidziher, "Neue Materialien," 487; "Kämpfe," 861; and in his Abhandlungen zur ara-bischen Philologie (Leiden, 1896-99), I, 49, cf. also al-Bukhārī 'Ilm no. 33, Ṣalāt no. 67, Adah no. 91, Jum'a no. 3.
36 Cf. above, n. 31.
37References from Jacob Levy, Neuhebräisches und chaldäisches Wörterbuch über die Talmudim und Midraschirn (Leipzig, 1876-89), IV, 569.
38Sigmund Fränkel, Die ararnäischen Fremdwörter irrt Arabischen (Leiden, 1886), 14. Hebrew delet already has the same meaning; see Jeremiah 36:23.
39Moritz Steinschneider, Die Geschichtsliteratvr der Juden in Druckwerken und Hand-schriften (Frankfurt, 1905), I, 12, 23.
40Otto Loth, "Ursprung und Bedeutung der Ṭabaqāt, vornehmlich der des Ibn Sa'd," ZDMG 23 (1869), 607; Sachau, "Musa ibn 'Ukba," 194.