3.5. DISTORTION AND FORGERY
There is no dispute over the occurrence of extensive forgery in the Hadith literature. The ulema of Hadith are unanimous on this, and some have gone so far as to affirm that in no other branch of Islamic sciences has there been so much forgery as in the Hadith. The very existence of a bulk of literature and works by prominent ulema bearing the title al-Mawdu’at, or ‘fabricated Hadith’, bears witness to extensive forgery in this area.
There is some disagreement over determining the historical origins of forgery in Hadith. While some observers have given the caliphate of ‘Uthman as a starting point, others have dated it a little later, at around the year 40 Hijrah, when political differences between the fourth caliph, ‘Ali, and Mu’awiyah led to military confrontation and the division of the Muslims into various factions. According to a third view, forgery in Hadith started even earlier, that is, during the caliphate of Abu Bakr when he waged the War of Apostasy (riddah) against the refusers of zakah. But the year 40 is considered the more likely starting point for the development of serious and persistent differences in the community, which is marked by the emergence of the Kharijites and the Shi’ah. Muslims were thenceforth divided, and hostility between them acquired a religious dimension when they began to use the Qur’an and Sunnah in support of their claims. When the misguided elements among them failed to find any authority in the sources for their views, they either imposed a distorted interpretation on the source materials, or embarked on outright fabrication.
The attribution of false statements to the Prophet may be divided into two types: (1) deliberate forgery, which is usually referred to as hadith mawdu’; (2) unintentional fabrication, which is known as hadith batil and is due mainly to error and recklessness in reporting. For example, in certain cases it is noted that the chain of narrators ended with a Companion or a Successor only but the transmitter instead extended it directly to the Prophet. The result is all the same, and fabrication whether deliberate or otherwise must in all cases be abandoned. Our present discussion is, however, mainly concerned with deliberate fabrication in Hadith.
The initial forgery in Hadith is believed to have occurred in the context of personality cult literature (fada’il al-ashkhas) which aimed at crediting (or discrediting) leading political figures with exaggerated claims. The earliest forgery in this context, according to the Sunnis, was committed by the Shi’ah. This is illustrated by the Hadith of Ghadir Khumm in which the Prophet is quoted to have said that “Ali is my brother, executor and successor. Listen to him and obey him’. A similar statement attributed to the Prophet is as follows: ‘Whoever wishes to behold Adam for his knowledge, Noah for his piety, Ibrahim for his gentleness, Moses for his commanding presence and Jesus for his devotion to worship – let him behold ‘Ali
There are numerous fabricated ahadith condemning Mu’awiyah, including, for example, the one in which the Prophet is quoted to have ordered the Muslims, ‘When you see Mu’awiyah on my pulpit, kill him.’ The fanatic supporters of Mu’awiyah and the Umayyad dynasty are, on the other hand, known to have fabricated Hadith such as ‘The trusted ones are three: I, Gabriel and Mu’awiyah.
The Kharijites are on the whole considered to have avoided fabricating Hadith, which is due mainly to their belief that the perpetrator of a grave sin is no longer a Muslim. Since they saw the fabrication of Hadith in this light, they avoided indulgence in forgery as a matter of principle and a requirement of their doctrine.
A group of heretic factions known as al-Zanadiqah (pl. of Zindiq), owing to their hatred of Islam, fabricated Hadith which discredited Islam in the view of its followers. Included among such are: ‘eggplants are cure for every illness’; and ‘beholding a good-looking face is a form of ‘ibadah’. It is reported that just before his execution, one of the notorious fabricators of Hadith, ‘Abd al-Karim b. Abu al-‘Awja’, confessed that he had fabricated 4,000 ahadith in which halal was rendered haram and haramwas rendered halal. It has been further reported that the Zanadiqah fabricated a total of 14,000 ahadith, a report which may or may not be credible. For a statement of this nature tends to arouse suspicion as to its veracity: even in fabricated matters, it is not a facile task to invent such a vast number of Hadith on the subject of halal and haram. Could it be that exaggerated figures of this order were quoted mainly for their subversive value?
Racial, tribal and linguistic fanaticism was yet another context in which Hadith were fabricated. Note for example the following: ‘Whenever God was angry, He sent down revelation in Arabic, but when contented, He chose Persian for this purpose.’ The Arab fanatic too has matched this anathema by claiming that ‘Whenever God was angry he sent down revelation in Persian, but when contented He chose to speak in Arabic. These and other similar forgeries relating to the virtues of superiority of certain tribes, cities, and periods of time over others have been isolated b y the ulema of Hadith and placed in the category of al-Mawduat.
Known among the classes of forgers are also professional story-tellers and preachers (al-qussas wa’l- wa’izun), whose urge for popularity through arousing an emotional response in their audience led them to indulge in forgery. They made up stories and attributed them to the Prophet. It is reported that once a story-teller cited a Hadith to an audience in the mosque on the authority of Ahmad b. Hanbal and Yahya b. Ma’in which runs as follows: ‘Whoever says ‘there is no God but Allah’, Allah will reward him, for each word uttered, with a bird in Paradise, with a beak of gold and feathers of pearls.’ At the end of his sermon, the speaker was confronted by Ahmad b. Hanbal and Yahya b Ma’in who were present on the occasion and told the speaker that they had never related any Hadith of this kind.
Juristic and theological differences constitute another theme of forgery in Hadith. This is illustrated by the following statement attributed to the Prophet: ‘Whoever raises his hands during the performance of salah, his salah is null and void.’ In yet another statement, we read: ‘Whoever says that the Qur’an is the created speech of God becomes an infidel […] and his wife stands divorced from him as of that moment.’
Another category of fabricated Hadith is associated with the religious zeal of individuals whose devotion to Islam led them to the careless ascription of Hadith to the Prophet. This is illustrated by the forgeries committed by one Nuh b. Abu Maryam on the virtues of the various suras of the Qur’an. He is said to have later regretted what he did and explained that he fabricated such Hadith because he saw people who were turning away from the Qur’an and occupying themselves with the fiqh of Abu Hanifah and the battle stories of Muhammad b. Ishaq. Numerous other names occur in the relevant literature, including those of Ghulam Khalil and Ibn Abi ‘Ayyash of Baghdad, who were both known as pious individuals, but who invented Hadith on the virtues of certain words of praise (adhkar wa-awrad) and other devotional matters.
Without wishing to go into details, other themes on which Hadith forgery has taken place included the urge on the part of courtiers who distorted an existing Hadith so as to please and flatter their overlords. Similarly, the desire to establish the permissibility or virtue of certain varieties of food, beverages, clothes and customary practices led individuals to introduce exaggerations and arbitrary changes in the Hadith.
Classification and Value: II
From the viewpoint of the continuity and completeness of their chains of transmitters, the Hadith are once again classified into two categories: continuous (muttasil) and discontinued (ghayr muttasil). A continuous Hadith is one which has a complete chain of transmission from the last narrator all the way back to the prophet. A discontinued Hadith, also known as Mursal, is a Hadith whose chain of transmitters is broken and incomplete. The majority of ulema have divided the continuous Hadith into the two main varieties of Mutawatir and Ahad. To this the Hanafis have added an intermediate category, namely the ‘well-known’, or Mashhur.
by M. H. Kamali
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