Annotated Outline of the Errors from Motzki

From Silvers

Back to IIRS page

Back to Motzki

Western Scholars:

Followers of Jospeh Schacht on the Islamic traditions being a historical reliable frame of reference for the Qur’an (uncertain if the reports are real).

  • Ignaz Goldziher
  • Wansbrough
  • Michael Cook
  • Patricia Crone
  • Andrew Rippen
  • Gerald Hawting


  • they also question general conviction that the Qur’an as a whole is a contemporary record of Muhammed’s “utterances”. (4)

Goldziher, Schacht: regarded hadith reports of “fictitious and without any historical value” (4)

W. Montgomery Watt: had a poor methodology in answering Schachts objections by saying that hadith is not applicable to the sura material. Watt’s position was that “the sura has a basic core of material which is sound and in thinking that it would be impossible to make sense of the historical material of the Quran without assuming that truth of this core.” People fired back by asking what is the basic core and how can people know of it. People has the impression that he was “gullible.” (4-5)

Approach of Scholars who accept Islamic traditions as reliable sources and Quran is Muhammed’s preachings:

  • a critical revaluation of the studies wihcih deny to the hadith reports a historical value for the first century
  • an improvement of the methods to analyze and date traditions
  • both lead to convincing certain types of traditions (exegetical, legal traditions or a specific single or complex tradition). (5)

Opinions of Western Scholars:

Theodor Nuldeke: question historical reliability of the traditions

Goldiher:thesis on the fact that Prophet and his Companions cannot be uses an historically authentic because they reflect political, dogmatic and juridical developments of the Muslim community.

Friedrich Schwally: different from Nuldeke but the first two volumes of Nuldeke was prepared by Schwally; reject the historical reliability of the report that Quran was made shortly after the death of the Prophet by Abu Bakr. He argues that

1- Heavy loss of experts in the battle was the reasoning behind the collection of report; the transmitted list of Muslims killed in the battle contained only few names of persons well known for the knowledge of the Quran.
  • Also its illogical to collect it because there were “good reasons" to support that the Quran had already been written down pience-wise during Muhammed’s lifetime.
2- Reports differ as to the question whether the collection made on behalf of Abu Bakr and the official edition made during the caliphate of Uthman were almost identical  concludes: contradictions that the authors of the reports had no real information going back to the time of the first caliphs but made up their own mind about what had happened.
  • Also why get Zayd Thabit to collect information of Quran and edit it? Didn’t he also collect it for Abu Bakr.
3- Abu Bakr collected and passed it down to the successor (Umar) and it was then passed to Hafsa (daughter and one of the Prophet’s wife). Why was it nor passed to the successor after Umar which is Uthman?

Concludes: the first collection (Abu Bakr) were interventions so the collections that were brought up by Uthman would be disapproved my a section of the Muslim community (more authority). He accepts as historically reliable the third caliph, the “official traditions”, even though he detected inconsistent in it (unlikely to take place details).

Paul Casanova:first to claim that the Quran was not collected and officially promuhated before the caliphate of the Umayyed Abd al-Malik.

  • Earliest record about the compliation of the Quran’s transmitted by Ibn sa’d, about 200 years after Prophets death.


Rebuttal

Main scholars came to completely different conclusions of when the Islamic traditions were collected preceeding to the Quran:

  • Schwally goes more towards caliphat Uthman
  • Mingana goes more towards Abd al- Malik (1st Islamic century)
  • Wansbrough believes it was in the beginning of 3rd century
  • Burton believes it was during the lifetime of Muhammed

(12)

Schwally:

  • Contrasting one information to another is arbitrary: ex. He detects a contradiction where it is said that the first collection was made for the caliph and passed down to his successor Umar which suggests that this collection has official status. Then it was passed down to Hafsa (daughter of Umar and wife of Muhammed) which is a private possession. Argues that only one claim is historically true. He picks the later one (Hafsa’s) because it plays an important role in traditions concerning Uthman’s official edition. He gives Hafsa’s suhuf importance but then again he Abu Bakrs in not, in Schwally’s theory, even though Abu Bakrs “leaves” have been passed down to Hafsa.
  • Why the contradiction of rejecting Abu Bakrs collection and accepting Uthman’s official edition (even though he admits that Uthman’s collection has inconsistencies (13-14).

Mingana's problem is of dateing sources:

  • Hadith reports are unreliable b/c they are transmitted orally. Later resources are less reliable while earlier one can be ignored. Christian resources are more reliable because they are earlier and written.

Further weak positions:

  • He concludes from the fact that the “Quran is not mentioned in the few early Christian sources reporting on the Muslims, that there was no officially recognized Quran during the first Islamic century.”
  • He gives a comparison of Christian history of the Quran (Al-Kindi) because such comparison gives distorted summaries of Muslim tradition.
  • Mingana’s dating of Muslim tradition contains errors
  • Even if the Chirstian al-kindi is earlier there are errors b/c its accounts of the history of the Quran is distorted summary of the reports which we know from contemporary or earlier Muslim sources. (20)

Wanshrough reject editing of Quran and tradition b/c:

1- Contradictions with his view of the history of the Quranic test from a structural analysis and typological investigation of the Muslim exegetical literature.
2- Relied on Schacht’s information about Muslim traditions being historically unreliable. (14)

Burton is lacking historical dimension of the tradition of collecting the Quran:

  • He arranges the different traditions to create a discourse which he thinks took place between scholars over a longer period of time. He believes that some reports are reactions of others thus being dated later.
  • His data lead to the entire process of development being during the 3rd Islamic century.
  • Uses late sources without asking whether some of these traditions have already be in earlier works and can be dated more accurately.(15)
  • The sources that the traditions appeared are not really “compilations by their putative author but by their pupils or by later generations” (20-21)
Retrieved from "http://silvers.progressiveislam.org/Annotated_Outline_of_the_Errors_from_Motzki"