Gharaibeh (Mohammad) ed., Beyond Authenticity, Alternative Approaches to Hadith Narrations and Collections, Leyde, Brill ("History and Civilization ; 203"), 2023. ISBN 978-90-04-52908-3

Author

Mohammad Gharaibeh, Ph.D. (2012), University of Bonn, is Professor of Islamic Intellectual History at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He has published on modern reform movements, Islamic creed, Arabic historiography, and Hadith Studies and approaches Islamic intellectual history from the perspective of the sociology of knowledge.

Presentation

The studies in this volume go beyond the question of the authenticity of Prophetic narrations, which has occupied the field of Hadith Studies for over a century. By approaching hadith narrations and literature from various perspectives, the authors seek to uncover the potential that hadith material has to better understand the intellectual and social history of Muslim societies. Applying concepts and methods from other disciplines, the authors study the materiality of hadith collections, the places they were read, and the ways they were incorporated in architecture. Additionally, they explore understudied genres such as the forty-hadith, the faḍāʾil, aḥādīth al-aḥkām, and ʿawālī collections. As such, they set a new course to push the field of Hadith Studies in a new direction.

Contents

List of Figures

Introduction: Beyond Authenticity
Alternative Approaches to Hadith and Hadith Literature
 Mohammad Gharaibeh

1 Compilation Criticism
Exploring Overarching Structures in the Six Books
 Stephen R. Burge

2 Teaching Islam in Yemen
Insights from Two Forty Hadith Collections
 Scott C. Lucas

3 The Prophet’s Ideal in Pocket-Size
Sunni Forty Hadith Collections
 Swantje Bartschat

4 The aḥādīth al-aḥkām Genre and the Ḥanbalī School
 Jewel Jalil

5 The ʿawālī Genre and Its Social Dimension
 Mohammad Gharaibeh

6 For the Love of the Prophet
Faḍāʾil in the Early Modern Ottoman Context
 Dženita Karić

7 “As If the Prophet Stood in Front of You”
The Performative Meaning of Hadith Transmission and Its Prophetological Background in Late Formative Sunnism
 Ruggero Vimercati Sanseverino

8 Old Is the New Authentic
Arabic Papyri as a Source for Early Hadith
 Ursula Bsees

9 The Materiality of Hadith Scholarship in the Post-Canonical Period
 Konrad Hirschler

10 Where Was Hadith Read in Damascus?
Audition Notices and the Loci of Hadith Transmission in Medieval Damascus
 Garrett Davidson

11 The Word of the Beloved Prophet of Islam
Hadiths Inscribed on Cairo’s Islamic Architecture
 Noha Abou-Khatwa

12 Hadith Inscriptions in Medieval Anatolian Architecture
The Case of the Qaraṭay Madrasa in Konya and the Great Mosque in Birgi
 Mehmetcan Akpınar