101 Hadith Qudsi by pImam ibn Arabi

hadith and ibn ¡arabi
Some of the force of this situation is conveyed by what Ibn ¡Arab¨ writes
concerning the last ¢ad¨th in the collection:
This ¢ad¨th was reported to me several times by the Shaykh, the Imam,
scion of the Prophet, transmitter of ¢ad¨th, Ab¬ Mu¢ammad Y¬nus
ibn Ya¢yå … Sometimes I read it aloud to him while he listened, [and
this was] in the interior of the Sacred Precinct and facing the most
venerated Ka¡ba ... He told me that he had received it himself from
Ab¬ al-Fa‰l Mu¢ammad ibn ¡Umar.
There then follows the list of transmitters going back to ¡Al¨ ibn Ab¨ Êålib
(the companion and son-in-law of the Prophet, and the fourth caliph), who
received it from the Prophet. In this way of transmission, a ¢ad¨th is like a
light whose ¦ame has been passed from one lamp to another through generations,
a living scripture kindled from the “niche-light” of Muhammad.
The passing of this light from generation to generation is a genuine work
of prayer and testimony to receptivity. The Prophet Muhammad himself
provides the best example of receptivity: as recounted in the thirty-eighth
¢ad¨th, when he received the news of God’s saying: “He who greets you with
peace, him shall I greet with peace. He who blesses you, him shall I bless”,
he was in total prostration. His attitude was a model of humility and servanthood
before God. The oral transmission of these sayings becomes, then, not
just a chain of people passing on information, but more akin to a succession
of prostrations. To pass on faithfully what has been given as truth requires
a total emptying of self, so that there is no interference on the part of the
transmitter. As one scholar has remarked, “the transformative presence of the
Prophet, whose emphasis on honesty and integrity was impressed on all who
knew him, together with the Quranic warnings against the practice of wilful
scriptural distortion which had brought about the destruction of previous
religious communities, created an atmosphere of anxious scrupulousness in
the reporting of his words and conduct.” 26 Many Companions were so afraid
of committing mistakes that they refused to relate any ¢ad¨th at all unless
it was essential. Others, such as ¡Abdallåh ibn ¡Amr, asked permission from
the Prophet himself that they might write down ¢ad¨th to ensure accuracy,
even though there was initially discouragement of setting down any scriptural
material in writing other than the text of the Qur¤an itself. 27 The scrupulous
26. Muhammad Siddiqi, ±ad¨th Literature, p.|23.
27. Writing was a rarity in Arabia before Islam, with one report suggesting that only
seventeen people knew how to write in Mecca (the most advanced Arab town) in the
Prophet’s youth. The Prophet himself actively encouraged young people to learn how to
read and write (for example, ¡Al¨, ¡Abdallåh ibn ¡Amr and Ibn ¡Abbås), and his successors
made reading and writing compulsory in the schools that they established.
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