JOURNAL OF ARABIC AND ISLAMIC STUDIES

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Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 11 (2011)
correctly represents the ways through which the traditions were
transmitted from their source of origin to the later recipients. 4
In this essay I will apply both approaches to the ʿUbāda b. al-Ṣāmit
tradition, 5 which deals with the punishment for adultery and fornication. 6
4 Drawing on Schacht’s theory, G. H. A. Juynboll considers the CL as the
person who invented the single strand between himself and the Prophet “in order to
lend a certain saying more prestige” (G. H. A. Juynboll, “Some Notes on Islam’s
First Fuqahāʾ Distilled from Early Ḥadīth Literature,” Arabica, 39:3 [1992], 292).
Unlike Schacht, Juynboll stipulates that in order to be historically tenable, the CL
must be cited by a number of tradents (whom Juynboll terms Partial CLs [PCLs]),
who, in order to be accepted as historically tenable PCLs, must have transmitted to
a number of later transmitters or/and collectors (G. H. A. Juynboll, “Some Isnād-
Analytical Methods Illustrated on the Basis of Several Woman-Demeaning Sayings
from Ḥadīth Literature,” al-Qanṭara, 10:2 [1989], 352; idem, “Some Notes,” 293;
idem, “Nāfiʿ, the Mawlā of Ibn ʿUmar, and His Position in Muslim Ḥadīth
Literature,” Der Islam, 70:2 [1993], 210–1; idem, Encyclopedia of Canonical
Ḥadīth [Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007], XIX [henceforth ECḤ]). In his
reconstruction of the PCL and the CL variants, Harald Motzki assumes that singlestrand
isnāds both below and above the CL have a good chance of being authentic
and may therefore serve as historical evidence. In Motzki’s view the isnāds should
be read from “above” to “below”; that is, from the vantage point of the collector,
not from the position of the alleged source of information. In such a case, it is easy
to imagine that a collector would not cite all of his informants. His collection would
rather include traditions he personally chooses from the bulk of the material known
to him. The CLs, starting with the generation of Successors, should be considered
as the first systematic collectors of traditions who, as a rule, received their traditions
or parts thereof from the persons they name as their informants. Motzki points out
that not all variant traditions that had once existed would have survived to our time,
and not all students of a given teacher would have engaged in passing their
teacher’s traditions to the following generations (Harald Motzki, “Quo vadis, Ḥadīṯ-
Forschung? Eine kritische Untersuchung von G. H. A. Juynboll: “Nāfiʿ, the mawlā
of Ibn ʿUmar, and his position in Muslim Ḥadīth Literature,” Der Islam, 73:1–2
[1996], 45–54, 227; idem, “Dating Muslim Traditions: A Survey,” Arabica, 52:2
[2005], 217, 228–9, 238).
5 Throughout the article I will call the tradition at issue “the ʿUbāda tradition,”
although I realize that this term is rather loose. The tradition cannot be ascertained
as going back to ʿUbāda and therefore, strictly speaking, cannot be named after
him. At times, I will use the phrase “dual-penalty maxim” and “penal maxim” to
describe the specific part of the tradition that deals with the punishment for sexual
transgressions. This part may also be described as “the prophetic dictum,” although,
as we shall see, at the earliest stages of its development the tradition may not have
been associated with the prophetic authority.