Dating

Abstract

The study of early Islam is a major epistemological challenge. It stands or falls on our ability to develop an adequate methodology of dating and reconstructing the earliest variants of Muslim traditions. Such a methodology must take into account both the isnād, that is, the way by which a compiler of an extant hadith collection received a tradition from its putative original speaker, and the matn, that is, the substantive content of the tradition. This chapter includes an overview of the methods of dating and reconstructing Muslim traditions (hadiths) according to a combined analysis of their lines of transmission (isnāds) and their substantive content (matns). The author introduces a set of additional quantitative and qualitative criteria that may improve the accuracy of this analysis. The chapter ends with a short case study that illustrates the workings of the proposed method.

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