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_-_The_preservation_of_Isnad_001.jpg) Concerning when the narrators were forced by the
listeners to mention their Isnads, Fullaatah states that Abu Bakr, the
first caliph who died only two years after the Prophet, was the first to make
the narrator prove the authenticity of his narration as he sometimes would not
accept a hadeeth unless the person presented a witness for his hadeeth. Umar
also followed the same pattern. By doing so they made it clear if the person
heard the hadeeth directly from the Messenger of God or through some
intermediary source. Their goal was to confirm the correctness of the narration
although they were, at the same time, inadvertently making the narrator state
the Isnad for his hadeeth. Therefore, it was during their time (right
after the death of the Prophet) that narrators were first being forced to state
their Isnads. Ali, the fourth caliph and the caliph during the fitnah
(affliction), would sometimes take an oath from the person in which the
person would swear that he heard the hadeeth directly from the Prophet.
Obviously, then, after the fitnah, the same process of requiring the
narrator to state his sources continued.
Concerning when the narrator himself began to insist on
mentioning the Isnad of each hadeeth, Fullaatah states that the need for
the Isnad really became apparent after weak narrators and immoral people
began to relate hadeeth. During that time, the narrator himself made sure that
he would mention the Isnad of the hadeeth he narrated. Al-Amash used to
narrate hadeeth and then say, “Here is the head of the matter,” and then he
would mention the Isnad. Al-Waleed ibn Muslim of al-Shaam stated, “One
day al-Zuhri said, ‘What is wrong [with you people] that I see you narrating hadeeth
without the critical or important part?’ After that day our companions [that
is, the people of al-Sham (Northern Arabia)] made sure to mention the Isnad.”
The scholars would blame their students for listening to hadeeth from teachers
who would mention the hadeeth without the Isnad.
In fact they would reject any hadeeth which did not have an Isnad with
it. Bahz ibn Asad said, “Do not accept a hadeeth from someone who does not say,
‘He narrated to us..,” that is, without an Isnad. The Muslims even began
to insist on the use of the Isnad for people of disciplines other than hadeeth,
for example, history, tafseer (explanation of the Quran), poetry and so
on.
Therefore, after discussing the question in detail,
Fullaatah could soundly conclude the following:
1. The Isnad
was first used during the time of the Companions.
2. Abu
Bakr was the first to force narrators to mention the source for their hadeeth.
3. The
narrator himself insisted on mentioning the Isnad of each hadeeth on the
heels of (1) and (2) above.
In conclusion, there was never any time that hadeeth
narrations were completely void of mentioning the Isnad. During the time
of the Companions the use of the Isnad was not so obvious as there was
(usually) no intermediate narrator between the person mentioning the hadeeth
and the Prophet. (The period of the Companions “officially” ended in 110 A. H.
with the death of the last Companion.) Abu Bakr and Umar were scrupulous in
checking the authenticity of hadeeth. Later scholars like al-Shabi and al-Zuhri
appeared and they made the Muslims realize the importance of mentioning the Isnad
with the hadeeth. This was especially manifest after major confrontations (such
as the death of Uthmaan) which made the people realize that the hadeeth
narrations were their religion and, therefore, they should look carefully at
whom they were taking their religion from. After the early years, the Isnad
and its proper use became standardized and its knowledge became an independent
branch of hadeeth. This continued until the major collections of hadeeth were
compiled in the third century.
In reality, God blessed the nation of Muhammad with a
unique way of preserving its original teachings: the Isnad. Muhammad ibn
Haatim ibn al-Mudhaffar wrote:
“Verily God has honored and distinguished this nation
and raised it above others by the use of the Isnad. None of the earlier
or present nations have unbroken Isnads. They have [ancient] pages in
their possession but their books have been mixed with their historical reports
and they are not able to distinguish between what was originally revealed as
the Torah or the Gospel and what has been added later of reports that have been
taken from untrustworthy [or, most likely, unknown] narrators.”
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