The Muslims’ care about the authentic transmission of this religion
Since it is the Prophet’s statements, actions, and approvals that clarify Allah’s words and explain the commands and prohibitions in Islam, the Muslims paid great attention to the authenticity of the transmission of the Hadīths reported from the Prophet (may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him), and they exerted tremendous efforts in ridding these Hadīths of additions that were not said by the Prophet and in revealing the statements
falsely attributed to him. To this end, they laid down the most accurate rules and systems to be observed in the transmission of these Hadīths from one generation to another.
We will briefly talk about this field of knowledge – the science of Hadīth – to make the reader aware of what made the Muslim Ummah distinct from other religions, as Allah enabled this Ummah to preserve their religion pure and untainted by lies and superstitions over the ages.
Transmitting the speech of Allah and the statements of the Prophet (may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him) relied upon two main ways:
memorization and writing down. The early Muslims were among the best people in accurate memorization and broad comprehension, because of their clear minds and sharp memories. This is a clear fact to anyone who reads their biographies. A Companion would hear a Hadīth right from the Prophet’s mouth and memorize it well and then convey it to someone from the following generation (Tābi‘i), who in turn would memorize and convey it to those after him. In this way, the chain of transmitting Hadīths would continue until it reached a scholar of Hadīth, who would write them down, memorize them, and collect them in a book. Then, he would read out the book to his students, who would in turn memorize and record these Hadīths and then read them out to their students and so on. The cycle kept going until these books reached all the subsequent generations in this way and manner.
Hence, any Hadīth from the Prophet (may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him) is never accepted without knowing its chain of narrators who reported it to us.
Based on this, there emerged another science that distinguished the Muslim Ummah from all other nations; namely ‘Ilm ar-Rijāl (knowledge of men), or ‘Ilm al-Jarh wa at-Ta‘dīl (science of criticism and commendation).
This science is meant for knowing the conditions of those narrators who reported the Prophet’s Hadīths to us. So, it examines their biographies, their birth and death dates, their Shaykhs and their students, and it documents
their contemporary scholars, how perfect and accurate their memorization was, their truthfulness of speech, and other things of interest to the scholar of Hadīth for the purpose of verifying the authenticity of a given Hadīth reported through a certain chain of narrators.
This science is uniquely adopted by this Ummah out of the Muslims’ keenness on the authenticity of any statement attributed to the Prophet (may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him). Never in history, from its very beginning to this day, have people seen such huge efforts and care about the statement of any person as they have seen with regard to the Prophet’s Hadīths.
It is a broad science written down in books totally concerned with the narration of Hadīths and containing detailed biographies for thousands of narrators for the sole reason that they were the intermediaries in the transmission of the Prophet’s Hadīths to the succeeding generations. This science was not established in favor of anyone, but as a balance in terms of the accuracy of criticism. It labels the liar a liar and the truthful a truthful, and likewise it classifies those with poor or strong memorization as such. To this end, they followed the most precise rules ever known to the specialists in this field.
They would not consider any Hadīth authentic unless its chain of transmission was connected, and its narrators were marked by integrity, truthfulness, and good memorization and accuracy.
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