ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Light On the Muhammadan Sunnah Or Defence of the Hadith Stages of Changeability of Tadwin: From what has been said above, it can be concluded that the traditions of the Messenger of Allah were not written down neither during his lifetime nor in the era of Sahabah and their followers.

And it is concluded also that tadwin only commenced in the 2nd Hijrah century in the last days of the reign of the Umayyads, adopting no one method but diversifying in various stages. In the first stage tadwin was done by collecting from riwayah of narrators, according to what the memory kept of the traditions of the Messenger of Allah.

These were inscribed in suhuf not contained in one comprehensive classified book, including beside the hadith something of fiqh, grammar (nahw), lughah (linguistics) and poetry, and alike things that were required for initial stage of tadwin. That was the first phase of tadwin of which nothing reached us through a special all-inclusive book. Then the second phase of tadwin started during the rule of the Abbasids.

The ulama’ rectified — by what they obtained from the city of Fars — and arranged what these suhuf contained, adding to them the narrations of that age, compiling out of them books dedicated for the traditions and relevant sayings of the Sahabah and fatawa of the Tabi'un, with no literature or poetry. Many among the elderly used to consider the utterances of the and Followers among the hadith.

Tadwin followed this course as a consequence of the elevation of the level of compilation during the Abbasid era, with the sciences being distinguished of each other, and the correlated issues- of every ilm being collected separately. Thus compilation continued in this manner up to the end of the 2nd century, but none of the classified books of that stage reached us except Muwatta’ of Malik.

After the 2nd century tadwin followed another course leading it to the third phase, in which the ulama’ embarked on committing to writing all the traditions narrated orally during their time in independent books, after being blemished with the sayings of the Sahabah and others, as stated before.

Many Masanid were compiled in this field, the most famous of which being Musnad Ahmad which is still extant today, to which a reference will be made when discussing the hadith books, with showing its degree of veracity and position among those books.