Kitabat al-Hadith fi Ahd al-Nabi bayn al-Nahy wa al-Idhn
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- King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Quran in Medina
Kitabat al-Hadith fi Ahd al-Nabi bayn al-Nahy wa al-Idhn (Writing of Hadith in the Prophet's Era: Between Prohibition and Permission) is a treatise in hadith studies by the contemporary Saudi scholar Nasir bin Ibrahim al-Abudi, examining the historical and textual evidence concerning the documentation of hadith during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad .
Background and Purpose
The work was composed as a research paper for a scholarly symposium organized by the King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Quran in Medina, titled "The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's Care for the Sunnah and the Prophetic Biography" (عناية المملكة العربية السعودية بالسنة والسيرة النبوية) . The author accepted an invitation to contribute under the symposium's first thematic track, focusing on examining whether hadith writing was permitted or forbidden in the prophetic era and clarifying the stages through which early hadith recording passed .
Structure and Contents
The book begins with an introduction outlining the general evolution and stages of hadith writing during the prophetic era, followed by six core chapters, a conclusion, and an index of cited sources :
- Chapter One: Presents the hadiths that convey permission to write hadith, providing their source attribution (takhrij), chain-of-transmission analysis (dirasat asanidiha), and critical authentication .
- Chapter Two: Reviews extant written sheets (suhuf), documents, and official correspondence recorded during the lifetime of the Prophet .
- Chapter Three: Argues for the mass-transmitted status (tawatur) of reports establishing the actual occurrence of writing during the Prophet's lifetime .
- Chapter Four: Details the hadiths containing prohibitions against writing hadith, accompanied by their source documentation, chain analysis, and legal assessment .
- Chapter Five: Surveys scholarly approaches to reconciling the texts permitting and prohibiting writing, followed by a critical determination (tahqiq) of the issue .
- Chapter Six: Responds to orientalist arguments and other critiques claiming that hadiths were not recorded during the first Islamic century until formal compilation was initiated under Caliph Umar bin Abd al-Aziz .
Key Conclusions
The author summarizes several key findings in the treatise's conclusion:
- The reports explicitly prohibiting hadith writing do not exceed four narrations. The strongest among them in transmission is the narration of Abu Sa'id al-Khudri collected in Sahih Muslim, which al-Bukhari and Abu Dawud nevertheless considered defective as a non-prophetic statement (mawquf) .
- The reports, written records, and letters documenting the occurrence of hadith writing under the Prophet are numerous enough to constitute thematic recurrence (tawatur ma'nawi), yielding definitive certainty (ilm yaqini qat'i) regarding early inscription .
- The total body of material recorded in writing during the Prophet's lifetime represents a substantial portion of his traditions, equivalent in collective volume to a major hadith compilation .
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