The Ḥadīth Format

The majority of our information about Islamic origins in the Islamic sources is conveyed as historical reports (Ar. akhbār, sing. khabar) , the texts ( matn) of which are often quite short. Long akhbār certainly do exist, but the overwhelming majority of the extant information on Islamic origins is conveyed in accounts ranging from a few words to a half-page or so in length, a format that has been aptly termed “khabar history.” The generally fragmented, almost atomistic quality of much of this material is one of its most distinctive qualities; it has been noted that this format sets early Islamic historical writing apart from most other early historiographical traditions, which usually tend to begin as connected narratives- sagas, epics, etc.

In some cases, each short khabar is introduced by an isnād or chain of informants going back to an eyewitness or first informant. In such cases, of course, the akhbār have the same form as the traditional Islamic ḥadīth literature-the collected sayings of and reports about the Prophet Muḥammad. Each is essentially a payload of substantive information linked to a critical apparatus (the isniid ), whose function is to affirm, or perhaps to help us decide, the “truth value” of the information conveyed. We can call this the ∼adlth format.

The ḥadīth format-akhbār with validating isnāds-was borrowed by purveyors of historical accounts from the field of religious knowledge. We should pause here to remind ourselves that the pursuit of religious knowledge was far more important to the life of the early Muslim community than was the study of history, which in that day had no standing as a profession or field of study in its own right. Writing history was, in those times, a sideline, pursued by people whose main activity was something else: the study of religious knowledge ( ‘ilm ), ∼adzth, jurisprudence (fiqh ), Qur'ānic study, etc.-all of which were respected and recognized disciplines at which it was possible for some people, at least, to earn a living.The cultivation of religious knowledge ( ‘ilm, fiqh ), on the other hand, was central to the early Islamic community's need to define the cultic, social, and ethical norms by which its members should live.