Isnad in Scholarship

 In the Islamic tradition, the Qur'an is the center of everything, for it is believed to be the very word of God, the uncreated word of God, in human speech.  Muhammad was not its author, but rather its transmitter, the channel through which it came to men.  Every single word in it was directly told him by God, and he wrote it all down precisely; this is in contrast to the Catholic view of Scripture, which was written both by God and men, the divine Author and the human authors.  

Yet Islam does not treat Muhammad simply as a channel: he was also a prophet, and the final prophet, "the capstone of the prophets," whose example and practice (sunnah) should be followed.  This sunnah is not contained in the uncreated Qur'an, though; instead, it is passed down by tradition, by word of mouth, by the sayings of and about Muhammad, the hadith.

What is unique about the Islamic use of hadith is the chains of succession each has, the isnad.  Where Catholicism has its chains of apostolic succession, to show how the consecratory grace of Holy Orders was passed down through the centuries, Islam has chains of succession for statements.  So a full isnad for a hadith would be something like "It has been told me by Salman, on the authority of Rashad, on the authority of Omar...on the authority of Ali, that Muhammad said..."  Each authoritative chain should link all the way back to one of the Companions of the Prophet, an eyewitness source of what Muhammad said or did.

This authority via tradition is often frowned upon today, since it cannot be confirmed.  One cannot go back to the writings of the Companions of the Prophets to see what they actually wrote; one must simply just these chains.  What the scholar wants is first-hand sources, the autograph manuscripts of the author, or at least a text approved by him.  If that is available, then he seeks out the earliest copy he can find, hoping that, the less time that has passed since the text was originally written, the fewer errors and changes will have crept into it.  So, for the Gospels, scholars go back to the old 3rd- or 4th-century manuscripts, generally the oldest we have; for the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, scholars often went back to the 10th-century Masoretic Text, though the 1st- and 2nd-century manuscripts found in the Dead Sea Scrolls have shaken this up.  For the hadith, a modern scholar would want to find the oldest written collections of them that he can.

But for old sources, there is often a gap between the original manuscript and the oldest surviving copies.  Things fall apart: papyrus, vellum, parchment, paper.  Authorities may decide to go on burning sprees, accidents may set a library ablaze, conquering forces may have no care for scholarship.  Things are destroyed, naturally or unnaturally, so the scholar must make do with the best he has.

All these non-original copies rely upon some form of isnad: one trusts that the 10th-century manuscript he is reading is an accurate copy of a 7th-century one, which was an accurate copy of a 5th-century one, which was an accurate copy of the original 3rd-century autograph.  Without other sources to compare, the scholar must rely on trust.  

Sometimes, an entire work is lost: what remains are fragments, repeated and repeated in texts that have been copied and copied.  For instance, we have only fragments of the works of Papias of Hierapolis (60-130), an Apostolic father.  One famous quote—reported in Eusebius of Caesarea's Ecclesiastical History—claims that the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Hebrew.  Should we believe this?  First, is this actually a true quote?  Eusebius is quoting someone who lived two hundred years before him: did he have an accurate copy of Papias' writings?  (Possibly: there are records claiming full works of his were still extant in the Middle Ages.)  Was he quoting accurately?  Is the text of Eusebius that we have accurate?  There are many layers we have to take on trust, before getting to the key point: had Papias himself seen Matthew's Gospel in Hebrew, or was hearsay his source?  Many scholars trust all these layers, for this one passed-along quote by Papias is often taken as the basis of the claim that the Matthew was written in Hebrew (though we have no fragments of that).

There is, then, often many chains of transmission underlying the texts we read and study; the benefit of the isnad is that it at least gives names to the various links in the chain.  This is rarely the case with copied and reprinted texts, though it can sometimes be found.

There is a way, though, that a true isnad practice is used by scholars: the citing of cited quotations.

Sometimes a scholar is reading another scholar's work and comes across an apt quote, or an important point.  Giving due credit is one of the bedrocks of scholarly ethics, so, if the reading scholar reuses this quote or point, he must cite the scholar he read.  (To fail to do so is to plagiarize, though it is interesting that this is generally only the case in scholarship: art is rampant with unmarked quotations and borrowings, and it is rarely criticized for it, except in the realm of music.)  

Now, what if another scholar reads the quoting scholar's work, and wants to reuse the quote he quoted?  Can he simply give reference the original scholar, and not the intermediate one?  Scholarly ethics and custom says no: he must cite the original scholar as well as the intermediate one.  And, if there is yet another scholar reading the third scholar, who wishes to use this quote, he must add another link to the isnad of the quote.

Why wouldn't a scholar simply cite the original source?  For two main reasons: first, to continue to give due credit.  The final scholar did not find this quote on his own, through his own reading of the original source: quite often, he has not even read the original source at all.  All of his knowledge about it comes from the intermediaries.  Even if he has read it, he might not have noticed this quote at the time: he only noticed it because the intermediary scholars pointed it out.  He cites them to show that his knowledge of this quote or point is due to them, not to his own original research.

Second, the final scholar may not be able to read the original source.  Maybe he has no access to libraries that hold the text; maybe it is a language he cannot read, so he must rely on intermediaries and their translations; maybe it is an interview or personal letter, which he can access in no other way than through intermediaries; maybe, if it is an older work, it is now lost, and so he must rely on intermediaries (as in the case of Papias).  He gives the isnad of his quote so that others know what he is relying on; it can also protect him, in a sense.  If a later scholar is able to find the original source and read it, and finds that the quote is erroneous, then that error can be attributed to the cited intermediaries, not to the final scholar, since he is dependent upon them.

So the principle of the isnad, sometimes quite literally (as in chains of citations), and sometimes more abstractly (as in often-unknown chains of manuscript and textual copies), has a purpose even in modern scholarship.  In an ideal world, every scholar would be able to investigate primary sources only, original autographs, eyewitnesses, but the ravages of history make this an unideal world.  The isnad is the best practice possible when the original source is lost.

 

Text ©2024 Brandon P. Otto.  Licensed via CC BY-NC.  Feel free to redistribute non-commercially, as long as credit is given to the author.