The Evolution of the Definition of “Book” in the Cultural History of Muslims during the Early Islamic Centuries

One of the important issues in the field of “historical theology” is the analysis on the nature of the term “book”. Ignoring the structural change in the history of Islamic civilization is one of the backgrounds for misinterpreting the term “book” and thus misunderstanding the analysis of the heritage of Islamic civilization. Paying attention to this restructuring prevents the formation of incorrect analyzes on various topics in the history of Islamic culture, such as “Hadith writing”, “prohibition of writing”, “inventing Hadith”, “Hadith communities”, etc. in the first centuries of Islamic civilization, which it is strongly criticized by Orientalists. By establishing, interpreting and explaining the view of the applicable-mediating nature of the “Book” along with its “spoken-written” nature in the first centuries of Islam, this article aims to criticize the prevailing view of the analysis of the history of Hadith, in order to correct and promote of arguments in the field of historical theology. This article also strengthen the hypothesis that the prevailing view on the analysis of the history of Hadith, which has been influenced by the approach of orientalists, has deviated sharply from the standard model of “Book” in the earlier centuries.