God’s Preservation of the Sunnah: Al Hadith

Before discussing this topic, it should be noted that, in order for something to be preserved, it is not a necessary condition that it be recorded or written down.  That is, simply because something was not written down, it does not mean that it was not accurately and correctly preserved.  Furthermore, the writing of something down itself is not sufficient for the preservation of something.  It is possible that something is recorded incorrectly.  Both of these points were duly noted by the scholars of hadeeth. 

 They did not require hadeeth to be written down for them to be accepted although they did recognize the importance of such a physical recording and many times, depending on the personality involved, preferred the written record over the verbal record.  These scholars also realized that the mere recording of something is not sufficient.  It must also be ascertained that it was recorded properly.  Hence, scholars of hadeeth would accept or prefer written reports of scholars over memorized reports only if it was known that those scholars were proficient and correct in their writing.

It has been one of the favorite practices of many of the Orientalists to constantly state the “fact” that hadeeth were not recorded at first but were, instead, passed on only orally for the first two centuries after the Hijrah (Arabic calendar).  Therefore, hadeeth are not much more than folklore and legend that was passed on orally and in a haphazard fashion for many years.  Unfortunately, this is a misconception that has become quite widespread amongst many who have sufficed with a mere shallow research of the subject.  

In reality, this false claim and incorrect view has, by the grace of God, been refuted by numerous Muslim scholars in various doctoral dissertations in the Muslim world as well as at Western Universities, such as the dissertations of Muhammad Mustafa Azami (1967), published as Studies in Early Hadeeth, and  Imitiyaz Ahmad’s The Significance of Sunna and Hadeeth and their Early Documentation from Edinburgh in 1974.