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The second major source is the great mass of traditions, numbering about a hundred thousand, inclusive of all the correct as well as the so-called incorrect reports [7]. Out of these were compiled the Sihah or the six authentic books of hadiths after careful sifting and evaluation of each report according to the historical and subjective canons of criticism. There are also other compilations known as Musnads, the largest of which is the al-Musnad of Ibn Hanbal consisting of six voluminous parts of about 500 pages each printed in small Egyptian type. It lists separately all the authentic traditions pertaining to the Prophet and handed down by various companions and throws a floodlight on the life and character of the Prophet.

The journals of the battles fought by the Prophet, known as maghazi (campaigns), constitute the third important source for the biographies of the Prophet. Written mainly to record the events relating to expeditions and battles, these contain many interesting details not found elsewhere. The oldest books of Maghazi were written by `Urwah ibn az-Zubayr (d. 94/712), Muhammad ibn Muslim ibn Shihab az-Zuhri (d. 124/741), Moosa ibn `Uqbah (d. 141/758), Ibn Ishaq (d. 150/767), Ziyad al-Baka'i (d. 182/798) and Muhammad ibn `Umar al-Waqidi (d. 207/825).

Fourthly, the books of history associated with the life and times of the Prophet are an invaluable source for the biographers. The more reliable, as well as detailed ones, are the annals known as the at-Tabagat of Ibn Sa'd (d. 230/844), the celebrated Tareekh ar-Rasool wal Mulook by Muhammad ibn Jareer at-Tabari (d. 310/923) and two more works of Imam Bukhari entitled at-Tareekh al-Kabeer and at-Tareekh as-Sagheer. To this category of early historical works also belong the annals written by Ibn Hibban and Ibn Abi Khuzaymah (d. 99/717) of Baghdad.

The works describing the miracles and spiritual attainments of the Prophet, known as Kutub ad-Dala'il, have been compiled by a number of scholars. The notable among these, which also form a source material for the Prophet's biographical accounts, are the two Dala'il an-Nubuwwah by Ibn Qutaybah (d. 276/889) and Abu Ishaq Harabi (d. 255/868), the Dala'ils of Imam Bayhaqi (d. 430/1038), Abu Nu'aym Isbahani (d. 430/1038), al-Mustaghfiri (d. 432/1040) and Abul Qasim Isma'eel al-Isbhani (d. 535/1140), and, finally, the Khasa'is al-Kubra, a more detailed dissertation by Imam as-Suyooti.

Yet another category of works containing a rich treasure of biographical data relating to the Prophet are books known as ash-Shama'il, for these are exclusively meant to portray the morals, habits, manners and character of the holy Prophet of Islam. The first and the best known among these is the as-Shama'il of Muhammad ibn `Eesa at-Tirmidhi (d. 279/892) on which scores of commentaries were later written by reputed scholars. Another scholarly and voluminous work is ash-Shifa fee Huqooq al-Mustafa written by Qadi `Ayad. A commentary on it was written by Shihab Khafaji under the title of Naseem ar-Riyad. Other treatises on the subject are Shama'il an-Nabi by 'Abul-'Abbas Mustaghfiri (d. 432/ 1040) and Shama'il an-Noor as-Sati ` by Ibn al-Muqri (d. 253/876) and Safar as-Sa`adah by Majd-uddeen Fayroozabadi (d. 817/1414).

Footnotes

[7] It would be relevant to mention here, briefly, the misunderstanding purposely created by almost every Western orientalist. They are never weary of pointing out the large number of traditions rejected by the earlier scholars as a proof of the unreliability of the entire hadith literature. It is contended, for example, that the fact that Ibn Hanbal selected 30,000 out of 750,000 traditions and Bukhari had made his collection from a collection of six hundred thousand, shows that it was all a mass of forgeries and dubious reports. [c.f. A. Guillaume, Islam, Penguine Series, Pp. 66, 91; Muir, The Life of Mohamet. London (1894) yet. 1 p. xxxvii; R.A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs. Cambridge (1962), p. 146; H. A. R. Gibbs, Mahammadanism, London (1964), p. 79]. The problem, so puzzling to the orientalists is, however, more an evidence of their slipshod approach to the science than the unauthenticity of the traditions. The traditions do not include only the utterances, deeds and tacit approval of the acts done in the presence of the Prophet but they also cover similar reports in regard to the Companions and their Successors. Then, every single report transmitted through different channels of narrators, which sometimes run to a hundred or more [c.f. Mustafa as-Siba`ee, as-Sunnah wa Makanatuha fi al-Islam, - Cairo (1390/1961), p. 224] is counted as a separate hadith for purposes of its evaluation. It is, thus, not at all surprising if about 10,000 reports handed down by about 4000 Companions of the Prophet were multiplied into several hundreds of thousand narrations by the scholars in order to facilitate their scrutiny. Naturally, if a traditionalist selects a particular hadith as authentic because of its more trustworthy narrators, and rejects the reports of other narrators containing almost even exactly the same narration, it does not mean that all the other reports rejected by him are 'unauthentic' or, `spurious'. In fact, Bukhari or any other compiler of hadiths never claimed that what had been left out by him was spurious or lacked authenticity. According to the criteria laid down for the criticism of traditions, the traditionalists first make a search about the isnad or chain of narrators of a report, and they call it defective, without any further scrutiny of the subject-matter, if it falls short of their stem criteria of historical criticism. Dr. Muhammad Mustafa Azami has given in his Studies in Early Hadeeth Literature, a collection of traditions transmitted by Bishr ibn al-Husain on the authority of Zakariyah ibn `Adi from Anas ibn Malik from the Prophet, (Pp. 305-310). It has traditions rejected as unreliable, though about one quarter of these traditions handed down by other narrators are found in Bukhari and Muslim's Saheeh collections. In other words, Bukhari and Muslim have accepted identical reports with more satisfactory isnad. The only reason for discarding these traditions was that one of the narrators, Zakariyah, did not hear them himself from Anas. Even though the reports of Zakariyah were supported or corroborated by other channels, these were not accepted by the traditionalists for they fell short of their canon of historical criticism. Actually, the matter cannot but impress an honest scholar and strengthen his trust and reliance on the books of hadiths, but nothing can convince those who more often deliberately mistranslate the reports and then produce them as an evidence of the unauthentic character of the hadiths. It is also equally surprising that modern Western writers hardly ever pay any attention to the researches exploding these charges and go on repeating them ad nauseam, without least, regard to their pretensions of unbiased and sympathetic approach to Islam.

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