Critical Rigor vs. Juridical Pragmatism: How legal theorists and hadith scholars approached the backgrowth of isnāds in the genre of  ilal alhadith [Backgrowth of isnāds]

Modern scholarship has accepted the ‘backgrowth of isnāds’ in the earlyhadith tradition, but this phenomenon did not occur without controversyamong classical Muslim scholars. Hadithcritics were aware that materialwas being pushed back to the Prophet, a phenomenon they approachedthrough the lens of ziyāda (addition). By examining works devoted to criticizinghadith narrations (‘ilal) from the 3rd/9th to the 8th/14th centuries,we will see that the original non-Prophetic versions of many hadiths survivedalongside their Prophetic counterparts well into the 5th/11thcentury. More importantly, certain hadith scholars from the 3rd/9th to the7th/13th centuries believed that Prophetic reports in the canonical hadithcollections were actually statements of other early Muslims. The positionof these critics, however, was marginalized in the 5th/11th century, whenmainstream Sunni jurists chose to accept the Prophetic versions categorically. Although the jurists’ position became dominant in Sunni Islam,criticism of the backgrowth of isnāds has continued in the work of selecthadith scholars until today.