An Encyclopedia of Official Hadiths: a Critical Review

An Encyclopedia of official Hadiths, which was published by Brill Publication in 2007, is a summary of a lifetime academic efforts of Khutir Hendric Albert Yanbel, one of the Dutch orientalists. The following study which is about a critical review on this book is going to be presented in two parts. In the first part, the author is going to provide a brief biography of Khutir yanbel. Then, having considered his works on jurisprudence, Quran, and hadith studies, he intends to examine this orientalist’s place in western hadith studies and analyzes his method of dating the hadiths. In the second part of the paper, the translation of Herald Mutzki’s essay upon this book is presented. In his paper, Mutzki talks about the content of the book as well as Yanbel’s way of offering the information. Besides, he examines the book from different aspects such as the content, and …. Therefore, Mutzki scrutinizes the following question: is Yanbel’s method in rebuilding the process of the evolution of the history of hadith valid? Is his method exact enough? Are the assumptions behind his results reasonable? Isn’t his terminolgy vague? Are the results persuasive?