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First Century Sources for the Life of Mu1ammad? A Debate 41
versions than many legal traditions. This is not very surprising, however, as from
the third/ninth and fourth/tenth centuries many more legal and hadith works
have been preserved than historical works or works specifically dealing with
the life of Mu1ammad. As only a few hadith collections include sections on
Mu1ammad’s biography, the number of possible sources in which sira traditions
were likely to be included is much smaller than the number of sources which
comprise mainly legal traditions. Thus, we simply have fewer versions for almost
any sira tradition than we have for most legal traditions, and this makes isnad
analysis more difficult.
But Shoemaker’s conclusion, that therefore using isnad-critical methods on
sira traditions is less likely to yield relevant results, is unfounded, or possibly
based on a too strict focus on the isnad. While it is true that usually there are fewer
versions of sira traditions than of legal traditions, on the other hand, many sira
traditions are much longer than legal traditions. This, too, is not surprising, as
sira traditions in general needed to provide a context and some line of events,
while legal traditions can (and often do) only contain a legal maxim without mentioning
any context. The longer a tradition is, however, the easier it is to compare
different versions regarding contents, wording, or the line of events. Thus while
in legal studies there are usually many versions of a tradition but the differences
between the versions are often rather small, in sira traditions it is much easier to
see whether one version can be derived from another or whether they more likely
have a common source.
This is an aspect that is totally disregarded by Shoemaker, who only argues
with the isnads. But as can be demonstrated, very often a careful comparison of
the matns can reveal if a text is dependent on another and could indeed be derived
from it or not. In several cases a careful comparison of matns thus immediately vitiates
Shoemaker’s speculative assumptions on the possible invention of different
variants of a text. Insisting, as Shoemaker does, on Juynboll’s criteria for dense
network of transmitters may be useful when focusing on the isnad; however, when
taking into account the variants of the matn, secure statements about the interdepencency
of texts can already be made with a less dense network of transmitters.
Shoemaker also fails to see several of the other benefits of the isnad-cummatn
analysis. With this method for instance, it is possible to detect later insertions
and transformations of a tradition. The method aims not only at reconstructing
earlier layers of a tradition, but also at studying its transformation process.
Thus by using this method it can be shown that attempts at establishing a chronology
of events begin only in the generation after ^Urwa, scarcely only with Hisham,
slightly more with al-Zuhr\, and systematically only in the generation of Ibn
Is1aq. Observations such as this one cannot be achieved by resorting to matn
criticism alone.