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Essays on History, Religion, and Politics

Theory

Revisiting the ʿĪsawiyyah Hadith: Common Links, Anachronisms, and the Hierarchy of Evidence

November 12, 2024 by Joshua Little

Abstract: This blog article revisits a topic covered in one of my previous blog articles: a hadith that appears to have been created in response to the ʿĪsawiyyah, a Jewish messianic movement that erupted in Isfahan during the middle of the 8th Century CE. The present article incorporates some Hadith material that was not covered … [Read more…]

Posted in: Hadith, History, Methods & Debates, Textual Analysis, Theory Tagged: fabricated, Fabrication, Hadith, Harald Motzki, history, ICMA, Isawiyya, Isawiyyah, Isfahan, Islam, Islamic, isnad-cum-matn analysis, Joshua Little, Muhammad, prophecy, Prophet

A Bibliography on the Origins of Hadith

November 9, 2024 by Joshua Little

I recently appeared on the History Valley podcast to give a talk on the origins of Hadith, covering both the traditional Sunnī, Šīʿī, and ʾIbāḍī narratives thereon, and also the perspectives of modern critical scholarship. The talk covers the following topics: [@0:00] Preliminary comments [@6:16] THE ORIGINS OF HADITH, PART 1: TRADITIONAL NARRATIVES [@6:17] PART … [Read more…]

Posted in: Hadith, History, Theory Tagged: Hadith, Harald Motzki, history, Ignaz Goldziher, Islam, Islamic, Joseph Schacht, Joshua Little, Muhammad, Origins, Patricia Crone, Prophet

Reflections on the 2024 ICMA Conference and the Future of Hadith Studies

February 27, 2024 by Joshua Little

On January the 27th and 28th, 2024, Georgetown University and Charles Sturt University jointly hosted the “Isnād-Cum-Matn Analysis (ICMA) as a Method in Contemporary Hadith Studies” Conference. As both a speaker at the conference and someone with a keen interest in the ICMA and the state of the field, I thought it might be of … [Read more…]

Posted in: Current Affairs, Hadith, Methods & Debates, Textual Analysis, Theory Tagged: Hadith, Harald Motzki, ICMA, Islam, isnad-cum-matn analysis, Joshua Little

Explaining Contradictions in Exegetical Hadith

August 17, 2023 by Joshua Little

In a recent thread on the website formerly known as Twitter, a user named D1mashqi criticised one of the points I outlined in my podcast discussion with Javad Hashmi regarding some of the problems with the authenticity of Hadith. The point in question concerns the unreliability of exegetical Hadith in particular, which I summarised on … [Read more…]

Posted in: Hadith, History, Theory Tagged: Exegesis, Exegetical Hadith, Hadith, history, Michael Cook, Quran

The Unabridged Version of My PhD Thesis

March 7, 2023 by Joshua Little

My PhD thesis, entitled “The Hadith of ʿĀʾišah’s Marital Age: A Study in the Evolution of Early Islamic Historical Memory”, is now publicly available. The full unabridged version can be accessed here: I originally submitted both an abridged and unabridged version of my thesis for examination, and my examiners advocated for the unabridged version to … [Read more…]

Posted in: History, Methods & Debates, Textual Analysis, Theory Tagged: Aisha, Aishah, Diagram, Diagrams, Dissertation, Hadith, Harald Motzki, Isnad, isnad-cum-matn analysis, Isnads, Joshua Little, Oxford, PhD, Thesis

The Origins of Early Sunni Hadith Criticism, Part 2: The Modern Debate

December 23, 2022 by Joshua Little

In Part 1 of this series on the origins of proto-Sunnī Hadith criticism (here), I outlined the traditional narratives on this issue, which are plagued by numerous contradictions and cannot be relied upon alone to resolve the historical question of exactly when and where the Hadith-critical method emerged. Now, in Part 2, I survey the … [Read more…]

Posted in: Hadith, History, Methods & Debates, Theory Tagged: criticism, Hadith, history, Islam, Islamic, Joshua Little

“Common Links” as the Creators of Hadith: A Case Study of a Syrian Prophecy about the Antichrist

October 27, 2022 by Joshua Little

Ignaz Goldziher famously argued that Hadith largely reflect not the life and times of the Prophet and his contemporaries, but rather, the historical contexts and interests of later generations of Muslims: Closer acquaintance with the vast stock of ḥadīths induces sceptical caution rather than optimistic trust regarding the material brought together in the carefully compiled … [Read more…]

Posted in: Hadith, History, Textual Analysis, Theory Tagged: al-Dajjal, Antichrist, Common Link, Common Links, Gautier Juynboll, Hadith, Harald Motzki, history, isnad-cum-matn analysis, Joseph Schacht, Joshua Little, Juynboll, Motzki, prophecy, Prophet, Schacht

The New Historiography of Islamic Origins: A Review of Some Recent Trends in the Field

October 21, 2022 by Joshua Little

For many years, secular scholarship on Islamic origins and the first Islamic century was characterised by a relatively uncritical acceptance of 9th- and 10th-Century CE Islamic literary sources at face value and, consequently, a relatively uncritical acceptance of the conventional Islamic origins-narrative that predominates therein. In the context of the field of Islamic origins, the … [Read more…]

Posted in: Hadith, History, Methods & Debates, Quran, Theory Tagged: Fred Donner, Hadith, Hagarism, historiography, history, Islam, Islamic origins, Joshua Little, Michael Cook, Patricia Crone, revisionism, revisionist, Robert Hoyland, Stephen Shoemaker

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