robert spencer-did muhammad exist__ an inquiry into islams obscure origins-intercollegiate studies institute (2012) (1)

would hadiths with weak attribution, or no attribution at all, even exist? 62
Despite such claims, there is strong reason to question the reliance on isnads as a guide to the
authenticity of hadiths. The isnads themselves didn't start appearing until after hadiths had begun
circulating. Islamic tradition attributes a telling statement about the isnads to Muhammad ibn Sirin, an
eighth-century Qur'anic scholar who was also renowned as an interpreter of dreams in Iraq. The
collectors of hadiths, he said, “were not used to inquiring after the isnad, but when the fitna (= civil war)
occurred they said: Name us your informants.” 63 The fitna is usually understood as a reference to the
unrest that followed the assassination of the caliph Uthman in 656—more than thirty years after the death
of Muhammad, the subject of the hadiths. Thus even according to Islamic tradition, hadiths circulated for a
considerable period without isnads. It strains credulity to imagine that thirty years after Muhammad's
death, Muslims could remember exactly who among the Islamic prophet's companions was responsible
for transmitting each of thousands of stories about him.
Significantly, the use of isnads apparently became mandatory in the early 700s—around the time of
Abd al-Malik and Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, or shortly thereafter. 64
Even the idea that the isnad is an indication of authenticity rests on shaky foundations. Anyone who has
played the child's game of telephone, involving a story passed on by whispers through multiple
transmitters and then compared with the original at the end of the chain, knows how unreliable oral
tradition can be. 65 If Muhammad could be made to warn the Muslims that they “must keep on reciting the
Qur'an because it escapes from the hearts of men faster than camels do when they are released from their
tying ropes,” would not the same tendency to evanesce apply even more to the Hadith? 66 To be sure,
Arabia had an established practice of memorizing poetry, and the memorization of Islamic texts would
accord with that practice. It is equally true that in ancient Greece, trained bards recited the Iliad and
Odyssey from memory. But the original transmitters of the Hadith were not poets or trained bards; they
were simply companions of Muhammad who saw him do or say something at a given moment. What's
more, the Hadith are far more voluminous than the ancient epics that the ancient bards committed to
memory. And yet the canonical account of Islam's origins assumes that Muhammad's companions had
essentially total recall of the prophet's words and deeds, and that they passed on with scrupulous care
what they saw and heard in literally thousands of incidents. It further assumes that subsequent transmitters
applied equal care over the course of many decades, passing on these traditions without embellishment,
clarification, or alteration of any kind until the hadiths were finally collected and written down in the
ninth century.
Seldom, if ever, has such a feat of memory been documented.
What Did Muhammad Really Say and Do?
Ultimately, it is impossible to tell whether or not Muhammad himself actually said or did any of what the
traditional Islamic sources depict him as saying or doing, or even if there was a Muhammad at all. We
have already seen that the Abbasids to a great degree sponsored the proliferation, and ultimately the
collection, of the prophetic hadiths. This was in keeping with their opposition to the Umayyads on
religious grounds. Ignaz Goldziher observes that the Abbasids overthrew the Umayyads because of the