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…]
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…]
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…]
Since the publication of Javad Hashmi’s article regarding my DPhil research, some readers have quite understandably asked for more details. The full DPhil thesis should be available soon (and will be made available on this blog), but in the meantime, I can at least offer a summary thereof to give a better idea 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…]