Going ahead from the previous article that discussed the differences between the Sunnah and the ahadith, let’s dive straight into the differences between the Quran and the ahadith.
The ahadith vis-a-vis the Quran
(1.) The Quran has only one text, but the ahadith are scattered in around 50 different collections by dozens of hadith collectors/scholars: Starting from roughly the end of the first century of Islam, the prominent ones amongst the Sunnis being the Sahih of Al-Bukhari, the Sahih of Muslim, Sunan of Abu Dawud, the Jami’ of At-Tirmidhi, Sunan of Ibn Majah, Sunan of An Nasaii (these six are the classical Sihaah Sitta or the Authentic Six, as they are popularly called by Sunni scholars), the Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, the Sahih of Ibn Khuzaimah, the Sahih of Ibn Hibban, the Muwatta of Anas ibn Maalik, and more.
(2.) The Quran was finalized, mass transmitted, and established universally before the death of the Prophet, the Ahadith were not: Thousands of people had committed the Quran to their memories in the lifetime of the Prophet itself. A massive, live teaching and learning movement, a mammoth collective mission, was undertaken by the Prophet and his companions to ensure that the Quran reaches every Muslim with the utmost degree of accuracy, so much so that at the time of expiry of the Prophet, the Quran had been memorized by thousands of keen learners (huffaaz).
And the first complete collection of the written text of the Quran in one volume was concretely accomplished during the first Caliph, Abu Bakr’s reign, less than 3 years after Muhammad’s death. The third Caliph, Uthman, had this first text circulated even to the farthest flungs of the booming Islamic state, less than 15 years after Muhammad’s death.
But, the transmission of ahadith was not a project undertaken, supervised, and completed by the Prophet. They were reported on and off, by individuals to other individuals, upon their voluntary initiative and discretion. Hence they were not mass transmitted. They were transmitted through isolated chains containing one to maximum 70 people in its various stages of transmission.
And the first standard book of hadith circulated in the broader Muslim community, widely regarded to be imam Malik’s Muwatta, was not compiled until 150 years after the Prophet Muhammad’s death.
(3.) The Muslim community agreed upon one text of the Quran: As a consequence of the Quran having been perfected by Muhammad himself and being mass transmitted. While the ahadith weren’t perfected by Muhammad and not been mass transmitted, there continued to be different hadith collections with different scholars in different centers of the Islamic state at different points of time.
The set of ahadith which imam Malik had in Madinah was different from what his student imam Shafaii later got hold of! When Shafaii reached Egypt after completing his seminal work, Kitabul Umm, he found there a different hadith collection with the students of imam Laith/Layth, the star scholar of Egypt, who had died before Shafaii could get to Egypt. Shafaii thereafter incorporated the new insights he developed from Laith’s hadith collection and produced his magnum opus, Ar-Risalah, considered to be the mother book of the principles of jurisprudence (usul al fiqh) in Sunni Islam.
Thus the ahadith that imam Laith was using in Egypt, to derive his legal rulings from, were different from what imam Malik was using in Madinah or imam Shafaii in Palestine; and the hadith collection that Malik and Laith died with, was different from what Shafaii died with.
Ahmad ibn Hanbal’s collection Musnad was larger than Malik’s Muwatta.
Bukhari’s Sahih collection was more critically sound than his teacher Ibn Hanbal’s Musnad. And Bukhari’s student Muslim’s collection is different from his teacher Bukhari’s!
There was always this chance of a scholar not knowing some ahadith while other scholars having knowledge of the same. But, a scholar not having a verse of the Quran in his copy of the Book, while other scholars having it, this was never the case!
The number of verses of the Quran that Malik had was the same as that of Shafaii, Laith, Ahmad, Bukhari, or Muslim. Every scholar had the same text of the Quran with him, but the hadith collection of each scholar differed with time and place.
Disagreement over ahadith is to the extent that the Shias and the Sunnis have their own sets of hadith collections because the narrators whom the Sunnis accept as reliable sources of Muhammad’s traditions are not accepted by the Shias, they don’t consider Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Dawud and the rest to be reliable; their canonical hadith collections are ‘Al Kafi’ by Muhammad bin Yaqub al Kulayni, ‘Man la Yahduruhu al Faqih’ by Shaikh Saduq Muhammad bin Ali, ‘Tahdib al Ahkam’ by Shaikh Abu Jafar Tusi, ‘Al Istibsaar’ by Shaikh Abu Jafar Tusi (these four are the most revered Shiaiite hadith collections, called the Kutub al Arba’a, Shia counterpart of the Sunni Sihah al Sitta), ‘Bihaar Al Anwaar’, and more. But the Quran is immune from this wide scale disagreement, the same text being referred to by both Shias and the Sunnis as the Word of God!
(4.) Ahadith were originally isolated-acontextual while the Quran was fully contextual: Right from the date of departure of the Prophet from this world, every verse of the Quran has been contextual, as every verse was established by the Prophet himself to be a part of a surah (chapter) with a certain theme and message(s).
You study a surah, you get the context, the contextual meaning and interpretation, of all the verses of that surah. All surahs put together in one book, the Quran forms a complete wholesome text that explains itself, a self explanatory document in one small volume!
On the contrary, in the corpus of tens of thousands of ahadith, now scattered across dozens of volumes of books, not every hadith was contextual; since it was easy for anyone after the Prophet’s demise to simply say that he heard the Prophet say so and so, and then for this isolated report get recorded without the background or context as to why and when was the so and so thing said!
Like a student from the master chef’s cooking program could simply report that he heard the master say, “biryani is a strange food!”. Why did the master say so? Under what context? If the entire background/context is not mentioned/recorded, the report becomes acontextual. The same applied/ applies to the reports (ahadith) from the Prophet!
Take some examples.
Narrated Abu Hurairah: The Prophet said, “The part of an izar (lower garment) which hangs below the ankles is in the Fire.” (Sahih-al-Bukhari, #5787)
Narrated Abdullah ibn Umar: Allah’s Apostle (Prophet Muhammad) ordered that the dogs should be killed. (Sahih-al-Bukhari, #3323)
What’s the context of these ahadith? If at all the context is to be deciphered, it needs a painstaking process of collecting, grading and analyzing all the related ahadith to connect the pieces and try to complete the matrix!
That’s precisely what Bukhari and Muslim and dozens of other hadith collectors-scholars did for us in an arduous post-Mohammedan project that spanned three centuries or so. They collected all the related ahadith and placed them in books under suitable chapters and topics/headings, to try to provide some context to these originally acontextual-isolated reports spread across the full breadth of the then Islamic empire stretching from Bukhara to Al-Andalus (Islamic Spain)!
(5.) It’s easy to fabricate ahadith while it’s practically impossible to fabricate even one verse and insert it into the Quran: As explained above, it was easy for someone to say he had heard the Prophet say so and so; and some would believe him while some would not believe him, this being the reason we have separate Shiite and Sunni hadith corpuses. One group basically rejected the reports from members/perceived members of the other group. But no one could claim that so and so is a (special) verse of the Quran that (only) he (or a few others) heard the Prophet reciting! Because if he did so, he would have been attacked and belied by thousands of others who knew the Quran by heart!
Moreover, forging and putting words into the Prophet’s mouth wasn’t as difficult as forging and putting verses into the Quran because of the Quran’s novel literary style. To forge a verse and place it successfully into a surah of the Quran, the Quranic literary style, the theme and context of the surah, and several other parameters would have to be carefully considered and matched with the forged verse; a task that is excruciatingly difficult but extremely easy to be spot and call out as a forgery!
Thus, because of the wholesome nature of the Quran, its mass transmission and universal consensus, each verse of the Quran between its two covers has the same degree of authenticity and acceptability! While the ahadith could be easily forged because of it being acontextual, largely reported after Muhammad’s death, and being dependent upon individual memories of some reporters (i.e.; not transmitted en masse).
Hence all the ahadith are not of equal degree of acceptability and thus broadly classified into sahih (authentic/sound), hasan (good), and dhaeef/ zaeef (weak), with further subdivisions, in decreasing order of their acceptability. That is, their authenticity necessarily needs to be ascertained first, before using them to derive Islamic positions/rulings from.
(6.) In checking the degree of authenticity and acceptability of ahadith it’s necessary that:
- Both the sanad and matn of the ahadith be critically analyzed.
- Both sanad and matn be flawless for a hadith to be graded sahih: this being the ahlur-raiy methodology of hadith criticism, of the schools of imam Malik and imam Abu Hanifah.
- Matn would be considered correct only if:
It doesn’t go against the overall framework of Islam.
Doesn’t go against the Quran.
Doesn’t go against the established practices (the Sunnah).
Doesn’t go against established universal axioms and common sense and sound reason.
Thus, just because a hadith has sound sanad it doesn’t automatically become sahih. Unless the matn too got established as sound, the ahlur-raiy class of scholars like imam Malik and imam Abu Hanifah would not consider it to be fit as a source of Islamic law (fiqh) or creed (aqeedah).
(7.) The process of authentication of ahadith is highly subjective: There is a complex and elaborate way of criticism of the sanad, the taraf, and the matn of ahadith, devised by generations of hadith experts, to determine the degree of authenticity of each and every hadith under the Sun. This is altogether a separate field of Islamic studies, called the ‘Mustalah’ of hadith, in tandem with the science of ‘Asmaa-wa-Rijaal’ that is the study of the biographies of hundreds of thousands of hadith narrators/reporters (al-ruwaat, pl. of raawi) who form the isnaad (pl. of sanad) of the ahadith.
It’s such a vast field that universities offer full-time three year bachelors and two year masters programs on hadith studies to those who are proficient in the classical Arabic language, similar to the bachelors and masters programs in Quranic studies, Shariah/fiqh (Islamic law), etc.!
Thus, the derivation of laws from the ahadith is a more gigantic and tedious job than doing the same with the Quran, because the first step is the determination of the degree of authenticity and acceptability of the ahadith concerned, and then the interpretation and extraction of rulings from the vast corpus of dozens books of ahadith!
Moreover, the criteria that the hadith experts use to determine the degree of authenticity and acceptability of the ahadith are subjective and differ considerably. Some scholars are stricter in their critical analysis of the sanad, taraf and matn of a hadith while others are more lenient. Like Bukhari and Muslim were the strictest of all. Al Hakim, famous for his Mustadrak, is considered to be one of the most lenient.
Imam Abu Haneefah, imam Shafi’i, imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal, imam Malik, each had his own set of criteria, different from the rest, leading to their own sets of ahadith which they considered to be authentic and used to derive their legal rulings from. A hadith could be considered sound by some, but weak by others, based on their own set of criteria!
A classic example is the matter of acceptability of mursal ahadith (pl. maraasil). A mursal hadith is that whose chain of narrators (sanad) has the sahabi (Companion of Muhammad) missing between Muhammad and the tabaii (companion of Companion), i.e.; a tabaii quotes directly from Muhammad; normally it should be a tabaii quoting from a sahabi, the sahabi quoting from Muhammad. Most of the hadith experts (muhadditheen) reject maraasil outright; but most of the fuqaha (experts of fiqh/islamic law) including Abu Haneefah, Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, Malik and some muhadditheen accept it without any reservations; while Shafaii and others accept it with certain conditions.
Another example is the case of mutawaatir ahadith, which are those having a significantly large number of narrators in every stage of the chain of narrators (sanad), from Muhammad to tabieen, to taba-tabieen and so on to the recorder (Bukhari, Muslim, etc.). So, the mutawaatir ahadith have a wider circulation than their non-mutawaatir counterparts.
Now, what exactly is the required count of narrators in each stage of the isnad to qualify a hadith as mutawaatir is disagreed upon by the muhadditheen. The number varies from 4 to 70!
Mutawaatir ahadith are supposed to be considered sahih/authentic without any reservations, so if a scholar demands that the number be 10, for example, then he won’t consider a hadith to be mutawaatir if it has 7 narrators in every stage of the isnad! This has a direct effect on the derivation of rulings/conclusions from the hadith because in this case the scholar would use the other criteria to determine its authenticity, which might cause it to be graded as lower than sahih/sound/reliable, whereas a scholar who accepts the count of 7, would label the hadith to be sahih and use it to derive rulings on a more serious note!
The primary sources of Islam
All the above issues with the ahadith render it to be a non-absolute (dhanni/zanni) source, hence primary laws cannot be extracted from the ahadith. Only history and at the maximum trivial issues or laws can be derived from them as such the laws derived from the ahadith cannot be absolute.
Thus, the Sunnah and the Quran, are the only sources of the core al-Islam. The entirety of Islam the Religion is contained in these two sources which give the principles, the obligations, and the prohibitions, the core theory and the practices of Islam, that is, the primary matters over which the scholars have never disagreed. Although the Sunnah and the Quran also contain secondary matters that can be identified as the ones over which the community has differed since the very beginning, as explained under the case study on the placement of hands in Salaah!
The ahadith, amongst several other sources like customs (urf) of a nation, form the secondary or superficial basis over which the secondary layer of Islam is built consisting of secondary legal rulings (fiqh) and detailed secondary beliefs/creed (detailed theology or aqeedah) over which scholars have differed and disagreed from the very first generations of Islam!
Coming back to the issue of Aishah’s age
It should be clear now why the ahadith of Bukhari and Muslim that mention her age to be 6-9, despite being sahih in their isnad, cannot be accepted on mere face value. The critical analysis of the text (matn) of the ahadith renders them unacceptable as demonstrated in articles 20 and 21.
And the ahadith being a secondary source, the 6-9 narrative emanating from it cannot be held to be something indisputable or absolute and can be challenged and rejected in face of critical scrutiny.
So finally, with this series of five articles, we close the controversy of the saga of Aishah (r.a.) and Muhammad (s.a.w)!
Some small objections/questions and their responses/answers
(i) Doesn’t Islam get endangered/destroyed (become incomplete) if the ahadith are problematized (not considered to be a primary source of Islam)?
Definitely NOT. Since the core of Islam is in the Quran and the Sunnah, as explained above and in the previous article (through the master chef’s cooking training program example)!
(ii) Which scholars hold/have held the opinion that the Sunnah is different from, and more authoritative than, the ahadith?
From the classical scholars: Imam Malik, imam Abu Haneefah; basically the ahlur-raiy school of Madinah and Kufa (Iraq).
Amongst contemporary experts of Islam: Javed Ahmad Ghamidi and the entire Farahi school of thought, Shaykh Atabek Shukurov, Mufti Abu Layth al Maliki, Mufti Kamran Shahzad, etc.
So let’s summarize now!
The status of Ahadith versus the Quran and the Sunnah
| The Ahadith | The Quran and the Sunnah | Comments & Inferences |
| Different compilations The companions of the Prophet had different sets even after the Prophet’s death. There was no canonized set of ahadith even after the Prophet’s death. Compiled and canonized much later than the Quran. During compilation, different areas and scholars had different sets. Shias, Sunnis, Ibadis have different sets today. | The finalized version of the Quran was canonized prior to the Prophet’s death, under his direct supervision. The core practices of Islam (the Sunnah) established prior to the Prophet’s death, under his direct supervision. They have the same Quran and the same Sunnah. | Impossible that the Prophet would have left something fundamental to Islam incomplete, to be compiled, authenticated and canonized after his death! Therefore, the ahadith are not of a primary status in Islam. |
| Less reliable transmission Not transmitted en masse. Dependent upon isolated memories. | Transmitted en masse. | Less certainty in ahadith. |
| Authentication required Method of authentication is subjective. Thus, authenticity is subjective. | No authentication required. Each aayah/aayat/verse of the Quran and every practice under the Sunnah is equally established. | |
| Acontextual Exact timelines and contexts not known with certainty. Timeline and context needs to be painstakingly figured out, if at all possible. Thus, subjectivity and uncertainty is involved in rulings derived from ahadith. | Quranic contexts are clear from the Quran’s text itself. The Quran explains the Quran. It is self explanatory! | Thus, ahadith are a dhanni/zanni (uncertain) source. Primary matters (principles, faraaiz, hurmaat, primary items of belief/creed) cannot be extracted from the ahadith. Only history, fiqh (secondary rulings), secondary beliefs (detailed theology) can be extracted from the ahadith. |