Hadith literally means a report or a saying. For Muslims, it is a report documenting the sayings, actions, physical features, and tacit approvals of the Prophet Muhammad. In the nineteenth century, orientalist scholars started to question the origins and reliability of hadiths. This was the result of a growing interest in other cultures due to the expansion of colonial powers. Interest in Islamic literature in western academia was further stimulated by developments in Christian theology, the emergence of historical-critical studies of the life of Jesus, and source criticism of the Bible. It is not a coincidence then that the first scholars who occupied themselves with hadith studies are those who were involved in a source critical study of the life of Muhammad and the quest for the historical Muhammad. Ignaz Goldziher (d. 1921), the Hungarian orientalist, argued that while the hadith cannot provide an accurate record of what transpired during the life of Muhammad, it can function as historical data for later developments. ‘The hadith’, he wrote, ‘will not serve as a document for the history of the infancy of Islam, but rather as a reflection of the tendencies, which appeared in the community during the mature stages of its development.’
From the time of Goldziher, for more than fifty years, the academic study of hadith was focused on the origins of hadith. But a new era of hadith studies was ushered by new scholarship that specifically focussed on the reception history of hadith rather than its origins. Whatever the origins of hadith, the argument goes, it is definitely clear that it holds an important place in Muslim discourse and practice. Thus, how Muslims receive hadith should also be the focus of academic study and reflection. However, the focus was still confined to the era of the hadith collections (750-1050).
Garret Davidson, assistant professor of Arabic and Muslim World studies at the College of Charleston, moved the field to outside of the formative period. He examined how hadiths were studied and received during the Mamluk period, especially the works of Ibn al-Ṣalāh (1181-1245) and Ibn Ḥajar (1372-1449). Joel Blecher, co-editor of Hadith Commentary: Continuity and Change, recognised that there was a gap in the field. Whilst past scholars studied individual hadiths as well as how hadith originated and spread out through the Muslim land, Blecher argued that a study on hadith commentaries will provide us with more insight into how contestation and conciliation took place. These commentaries were themselves social commentary on the time they were written in. Hadith Commentary: Continuity and Change, based on a conference on hadith commentary held at Hamburg University in 2017, is a further exploration into the potential of this genre to capture the interplay between continuity and change.
The book is loosely divided into two historical sections: the Early and Middle Ages and the modern period. Out of the ten articles, three are on Shīʿī hadith commentaries and one on digital hadith corpora. The afterward opens further horizons and potential for the study of hadith commentary. Here, I am concerned with selected chapters I find interesting.
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