[Internet Repost]

Based on the classic research by contemporary prominent hadith scholar Professor Muhammad Mustafa al-Azmi, this guide breaks down the early written records of hadiths from the time of the Prophet, the teaching networks of the Companions, and the rigorous cross-regional verification mechanisms used during traveling scholarship.

Professor Muhammad Mustafa al-Azmi was a renowned contemporary orthodox apologetic scholar from India. Fluent in English, Arabic, and multiple other languages, he spent years teaching in Saudi Arabia, where he also passed away. I've learned a ton from his work, and this article is basically my summary of his major book on hadith studies mentioned below.



He felt that the English-speaking world lacked high-quality books on hadith studies, so he wanted to write one in English to make it easier for college students and everyday educated readers who don't know Arabic to understand hadith, while also pushing back against various misconceptions spread by Orientalists.

However, al-Azmi also made it clear that just reading this one book isn't enough to judge whether a specific hadith is authentic or not.

Originally, the word hadith meant a narrative, story, or conversation, and it could refer to religious, secular, historical, or recent events, with the adjective form meaning "new." It appears 23 times in classic texts. Back during the time of the Prophet, the term almost exclusively referred to accounts about the Prophet—including his sayings, actions, tacit approvals, and physical descriptions—though in a broader sense it could also refer to the statements of the Companions and Successors.

Sunnah originally meant a behavioral model or way of walking a path, but later it came to specifically refer to the normative behavior of the Prophet. Hadiths are the texts that record the Sunnah, and the two terms are often used interchangeably.

The Prophet taught hadiths through three main methods: 1. Oral transmission, where important points were repeated three times, followed by a test for the Companions; 2. Written records, where scribes wrote down what was dictated; and 3. Practical demonstrations, like prayer and pilgrimage, where everyone could watch and copy hands-on.

The Prophet taught hadiths by setting up learning spaces in Medina and sending his followers out everywhere to deliver instructions, telling those present to pass the knowledge on to those who were absent. After listening to a lecture, the Companions would get together to review and recall what was said, taking turns attending classes so that anyone who missed a session could learn from someone who was there, and some of the Companions even wrote hadiths down.

After the Prophet passed away, the Companions spread out across different regions, carrying hadiths everywhere, and that's when eight distinct methods for transmitting hadiths emerged:

1. The teacher reads to the students—this includes reciting from memory, reading straight from a book, Q&A, and dictation. Later on, professional repeaters emerged who would speak loudly to massive audiences, and after copying down the texts, students would proofread them, with early records mostly kept on wooden tablets.

2. Students read texts back to the teacher for verification. After the 2nd century AH, this became the standard method. Students would mark up their manuscripts to prove they had read them to the teacher, and without going through this process, even if you bought a handwritten copy, you weren't allowed to transmit it on your own.

3. The teacher gives a student permission to transmit a certain book without forcing the student to read the entire work cover-to-cover. This method became widely used after the 3rd century AH, though scholars have mixed views on how legally binding it is.

4. The teacher hands a handwritten manuscript directly to a student and grants them the rights to transmit it.

5. Sending hadith texts across distances via letters for remote learning.

6. Informing someone that they have the clearance to transmit, which has always been a bit controversial.

7. Bestowing books through a will, where a scholar hands over their manuscripts right before passing away and gives someone permission to transmit them.

8. Finding an old manuscript on your own without having official transmission credentials, meaning you can only cite it by noting "found in such-and-such manuscript."

Successors usually started systematically studying hadiths in their early twenties, and finishing their studies meant getting a certificate. Kids aged five and older were counted as official students, while anyone under five was just marked down as present. Later on, it became a thing for very young kids to get certificates, but the point of these certificates was to protect the purity of the text, not to prove that a kid actually understood the hadith. Plus, most of this education didn't cost a dime.

Hadiths were already being written down during the time of the Prophet, and the book lists a bunch of Companions—like Abu Hurayrah, Ibn Umar, Aisha, Ibn Abbas, and Abdullah ibn Amr—who all had their own handwritten hadith collections. The author concludes that the vast majority of the Prophet's hadiths were actually written down while the Companions were still alive.

As for the circulating hadith that says, "Only record the Quran, do not write down any other hadiths," most of the chains of narration for that prohibition have weak or broken links. The original point of that ban was to keep hadith text from being written on the exact same pages as the scripture so people wouldn't mix up the Quran with anything else—it wasn't a permanent ban on writing hadiths. Some scholars discouraged writing things down purely out of personal preference, not because of a religious command, and they would still secretly make copies for themselves. A lot of scholars were just worried that people would lean too heavily on books and totally ruin their memory skills.

The hadith isnad (chain of transmission) system kicked off during the civil wars and is linked to pre-Islamic poetry chains. Once the civil wars broke out, scholars strictly demanded that narrators be named so they could tell different factions apart. By the end of the 1st century AH, this whole system was already locked down and fully mature.

Hadiths are classified based on their isnads (chains of transmission) into specific categories:

1. Mutawatir (mass-transmitted) hadiths: Every single generation has a huge crowd of narrators, making it impossible for everyone to have conspired to lie. These are split into verbal mutawatir (where the exact wording is identical, which is rare) and conceptual mutawatir (where the underlying meaning is the same, but the wording differs, which is very common).

2. Ahad (isolated) hadiths: These don't hit the threshold for mass transmission. They're broken down further based on whether there are at least 3, 2, or 1 narrator per generation. Depending on whether the chain is unbroken and traces all the way back to the Prophet, the Companions, or the Successors—or if a Successor skips the Companion straight to the Prophet, or if there's a missing link in the chain—they get categorized accordingly.

After the civil wars broke out and forged hadiths started showing up, hadith criticism also emerged. Back in the era of the Companions, they used to cross-check each other. By the 1st century AH, Successors in the Medina and Iraq schools were already running systematic critiques. Fast forward to the 2nd and 3rd centuries AH when traveling for scholarship blew up, and scholars started comparing transmissions across different regions. That era gave birth to a massive wave of hadith masters, including figures like Ahmad ibn Hanbal and al-Bukhari.

By cross-checking reports from multiple students of the same teacher, scholars could figure out whether a mistake came from the teacher himself or just a memory slip by a student during note-taking. They also compared accounts by the same scholar from different time periods and double-checked oral reports against written manuscripts.

Human reason alone can't really judge whether a historical narration is true or false, so scholars only reject a hadith text if it totally contradicts basic, common-sense rationality.

A qualified narrator needs to meet two strict requirements: rock-solid moral character and an accurate memory. The character of the Sahabah (companions of the Prophet) is vouched for by Allah and the Prophet, while other narrators have to go through extra investigation.

Narrator tiers (Ibn Hajar's 12 levels) range from the top: Sahabah (companions of the Prophet) -> Thiqa (reliable) -> Saduq (honest) -> Saduq yahim (honest but frequently makes mistakes) -> Maqbul (acceptable) -> Majhul al-hal (status unknown) -> Da'if (weak) -> all the way down to Kadhdhab (liar, fabricator). Throughout the entire chain of narration (isnad), if even a single narrator is classified as 'weak' (da'if), that specific hadith is deemed weak.

Azami points out: why did most early handwritten manuscripts disappear? Because once everything was thoroughly compiled and bound into standardized books later on, keeping the rough drafts just wasn't necessary anymore.

Major hadith scholars and their works include:

1. Malik's Al-Muwatta (AH 93–179): This isn't a pure hadith collection; it also includes legal rulings from the Medina school of thought. It exists in over eighty different versions. Malik actually turned down the Caliph's request to make this book the official nationwide law, arguing that different regions needed to follow their own localized legal practices.

2. Ahmad ibn Hanbal's Musnad (AH 164–241): This massive work organizes hadiths by the names of the Sahabah rather than by legal topics. It includes roughly 30,000 to 40,000 hadiths, which makes searching through it pretty tough. Ibn Hanbal faced heavy persecution from the Mu'tazilites but refused to back down or compromise.

3. Al-Bukhari's Sahih al-Bukhari (AH 194–256): Compiled over a span of 16 years using insanely strict criteria. Bukhari insisted on having concrete, verifiable proof that two consecutive narrators had actually met each other face-to-face and studied together.

4. Muslim's Sahih Muslim (AH 204–261): Just as famous as Bukhari's collection. Muslim took a slightly different approach, believing that if two narrators lived during the same era in the same region, they had the opportunity to connect, so ironclad proof of a physical meeting wasn't strictly required. He only included sound (sahih) hadiths agreed upon by consensus. Both his work and Bukhari's are widely considered by scholars to contain entirely sound hadiths.

5. An-Nasa'i's Al-Sunan al-Kubra and Al-Mujtaba (AH 215–303): Available in both a large comprehensive collection and a smaller selected edition, this work is super critical. It includes weak hadiths alongside the strong ones while actively pointing out their flaws.

6. Abu Dawud's Sunan Abu Dawud (AH 202–275): Focuses heavily on law-related hadiths. The author believed that a weak hadith is still better than a scholar's personal opinion, so the book includes some weak hadiths while clearly marking their defects.

7. Al-Tirmidhi's Sunan al-Tirmidhi (AH 209–279): The standout feature here is that after every single hadith, the author evaluates its grading and lists the differing views of various jurists on the issue.

8. Ibn Majah's Sunan ibn Majah (AH 209–273): This is rated the lowest among the Six Major Hadith Books (Kutub al-Sittah). It contains 1,339 hadiths not found in the other five books, but it mixes sound, good, weak, and even terrible isolated (mufrad) hadiths together, and the author rarely pointed out their defects. It ended up in the Kutub al-Sittah purely due to the editing habits of later scholars—ancient traditions didn't have a fixed concept of 'six books,' and inclusion doesn't mean every single hadith in it is sound.

9. Al-Tabari's trilogy: Al-Mu'jam al-Kabir, Al-Mu'jam al-Awsat, and Al-Mu'jam as-Saghir (AH 260–360), which are packed with a massive amount of hadiths and historical source materials.

10. Ibn al-Athir's Jami' al-Usul (AH 554–606): This book extracts hadiths from the six canonical collections and reorganizes them for easier searching, though researchers still need to go back to the original source books to double-check citations.

11. Al-Haythami's Majma' az-Zawa'id (AH 735–807): A massive reference tool specifically put together to collect hadiths not found in the six authentic collections, with the chains of narration stripped away and the strength of each hadith clearly noted.

12. As-Suyuti's Jam' al-Jawami' (AH 849–911): He tried to compile every single hadith in existence, but he never finished it, and his methodology for grading hadiths faced a lot of criticism from later scholars.

That sums up my breakdown of Professor Azami's work. However, even after diving deep into these research methods of hadith studies, I still have a few burning questions that my original video post didn't answer. Let me run through them again here:

1. How do we verify the real-world context in which a hadith text first emerged? Even if the content is totally authentic and reliable, was its scope meant only for the people physically standing there at the time, or does it apply to all believers across future generations?

2. If an isolated hadith (hadith ahad) can't be cross-verified through multiple independent chains, how can we truly judge whether its text is trustworthy? And if the message was super important, why did it end up as an isolated report instead of being passed down by massive crowds (mutawatir)?

3. Were the character and integrity of the Sahabah really completely flawless and beyond any doubt? If the things they narrated were totally unquestionable, how do we explain the civil war that broke out between Ali and Aisha? view all

[Internet Repost]

This article provides an overview of the differences in research approaches and methodologies between Eastern and Western scholars regarding Hadith studies. It contrasts the traditional Islamic scholars' rigorous system for verifying the credibility of narrators with the modern academic focus on textual analysis, highlighting the rich dimensions of research into these prophetic traditions.

The content here is drawn from Chapters 8 and 9 of a book by Jonathan Brown, a prominent contemporary American Hadith scholar. Brown studied Arabic systematically in Cairo, Egypt, conducted years of fieldwork across various Middle Eastern countries, and studied under local scholars in Sana'a, Yemen, to receive an ijazah (a formal license/certificate to transmit Hadith). He is currently a professor at Georgetown University and serves as the editor-in-chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Law.



Theological scholars evaluate the credibility of narrators from within the faith's traditional perspective, while modern Western historical studies ask a different question: whether a specific Hadith actually originated from the Prophet himself in the 7th century. The evaluation criteria for each are different; a 'sound' Hadith does not necessarily mean it is 'historically authentic' in the modern academic sense.

With the rise of Orientalism in 19th-century Europe, Western scholars gained access to the six major Hadith collections and classic biographical literature. However, they did not accept the faith-based premises—such as the infallibility of the Prophet or the inherent integrity of all narrators—and instead approached Hadith texts through the lens of critical analysis. Early Western scholars were skeptical, suggesting that many Hadith were retrospective creations of later communities rather than the actual words of the Prophet.

Brown points out a key ideological divide: believers have long acknowledged the existence of forged Hadith, but they mostly attribute the motives to sectarian strife or intentional fabrication. In contrast, Western scholars argue that these 'forged' Hadith were not necessarily the result of someone lying on purpose, but rather a natural evolution of oral tradition, where later communities retrospectively created chains of narration (isnad) to justify their views.

Taking the famous Orientalist Joseph Schacht as an example, he argued that many isnads (chains of transmission) converged on a single successor in the 8th century, with the connections going back to the Prophet's companions appearing chaotic and unreliable. Therefore, Schacht inferred that Hadith were not preserved from the 7th century, but were invented in the 8th. He believed the 'common link' narrator was the inventor, and later generations traced these views back to the companions and then to the Prophet.

Schacht believed that the vast majority of Hadith were products of legal debates during the Umayyad and Abbasid eras. It wasn't until the time of Al-Shafi'i that the standard was established that the Prophet's sunnah (tradition/practice) held supreme authority in jurisprudence. Before that, regions like Medina and Kufa relied on local community customs rather than direct Hadith citations. Many legal Hadith attributed to the Prophet were constructed during Al-Shafi'i's time to provide ultimate authority to the views of various legal schools.

Schacht observed that for the same legal issues, different regional schools held different opinions, and subsequently, corresponding narrations emerged to attribute their respective viewpoints to the Prophet. He noticed that many isnads became more riddled with loopholes the closer they got to the Prophet.

Brown points out the limitations of Schacht’s theory. Schacht expanded the idea that 'many legal Hadith emerged in the 8th century' to claim that almost all were later constructions, ignoring the possibility that oral traditions existed as early as the 7th century. Schacht rarely used early manuscripts and relied too heavily on printed collections, overlooking the Sahifa Hammam b. Munabbih (a 1st-century Hijri manuscript). This document contains hundreds of Hadith collected by Abu Hurairah, indicating that large-scale collection of Hadith was already occurring in the early 8th century, not just invented from scratch. Converging chains of narration onto one 8th-century figure only shows that he was a key transmitter who inherited earlier oral traditions; the existence of the chain alone cannot prove a Hadith is false.

Modern research suggests that Schacht's extreme conclusions don't hold up. We can only say that Schacht revealed how many Hadith were shaped and adapted through 8th and 9th-century sectarian debates. Some Hadith kernels can be traced back to the 7th century and the time of the companions, but during the oral transmission process, the texts were constantly rewritten, adjusted, and adapted to fit later controversies. Narrator chains were often 'upgraded' or modified by later generations to connect old texts through longer chains all the way to the Prophet.

Modern studies have found that chains of narration often appear after the text itself. In many cases, a story existed first, and later scholars constructed a complete chain to support it; this has become a widely accepted finding. Early successors frequently omitted intermediate links, simply saying 'So-and-so said,' which made the chains look shorter and older than they actually were.

Brown notes that by cross-referencing chains of narration with textual content, scholars can accurately identify what was added or rewritten by later generations and determine which versions appeared later. However, this cannot 100% prove that a specific Hadith was spoken by the Prophet himself; one can only infer whether the general meaning might have originated with him. For example, the earliest extant Hadith manuscript fragments date to around 730 AD, which only proves that large-scale collection was happening by the early 8th century, not that every sentence in the manuscript was spoken by the Prophet.

Some scholars oppose Schacht, pointing out the highly developed oral culture in the early Arab world. They argue one shouldn't assume oral tradition inevitably leads to large-scale fabrication. The Prophet’s companions were fully capable of memorizing and preserving a large number of the Prophet's sayings and actions and passing them on to the successors. While rewriting occurred, the original core meaning was likely preserved.

Brown highlights the limitation of Western research: the vast majority of available historical sources appeared after the 9th century, with almost no complete texts from the 7th century surviving. Scholars are forced to reconstruct earlier stages based on 9th-century compilations, creating an evidentiary gap.

After the concepts of Orientalist research reached the Middle East, they triggered a significant ideological shock. Next, we look at how the conservatives, skeptics, moderate reformers, and the Salafi movement responded to the verification of Hadith.

The traditional community's original understanding was that the 'sound' Hadith in the six major collections were all truly spoken by the Prophet. Now, a sharp question has arisen: if some Hadith historically did not originate from the Prophet, can they still be used as a legal basis? Is classical Hadith verification enough to distinguish between historical truth and fabricated content? In modern society, which parts of the Hadith must be strictly followed, and which are merely ancient customs?

Brown emphasizes that in ancient times, believers already knew that forged Hadith existed, but those doubts were kept within the community. In the modern era, this is the first time that external historical criticism has been introduced into the community's public debate.

Moderate modernists like Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida acknowledge the authority of the two major Sahih (authentic) collections but argue that classical Hadith verification is only a probabilistic judgment, not equivalent to absolute historical truth. Being 'sound' (sahih) only means the chain of narration is technically correct; it does not guarantee the text is the Prophet's exact word. They distinguish between two types of Hadith: those regarding creed and core tenets, and those regarding local or temporal customs. The latter needs to be interpreted in the context of 7th-century Arab history and cannot be applied unconditionally to the modern world. They do not reject all Hadith but argue that if a Hadith's literal meaning conflicts with the Quran, it should be set aside.

Radical skeptics argue that apart from a very small number of mass-transmitted (mutawatir) Hadith, the vast majority of solitary-narrated (ahad) Hadith cannot be used as a definitive basis for faith or law, sometimes even suggesting that the Quran should be the only reliable source.

Traditional scholars point out that the Quran itself does not describe the complete details of worship. If the majority of Hadith are discarded, the entire framework for prayer, marriage, and inheritance law loses its practical basis. Radical skeptics struggle to build a complete legal system at a practical level.

Conservatives, represented by Al-Azhar scholars, believe that 'sound' Hadith that have passed rigorous verification should be accepted. They view the classical system of Hadith science as a divinely gifted tool for protecting the Sunnah. They acknowledge that humans cannot achieve absolute 'seeing is believing' certainty, but argue that for the purpose of religious obligation, believers must rely on this verification system. Regarding textual interpretation, they do not advocate for rigid literalism, but rather for reconciling Hadith with modern practice through contextualization, recognizing special circumstances, and applying the theory of abrogation, while never using modern secular values to negate 'sound' Hadith.

The Salafi position holds that all 'sound' Hadith in the two major Sahih collections are 100% from the Prophet, denying the probability of historical error in these texts. Salafis believe that skeptics are shaking the foundations of faith and that one should return to the first three generations (the companions, the successors, and the followers), prioritizing literal meaning, rejecting later legal deductions, and citing Hadith texts as directly as possible.

Brown also points out the internal contradictions within the Salafi movement. The great Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal explicitly admitted that even 'sound' Hadith could contain errors, but modern Salafis refuse to admit this. This is a modern development, not a consensus among ancient scholars, and there are disagreements among Salafis themselves regarding literalist versus contextual interpretations.

Brown mentions a popular modern phenomenon: the search for scientific predictions in Hadith. He criticizes this approach, stating that it is a modern invention. Classical Hadith studies never treated Hadith as a textbook for natural sciences; the core purpose of Hadith is religious guidance, not predicting scientific discoveries. Forcing Hadith to match modern science leads to an awkward situation: if scientific findings are updated, the interpretation of the Hadith must also change. Brown also opposes using modern values to judge the authenticity of ancient Hadith, noting that classical Hadith scholars rarely relied solely on content to judge authenticity.

Brown points out that there is a massive information asymmetry between popular folk Hadith culture and academic research. At the level of the ordinary believer, the public is largely unaware of the complex verification rankings of Hadith or the debates of modern historical research. A vast number of Hadith categorized as weak or forged are circulated on the internet and in popular pamphlets, yet they are treated as truth. This remains a persistent contradiction within the community.

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[Internet Repost]

Diving deep into the methodological differences between the Hanafi and Shafi'i schools regarding the physical details of raising hands during prayer, this analysis is based on Georgetown University Professor Jonathan Brown's seminal work on hadith studies. It breaks down the rigorous logic major legal schools use when vetting chains of transmission, analyzing widespread community practice, and applying analogical reasoning.

Professor Brown wrote a super influential, award-winning book in the West called *Misquoting Muhammad*, which mirrors the title of a more unorthodox book called *Misquoting Jesus*, though the main point is totally different. Don't stress, though—Professor Brown isn't some classic Orientalist; he's a convert to Islam. The real core of his book is actually in the subtitle: *The Challenges and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet Muhammad's Legacy*.



Chapter 3 of the book tackles a classic case study. Professor Brown picks what looks like a minor ritual detail of daily prayer as the core example for the entire book, showing the full debate logic, chain of transmission research, and legal school politics that classical scholars went through when dealing with conflicting, sound hadiths. It really proves that simply shouting "back to the Quran and Sunnah" doesn't automatically hand you a single, undisputed answer.

The practice of raising hands multiple times during prayer is reported by the Shafi'i, Hanbali, and some Maliki scholars, while the mainstream Hanafi position is to raise the hands only once at the very beginning. Both sides can put forward hadith texts that look to have completely sound chains of transmission to back up their views.

Part One: The Issue Itself: What Does Raising Hands in Prayer Mean?

1. Hadiths supporting raising the hands multiple times (The Ibn Umar Chain)

Ibn Umar reported: When the Prophet started his prayer, he raised his hands to his shoulders; he raised them before bowing, and raised them when standing back up from bowing, but he did not raise them between the two prostrations. The chain of transmission goes: Zuhri -> Salim (son of Ibn Umar) -> Ibn Umar -> Prophet Muhammad. The great Shafi'i jurist al-Bayhaqi gathered a massive amount of matching reports in his monumental work *Sunan al-Kubrā*, with multiple independent channels recording the exact same thing, backed up by tons of Companions and Successors who practiced it this way.

2. Hadiths supporting raising the hands only once at the beginning (The Ibn Mas'ud Chain)

Ibn Mas'ud reported: I prayed alongside the Prophet, Abu Bakr, and Umar, and they only raised their hands at the very opening of the prayer and never raised them again. The chain of transmission goes: Alqamah ibn Qays -> Ibn Mas'ud, and then passed down through the Kufan scholar Hammad ibn Abi Sulayman to Abu Hanifa, making it the core evidence for the Hanafi school.

The core conflict: Both hadiths claim to come straight from the Companions, yet the texts directly clash with each other. A foundational rule in Sunni legal theory is that truly sound and error-free hadiths cannot contradict one another. Because of this, scholars can't just write off one side as a total fabrication; they have to reconcile the differences using chain criticism, version comparisons, textual interpretation, and the doctrine of abrogation (naskh).

Part Two: The Two Great Debaters: Bayhaqi vs Tahawi

Bayhaqi: A champion of the Shafi'i school who dedicated himself to collecting all available hadith evidence to defend the practice of raising hands both before and after bowing.

Tahawi: Originally trained in the Shafi'i tradition, he later switched to the Hanafi school, became a master of hadith sciences, and stood as the ultimate defender of the Hanafi position.

1) Bayhaqi's Argument (Supporting Multiple Hand Raisings)

He critiqued the structural flaws in the chain of transmission for Ibn Mas'ud's hadith, citing research by the hadith master al-Daraqutni: in many versions, when Hammad transmitted this hadith, the chain was actually broken. Alqamah himself never directly met Ibn Mas'ud; some versions show it was just later successors passing on Ibn Mas'ud's personal opinion rather than a direct record of the Prophet's own actions. In other words, the version cited by the Hanafi school has a "broken chain" flaw, meaning it might just record Ibn Mas'ud's personal practice rather than a confirmed saying or action of the Prophet.

He pointed out that the narrator Yazid ibn Abi Ziyad suffered from memory issues in his old age, meaning any hadith flowing through him was prone to textual distortion.

He highlighted a ton of independent, multi-source reports backing up Ibn Umar's account: multiple Companions (like Malik ibn al-Huwayrith and Wail ibn Hujr) described the Prophet raising his hands multiple times during prayer. Bayhaqi wrote that with so many different sources recording this exact scene, it felt as though he were watching the Prophet raise his hands in prayer with his own eyes.

Reconciliation Solution One: The Doctrine of Abrogation (Naskh). What Ibn Mas'ud witnessed was the older practice from the early days of Islam; later on, the Prophet modified the prayer ritual by adding hand raising for bowing and standing, meaning the old way was officially abrogated. Therefore, what Ibn Mas'ud remembered was simply an earlier, now-abrogated style of prayer. Bayhaqi conceded that even if Ibn Mas'ud's memory was spot on, it only recorded an older version of the prayer before the ritual was officially updated.

2) Tahawi's Counterattack (Defending the Hanafi Position: Raising Hands Only at the Start)

Tahawi was brilliant; instead of outright dismissing the massive stack of hadiths supporting Ibn Umar, he zoomed in on the textual details of the versions, turning the tables to accuse the Shafi'i school of cherry-picking their evidence.

At the very end of Ibn Umar's long hadith, it adds: "And between the two prostrations, he did not raise them." Tahawi raised a tough question: Who actually said this sentence? Some versions show this line might have been added by later transmitters rather than being part of Ibn Umar's original report. Other versions of Ibn Umar's transmission note that the Prophet actually *did* raise his hands between the two prostrations. If the Shafi'i school relies on Ibn Umar's hadith, why do they reject raising hands between prostrations? Tahawi challenged his rivals: you only pluck out the parts that help your argument while rejecting other details from the exact same report—isn't that just selectively trimming hadith evidence?

He pulled in the actual practices of the two Rightly Guided Caliphs, Umar and Ali: according to certain reports, both caliphs only raised their hands at the start of prayer. Tahawi's logic was that even if the Prophet did raise his hands multiple times earlier on, the practice actually maintained and finalized by the leading Companions and Caliphs represents the definitive, final version of the Sunnah.

He pushed back against the accusation of a "broken chain": the local habit among Kufan successors was sometimes to drop intermediate transmitters, which didn't mean a report was fabricated; it was just a regional transmission norm of the era, so you can't just throw out the hadith entirely.

Part Three: The Deeper Scholarly Dilemma Revealed by This Debate

1. Both opposing sides were equally skilled at using the exact same high-level hadith criticism tools. Both Bayhaqi and Tahawi were absolute masters of the science of isnad chains (ʿilm al‑isnād): checking narrator character, memory retention, version differences, transmission habits, and abrogation theory. Yet these two sets of tools led them to completely opposite conclusions. There is no totally objective "hadith-testing machine," meaning human judgment inevitably plays a role.

Understanding Sunni Legal Methodology: Analyzing Hadith Acceptance Standards and Scholarly Disputes in Islamic Jurisprudence through the Hanafi and Shafi'i Debate on Raising Hands During Prayer.

This is a super key point from the whole book: a lot of people nowadays think that if you just ditch later legal schools (madhhabs) and read the original hadith texts directly, you will get the one and only definite answer. But the debate over raising the hands proves that even when dealing with tons of sound narrations, major disagreements still pop up.

2. Scholarly traditions totally shape how scholars judge the weight of evidence. The Hanafi school is rooted in Kufa and leans on Ibn Mas'ud and the later Kufan scholars; the Shafi'i school focuses on reports from the Prophet's companion Ibn Umar in Medina. Scholars aren't just blank slates—they are shaped by their school's intellectual tradition when they weigh which evidence is heavier or lighter.

3. The "theory of abrogation (naskh)" is both a tool for solving contradictions and a way to defend an argument. When two hadiths clash, one side can claim that one of them is an outdated rule that got abrogated. But there is no absolute objective standard to judge which one came first and which came second. Without rock-solid historical time evidence, abrogation just becomes a reasonable guess, not ironclad proof.

IV. Real-World Social Consequences: How Scholarly Disagreements Turn into Social Conflict

The book talks about a real historical event in India during the time of Shah Waliullah: The main crowd at the Delhi mosque followed the Hanafi school. One of Shah Waliullah's students raised his hands when bowing and rising from bowing during prayer, which went against local Hanafi customs. He got physically attacked by the crowd right on the spot and almost beaten to death.

Shah Waliullah's own stance was super delicate:

He believed that from the hadith evidence, raising the hands multiple times matches the recorded hadiths better;

At the same time, he brought up a practical ethics point: in public prayer spaces, you should respect local school customs and not deliberately stir up division. Ordinary believers shouldn't get caught up in these technical legal disputes; they should just follow the local legal school.

Brown's commentary: This isn't just some tiny detail about whether to raise your hands in prayer—it symbolizes a massive tension. On one side is the revivalist ideal calling to ditch blind following (taqlid) and return to the Prophet's original hadith; on the other side is over a thousand years of accumulated legal school traditions and the reality of community stability.

Brown specifically uses this tiny ritual issue to mirror all the major controversies in the book (like female prayer leaders, the punishment for apostasy, jihad, etc.):

Lots of people think that just by going back to the original scripture and hadiths, you can wipe out later scholarly disagreements and get one single, clear answer. The debate over raising hands shows that this idea is way too idealistic. Even with all the hadith texts laid out right in front of you, you're still gonna end up with unresolvable disagreements over narration versions, evidence weight, abrogation, and context.

Classical Islamic legal scholarship has a super precise set of tools, but those tools by themselves can't totally eliminate human judgment;

Scholarly disagreements can easily upgrade from textbook debates into real-world social conflicts; scholars have to study texts, but they also have to care about community peace;

The system where the four major legal schools recognize each other's legitimacy is literally designed to handle these kinds of tough problems where both sides have textual evidence yet can't totally disprove the other. Neither the Hanafi nor the Shafi'i school declares the other heretical; they both follow the principle of "we might be right but could be wrong, and you might be right but could be wrong." Even today, the Hanafi school (in Turkey, Central Asia, and South Asia) mostly raises hands only at the start of prayer; the Shafi'i (in Southeast Asia and parts of Egypt), Hanbali, and Salafi traditions usually raise their hands when bowing and rising from it. Both sides see themselves as following the Prophet's sunnah. view all