Thus the Qur’an reached us through a fully authentic chain...

Thus the Qur’an reached us through a fully authentic chain of narrators (mutawatir), deeming as an infidel whoever denying anything of it. Had the hadith been written down in the same way followed for the Qur’an, through the same means of investigation and accuracy, it would have reached us fully mutawatir too, devoid of that much difference among Muslims that no one could – throughout long ages – avoid.

Inscribing the Hadith: The other fact I reached through researching, was that the inscription of hadith was only done in the 2nd century (H), i.e. more than a hundred years after the Prophet’s demise. It was not the narrators who motivated to this but the governors who were feeling interdicted of writing the hadith, for fear of perpetrating that which was forbidden by the Prophet (S).

In the outset this inscription was incomplete, going then into different and changeable stages, till coming out in its recent shape, at about the middle of the 3rd Century and beginning of the 4th Hijrah Century. This delay in writing down the hadith had its bad effect and great disadvantage to which we referred in its place of the book.

Origin of Science of Hadith: Since ‘ilm al-hadith is relevant to our research, we brought about a good abstract of it, to be a guidance for anyone intending to recognize it. We have also stated information about the famous hadith books to demonstrate their reality, with what limitations attached to them and the comments said about them.

Then we have referred to the issue of jarh (sarcasm) and ta’dil (modification), moving then to the reliability of the and the scholars’ controversy regarding it, beside their positions in respect of knowledge and virtue. Out of all this we concluded our research to the true school of thought (madhhab), which discards both extravagance (ifrat) and intemperance (tafrit) concerning this reliability.

Scholars’ Stance Toward Hadith: As previously mentioned, the inscription of hadith has originated only in the 2nd Century, with its books widely-known among Ahl al-Sunnah – of al-Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Dawud, al-Tirmidhi and al-Nasa’i having not come out but only during the 3rd and 4th centuries, containing many unsuccessively-narrated (ahad) ones entailing only surmise.