JOURNAL OF ARABIC AND ISLAMIC STUDIES

200
Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 11 (2011)
dhālika); the second one comes to light when these symptoms are
removed from the narrative:
*(1) Kāna rasūl u l-lāh i , ṣalʿam, idhā nazala/nuzzila ʿalay-hi (2) fanazala/nuzzila
ʿalay-hi dhat a yawm in fa-lammā surriya ʿan-hu qāla:
The division of the preamble into the above textual layers will be helpful
at the next stages of our analysis.
The Qatāda b. Diʿāma cluster
In addition to the traditions through Saʿīd b. Abī ʿArūba, the revelation
cluster includes a number of isnāds that look at first sight as likely dives
under the CL (Diagram 5, p. 192). May these isnāds indicate a CL that is
earlier than Ibn Abī ʿArūba or they are mere dives? What was the
wording of the hypothetical early CL version if it existed at all? Let us
turn to these traditions for possible answers.
Ibn Ḥanbal, Ibn al-Mundhir and Abū Muḥammad al-Fākihī 126 cite a
tradition on the authority of Ḥammād b. Salama, thereby circumventing
Saʿīd b. Abī ʿArūba. This version differs from the other revelation
traditions in relying on the collective transmission of Ḥumayd al-Ṭawīl
(d. 142/759–60) and Qatāda b. Diʿāma (d. 117/735) from al-Ḥasan al-
Baṣrī. Due to the considerable age difference between Ḥumayd and
Qatāda, it seems as an isnād irregularity that Ḥumayd and Qatāda are
juxtaposed at a single tier of transmission. Ḥumayd would have been a
more likely intermediate link between Qatāda and Ḥammād b. Salama
(d. 167/784), but neither al-Fākihī nor Ibn Ḥanbal nor Ibn al-Mundhir
indicates this possibility.
Above the tier of Ḥammād b. Salama, one finds a key figure, al-ʿAlāʾ
b. ʿAbd al-Jabbār (d. 212/827–8), who is quoted directly by the CR, al-
Fākihī, and indirectly by Ibn al-Mundhir. A CR quotation accompanied
with a single-strand isnād may point to al-ʿAlāʾ b. ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s
CL/PCL status, provided that the traditions that pass through him are
textually consistent. Ibn Ḥanbal’s isnād to Ḥammād b. Salama is a single
strand, but it may serve as corroborative evidence of Ḥammād’s CL
status if a consistent matn variant of al-ʿAlāʾ b. ʿAbd al-Jabbār is
established, and if that variant concurs with the matn of Ibn Ḥanbal.
Compared to the traditions in the Ibn Abī ʿArūba cluster, Ibn Ḥanbal,
Ibn al-Mundhir and al-Fākihī partly dispose of clause 1b, which
126 Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad, 37:376, no. 22703; Ibn al-Mundhir, Tafsīr, 1:602, no.
1469; Abū Muḥammad al-Fākihī, Fawāʾid, ed. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿĀyiḍ
al-Ghabbānī (1st ed., Riyadh: Maktabat al-Rushd, 1419/1998), 433–4, no. 209.