JOURNAL OF ARABIC AND ISLAMIC STUDIES

138
Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 11 (2011)
Introduction
During the past few decades, Western studies of Islamic origins made a
considerable advance in assessing the sources that have for a long time
been considered a repository of exegetic, legal and historical material
about the first centuries after the Hijra (AH). Growing skepticism towards
Islamic foundation narratives and the traditional accounts of Islamic
history undermined the notion that, unlike other religions, Islam “was
born in the full light of history” and “its roots are on the surface”. 2 The
study of the first centuries of Islam became the focus of clashing
methodologies that often yielded conflicting accounts on how, when and
where Islam emerged on the historical scene. With skepticism cast over
every aspect of early Islamic history as constructed by the traditional
sources, the implications of the methodological debate during the past
few decades have been predominantly negative. An important
consequence of this debate has been the realization that a sound
methodology for dating early Muslim traditions is needed.
In the course of the methodological debate, Western Islamicists
expressed varying opinions about the epistemological value of the formal
lines of narrative transmission, known as isnāds, which, according to the
traditional Muslim view, control the authenticity of the information
included in the substantive part of the tradition, known as matn. At one
pole of the spectrum stand the scholars who dismiss the isnāds as
fictitious authentication devices that do not carry tenable information
about the origin and the ways of transmission of the matns, especially
when they purport to link these matns to authorities from the first
century AH. 3 Instead of the isnāds, these scholars prefer to study the
2 Ernest Renan, “Muhammad and the Origins of Islam,” in The Quest for the
Historical Muhammad, edited and translated by Ibn Warraq (New York:
Prometheus Books, 2000), 128–9.
3 The origin of this view goes back to J. Schacht’s division of the isnād into a
“higher, fictitious part” that reaches back from the original promoter (N. N. or the
Common Link in Schacht’s terminology) to a Companion or the Prophet; and a
lower, presumably authentic, part, which extends from N. N. to the later collectors
(Joseph Schacht, The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence [Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1950], 171 ff). In terms of chronology, this means that “the evidence of legal
traditions carries us back to about the year 100 AH only” (ibid., 5). N. J. Coulson
tried to mitigate the implications of this conclusion by stating that there is no direct
relationship between the authenticity of the isnād and the historicity of the tradition
attached to it. While admitting that in their great majority the isnāds are fictitious,
Coulson argues that “where …the rule fits naturally into the circumstances of the
Prophet’s community at Medina, then it should be tentatively accepted as authentic