The Opponents of the Writing of Tradition in Early Islam

Abstract

? 1 In the sixth century of the Muslim era the Hanbalite scholar Abui 'l-Farag ibn al-Gawzl (d. 597) wrote a book to encourage his lazy contemporaries to greater efforts in the memorisation of Tradition.' God, he argued, had singled out the Muslims to memorise Koran and Tradition, whereas those who had been before them had been dependent on written sources and were incapable of memorisation. The Jews, for example, had conferred on Ezra2 the title son of God merely because he knew the Torah by heart; among Muslims, by contrast, a seven-year-old child could recite the Koran from memory. The same contrast obtained in the field of Tradition. Nobody among the nations transmits the words and deeds of their Prophet in a reliable fashion apart from us; for among us is transmitted from one generation to another, and the reliability of [each] transmitter is examined until the tradition has been traced back to the Prophet. Other nations have their traditions from written sources of which the writers and transmitters are unknown.3 ? 2 Ibn al-Oawzi's exhortation suggests two basic points about the Tradition of Islam. The first concerns the significance of its oral character. For Ibn al-(awzi, as for the Muslim traditionists in general, this oral character was more than an occasion for the display of

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