In late September of 2022, I passed the final exam (viva/defence) for my PhD at Oxford University, pending minor corrections. The subject of my thesis was the famous and controversial hadith about the Islamic prophet Muḥammad’s marriage to his wife ʿĀʾišah bt. ʾabī Bakr at a young age: according to the dominant version of the … [Read more…]
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…]
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…]
In his ʾAnsāb al-ʾAšrāf, the Baghdadian litterateur and genealogist ʾAḥmad b. Yaḥyá al-Balāḏurī (d. post-270/883-884) recorded the following concerning the birth of the Islamic prophet Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib (d. 11/632): As for Quṯam b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib: his mother was Ṣafiyyah bt. Jundub, the mother of al-Ḥāriṯ b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, and he … [Read more…]
In his al-ʾItqān fī ʿUlūm al-Qurʾân, the famous Egyptian Sunnī Hadith scholar al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505) mentioned the following hadith: Al-Ṭabarānī cited [a hadith] in [his al-Muʿjam] al-Kabīr, from the transmission-path of al-Walīd b. Muslim, from ʿUfayr b. Maʿdān, from Ibn ʿĀmir, from ʾAbū ʾUmāmah, who said: “The Messenger of God said: “The Quran was revealed … [Read more…]
I was asked on Twitter to apply an isnad-cum-matn analysis to the famous “Hadith of the Cloak”, an exegetical hadith relating to Q. 33:33. There are actually several hadiths that seem to be referred to as such, including a tradition attributed to ʾUmm Salamah, and another attributed to ʿĀʾišah. In this article, I will be … [Read more…]
There is a classic debate in some modern scholarship on the history of early Arabic scholarship and learning: when did Arabic scientific writing commence? More specifically, the debate is about which caliph oversaw the first translation of ‘foreign’ scientific, philosophical, and related works into Arabic (i.e., the famous Arabic translation movement): was it an Umayyad … [Read more…]
In a recent article, I explored a popular myth about the destruction of pre-Islamic Persian books and knowledge during the great Arab conquests, based on an improbable story that can be found in certain extremely late Arabic sources. There is however another, similar myth, which is perhaps better known than the first: that it was … [Read more…]
There is an infamous story about the great Arab conquests and the destruction of books, which is popularly cited by Islamophobes to show that Muslims are intolerant zealots or philistines who hate science, etc. The story goes that, when the Arab armies conquered Persia, they found libraries of Persian books. The Arab commander, Saʿd b. … [Read more…]
In the course of my investigation of a certain corpus of exegetical hadiths, I happened to come across the following report in the Tafsīr of al-Ṭabarī: Yaʿqūb b. ʾIbrāhīm related to me—he said: “Ibn ʿUlayyah related to us—he said: “Rajāʾ b. ʾabī Salamah related to us—he said: “ʿUbādah b. Nusayy, reported to us—he said: “Our … [Read more…]