JOURNAL OF ARABIC AND ISLAMIC STUDIES

JAIS
ONLINE
Pavel Pavlovitch
zinā. Thus, the literary analysis of Muqātil’s commentary has shown that
the reference to what was to become the ʿUbāda tradition is intrusive and
was not part of the original narrative.
Isnād-cum-matn analysis seems to contradict the latter conclusion.
Our study of the isnāds and matns in the ʿUbāda cluster has shown the
Baṣran mawlā Shuʿba b. al-Ḥajjāj (born 82–6/702–7, died 160/776) as
the earliest disseminator of the non-revelation tradition. It is therefore
feasible that the tradition was known to Muqātil, who, like Shuʿba, lived
and worked in Basra. If so, isnād-cum-matn analysis belies the results of
the literary analysis by allowing an earlier date of the circulation of the
ʿUbāda tradition. Before one settles on this conclusion, however, one has
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to look more thoroughly at Muqātil’s narrative. To facilitate the task, I
cite the full matn of the dual-penalty tradition found in Muqātil’s
commentary:
(1) Allāh u akbar! (2) Jāʾa l-lāh u bi-l-sabīl. (3a) Al-bikr u bi-l-bikr i jald u
miʾat in wa-nafy u sana. (3b) Wa-l-thayyib u bi-l-thayyib i jald u miʾat in warajm
un bi-l-ḥijāra.
(1) Allāh is great! (2) Allāh has come with a way. (3a) A virgin with a
virgin [punish them with] one hundred strokes and a year’s banishment
(3b) and a non-virgin with a non-virgin [punish them] with one hundred
strokes and execution with stones.
Before all, one should note that the tradition does not include the
revelation preamble. Neither do the surrounding sentences indicate that
the Prophet’s words are divinely revealed. Like Shuʿba, Hushaym and
al-Qaṭṭān, Muqātil, or the later redactor who ascribed to him the halakhic
commentary, knew only the non-revelation tradition, which, it will be
recalled, developed over the course of the second century AH. This is
however too broad a frame; it does not allow us to determine whether the
prophetic tradition was present in Muqātil’s original narrative.
The opening clauses of the prophetic dictum in Muqātil’s commentary
depart from the established wording of the dual-penalty traditions in a
way that suggests either dissimilar origin or different stages in the
narrative development. Most of the traditions in the ʿUbāda cluster open
with khūdhū ʿan-nī (clause 1) immediately followed by qad jaʿala l-lāh u
la-hunna sabīl an (clause 2). Muqātil’s alternative clause 1 indicates that
khūdhū ʿan-nī may have not been present in the original tradition, which,
therefore, would have been an early legal maxim independent of the
prophetic and scriptural authority. Clause 2 in Muqātil’s tradition is
transitional. Whereas most of the dual-penalty traditions repeat the
wording of Qurʾān 4:15; Muqātil refers to the same verse in paraphrase.