In contemporary Western Hadith Studies, the isnad-cum-matn analysis (ICMA) is the foremost method of reconstructing and dating hadiths, which can often be traced—in one form or another—back to earlier, commonly cited tradents or “common links” (CLs). These CLs have thus replaced the extant Islamic literary sources as a key methodological barrier—a transmissional or informational bottleneck—facing historians of early Islam, who continue to debate whether—or to what extent—such CLs reliably preserve earlier religio-historical material. The present article argues that several existing methods of Hadith analysis can be used to reach back beyond CLs, especially tradition-historical criticism. By subjecting the results of an ICMA to a further tradition-historical analysis, it is possible to reconstruct the pre-CL or even pre-isnad development of hadiths, including the way in which such hadiths emerged, via a series of transitional forms, from an underlying Urtradition or archetype. This kind of combined approach is not only useful for historians of early Islam, but also necessary: without implementing such methods, we run the risk of mistaking later distortions or secondary developments for authentic historical data. To avoid or at least minimize this problem, the ICMA should always be used alongside other historical-critical methods, which can help to shed light on the prehistories of hadiths.
Meat production contributes considerably to the climate crisis. It is a major cause of animal suffering and the over-consumption of meat increases health risks. As Muslims represent a large part of the world population and economy, they are both causing climate change and suffering from it. Based on the analysis of primary and secondary sources, this paper discusses and analyses how vegetarianism and veganism are considered in the Muslim world.Meat consumption in the Muslim World is relatively low. But with an increasing Muslim population on Earth, and increasing per capita incomes, meat production and its associated problems are increasing. Through the interpretation of respective Quranic verses, the prophetic tradition, and theological position, the slaughter of (certain kinds of) animals and the consumption of their meat is approved in Islam. The same sources also call strongly for compassion for animals and for moderation in consumption.Nowadays, vegetarians and vegans are a small but growing phenomenon in the Muslim world and diaspora. While some might be non-religious, others defend and propagate their position as Muslim vegetarians by referring to historical precedents of pious Muslim vegetarians, primarily by reinterpreting the sources of the traditional Islamic view. The discourse about Islamic vegetarianism is also in communication with the discourses of environmentalism, postdomesticity, and ecofeminism. A major argument is that the ecological and economic situation has changed significantly since the initial period of Islam, and that considering the present challenges, and the Islamic principles of human stewardship on Earth, and compassion for animals, vegetarianism or veganism is the preferable Islamic choice. In addition to these arguments, other factors influence Muslim food habits and the accompanying discourses, among them the interests of the ḥalāl meat industry and the development of alternative proteins, e.g. cultured meat and insect proteins.
Western academic and traditional Muslim scholarship on Ḥadīth studies are often perceived as operating in silos, due to the differing sets of assumptions they operate on. While we should be careful about broad strokes, what sets them apart is the underlying presumptions on which a corresponding historiography is built. The primary focus of this article will be briefly assessing the historical assumptions that underlie modern Western Ḥadīth s tudies. The aim is to highlight the conjectural aspect of the approach adopted in modern Ḥadīth studies to date aḥādīth or Muslim traditions and to contrast the two approaches (modern and traditional) on a given topic, by providing a high-level “side by side” presentation to show that the former is highly speculative. Having first pointed out some of the pitfalls of letting speculative a priori assumptions drive our reading of the data, the point will be illustrated by considering how this can affect the conclusions drawn in the context of Isnād-cum-Matn Analysis (henceforth ICMA). The purpose of this discussion is to show that, from a traditional perspective, the principles and methodology adopted in modern Ḥadīth studies do not make their conclusions more plausible than the alternative. What results, then, is that the advocates of the respective analytical frameworks continue to operate in silos, each unconvinced of the value of the other’s work.
This paper introduces and tests a new methodological framework for analyzing Twelver Shīʿī (Imāmī) ḥadīth, aiming to adapt isnād-cum-matn analysis (ICMA) to the distinctive written transmission patterns of Shīʿī traditions. While the current form of ICMA was developed and applied in alignment with the oral-centric transmission dynamics of Sunnī ḥadīth during Islam’s first three centuries, its application to Imāmī ḥadīth remains methodologically limited and inconclusive. This largely stems from the lack of systematic attention in academic scholarship to the defining features of Imāmī ḥadīth development, particularly its early reliance on written documentation. To address this gap, this paper proposes an approach that cross-references isnāds with the transmission lines of early Imāmī written records (kitābs and aṣls) documented in bio-bibliographical works—such as Rijāl al-Najāshī and Fihrist al-Ṭūsī. Through a detailed examination of the isnāds and variants in the matns of an Imāmī ḥadīth on the pre-existential world of particles (al-ʿālam al-dharr), this paper demonstrates how this tailored methodology enhances ICMA’s utility for dating Imāmī ḥadīth, successfully tracing its earliest recoverable textual layer to the first half of the 2nd/8th century.
Isnād-cum-matn analysis (ICMA) has been employed in Western academic hadith studies for over three decades as a method for reconstructing transmission histories. A comparable approach was long practiced by Muslim scholars under the name muʿāraḍa, which they used for evaluating hadith texts and transmitters (rijāl). This study proposes an expanded scope for ICMA by integrating it with muʿāraḍa and supplementing it with biographical data from rijāl literature. Through this combined framework, the article demonstrates that ICMA can also be effectively applied to assess the reliability of hadith s transmitted through single-strand isnāds. The most extensive critique of single-strand transmissions in hadith literature is associated with G. H. A. Juynboll. His analysis centers on isnād structures featuring common links (cl) and partial common links (pcl), while he dismisses single-strands—termed “dives” in his terminology—as fabrications. This study challenges Juynboll’s conclusions by applying ICMA to the hadith of qatl, a report concerning the legal and moral implications of killing women and children during warfare, which he presents in Encyclopedia of Canonical Ḥadīth (EOCH) with a spider-like isnād diagram. The findings demonstrate that ICMA, when expanded and carefully applied, can reconstruct a more complex and credible transmission history for this narration. To begin with, electronic hadith databases1 were used to identify an additional 43 isnāds for the hadith of qatl, which were not included in Juynboll’s original diagram. These isnāds were then analyzed alongside their corresponding textual variants, which were grouped according to their principal transmitters. The analysis revealed that the versions transmitted by each main transmitter exhibited distinctive lexical and stylistic patterns, distinguishing them from one another. Following this classification, the similarities and differences among the variants were evaluated, and possible explanations for the textual divergences were considered. Drawing on both hadith literature and logical inference based on the data received, the application of ICMA demonstrated that the expanded isnād diagram—incorporating all available transmission lines and their textual variants—reflects a credible transmission history for the hadith in question. Accordingly, based on Juynboll’s claims concerning the hadith of qatl, the core argument of this study is that his assertion—that single-strand transmissions result from coordinated fabrications by later transmitters or compilers—is, at the very least, open to question, methodologically problematic, and cannot be reliably extended to the broader hadith corpus.
