JOURNAL OF ARABIC AND ISLAMIC STUDIES

JAIS
ONLINE
Pavel Pavlovitch
part of a spider before its matn is compared with the other matns that
pass through the same key figure. If a sufficient degree of overlap is
established, the evidence of the CR inevitably increases the degree of
certainty. The greater the number of CRs who quote a key figure, the
stronger the chances of that key figure’s being a CL/PCL.
Reference to Islamic biographical lexica (kutub al-rijāl) has been seen
as a rewarding part of the ḥadīth analysis. 18 Despite its exhaustive
contents, the rijāl corpus should be treated with caution. Most of the
synoptic rijāl dictionaries, as those composed by al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī
(d. 463/1071), Ibn ʿAsākir (d. 571/1176), al-Mizzī (d. 742/1341), al-
Dhahabī (d. 747/1374) and Ibn Ḥajar (d. 852/1449), were produced long
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after the isnād had been established as an authentication device. Tedious
listing of informants—both to and from a certain transmitter—leaves an
impression that late rijāl critics recovered names through a retrospective
review of the isnāds. Although this approach may have enriched their
biographical collections with numerous names of alleged early ḥadīth
transmitters, one doubts the appropriateness of such deduction. Its value
is impaired by the possible errata in the manuscripts from which the
names had been transcribed and by the inevitable inclusion of either
dubious or fictitious isnāds as a basis of deductive exercises. To rely on
the (repetitive) evidence of the biographical literature in the case of the
numerous barely known tradents, who appear with notable frequency in
the single strand isnāds both below and above the early CLs, is
tantamount to circular reasoning. 19 Therefore, when consulting the rijāl
A. Juynboll, Muslim Tradition [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983],
96–134), but rightly criticized by Motzki for drawing conclusions from silence
(“Dating,” 214–9, especially 218).
18 Such references have been extensively used by J. van Ess in Zwischen Ḥadīṯ
und Theologie. See also Juynboll, Muslim Tradition, 161–218. In his later research
Juynboll cautioned against credulous acceptance of the numerous fulāns populating
the single-strand isnāds. According to his criteria, only those master–pupil
relationships should be trusted that are attested in a sufficiently large number of
isnād bundles (“Early Islamic Society,” 156–7).
19 According to H. Berg’s remark, “biographical materials … were produced
symbiotically with the isnāds they seek to defend.” (Development, 26) This view
has been criticized by H. Motzki, who maintains that, “Berg’s claim that the
biographical materials were produced symbiotically with the isnāds and that the two
sources are not independent has not been substantiated by him or anyone else until
now and it is certainly questionable in its generalization.” (Harald Motzki, “The
Question of the Authenticity of Muslim Traditions Reconsidered: A Review
Article,” in Method and Theory in the Study of Islamic Origins, ed. Herbert Berg