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Circular Logic Of Hadith Sciences
As salamualaikum,
If the books that tell us which narrators were trustworthy were written hundreds of years after the Hadith were collected, and those books were based on the Hadith themselves, doesn’t that mean the whole verification process is circular? In other words, aren’t they just using the Hadith to prove the narrator was good, and then using the narrator to prove the Hadith is true?
How is then hadith sciences are reliable ? Can anyone point which episode this has been discussed in the 23 Objection series for Hadith?
Jazakallahu Khairaa
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Circular Logic Of Hadith Sciences
updated 11 hours, 50 minutes ago
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The critical evaluation of narrators was not documented in this manner. The critics were either contemporaries or immediate successors of the narrators, and as experts in their field, they were well aware of the reliability and trustworthiness of individuals within their discipline. They continuously dictated and recorded these assessments in their works. Later compilers gathered this information and included it in their comprehensive books.
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If later compilers gathered this information, then how much is the time gap between critics and when the actual compilation took place. I am asking this because the initially hadith was based on oral transmission and so did the critics transmit their criticism orally.
What guarantee is there that the criticisms were transmitted exactly as they were without any bias or modifications or malicious intent because initial years after the prophet (sws) passed were filled with wars, division and sectarian conflicts and hadith forgeries.
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The transmission of Hadith, the evaluation of narrators, and the preservation of historical accounts have always been continuous processes carried out through both oral and written means. From the earliest period of Islam, circles of Hadith instruction were established in which teachers systematically transmitted their knowledge to students. This process was organized rather than random, with students learning directly from recognized teachers. They not only memorized their teachers’ narrations but also recorded them in writing, ensuring their preservation and accurate transmission.
The well-known Hadith compilations were not the earliest written records of Hadith. Rather, they were the first comprehensive and systematically organized collections, which explains their widespread recognition and enduring popularity.
Similarly, several Hadith critics documented their assessments of narrators. The reliability of a particular narrator is not established on the basis of a single critic’s opinion; instead, it is determined by considering the collective evaluations of multiple qualified critics.
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