2 Day Workshop on July 8 & 9 at the DAAD Regional Office
Special event within the framework of the OIB/COSIMENA Research Colloquium
 

Ḥadīth has been called by traditionists as "the backbone" of the Islamic civilization. Its importance lies in that it is the second source of fiqh after the Qur’an, but also that it permeates all Islamic literature, be it exegesis, Prophetic Sira and/or other genres. It ranks second to the Qur’an, yet sometimes it even gets elevated above the Qur’an. 
Medieval Muslim scholars already acknowledged that much of the Ḥadīth corpus was fabricated and devised methods to sift the authentic from the forged, like ʿilm al-rijāl (science of narrators), al-jarḥ wa-l-taʿdīl (criticism and praise) and others. Until the 4th/10th century Muslim scholars applied their Ḥadīth criticism on both parts of the Ḥadīth report, namely the isnād (chain of narrators) and the matn (text body), yet after that they only focused on the isnād. Muslim scholars from the 2nd/8th century until today have never stopped repeating that "The isnād is part of the religion — if it was not for the isnād, whoever wanted could say whatever they wanted and ascribe it to the Prophet." 
Muslim feminists criticized Ḥadīth reports in general and women-unfriendly reports in particular, finding faults with particular narrators, using the biographical dictionaries while applying the same criteria used by the Muslim scholars, yet they are also not acknowledged. Many western methods, which resemble the medieval Muslim scholars’ methods are also not acknowledged, like the common-link being the madār for example and other methods, like the isnād-cum-matn (ICM) analysis. Newer “western” methods, some by Muslim scholars, like using digital humanities to analyse the matn in terms of growth to the text, additions and deletions, placing the reports and narratives in their contexts, as well as analysing the terms found in the biographical dictionaries regarding the probity of the narrators, also remain unacknowledged by clerics.
This workshop aims at putting the different scholarly sides in a nuanced academic dialogue to introduce the different methods to one another and perhaps arrive at mutually acceptable methods to enrich the study of Ḥadīth and perhaps attempt to clearing some of the superfluous additions to the prophetic Sunna.
 

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