IB World Religions 5.3.2. Development: Makkan and Madinan Revelation, and the Hadith Notes

5.3.2. Development: Makkan and Madinan Revelation, and the Hadith

Continuity of prophetic revelation

1. Muslims do not present the Qur'an as the first revelation but as the last in a long series. On this account Allah sent guidance to every community, and the same call to submission was delivered again and again.
2. The Qur'an names earlier scriptures: the Tawrat given to Musa (Moses), the Zabur given to Dawud (David), the Injil given to 'Isa (Jesus) and the suhuf, or scrolls, of Ibrahim (Abraham).
3. Muslims therefore call Jews and Christians Ahl al-Kitab, the People of the Book, and hold that what those communities first received was genuine revelation.
4. The tradition also teaches tahrif, the belief that earlier scriptures were altered over time, whether in their wording or in the way they were read. The Qur'an is held to confirm what was true in them and correct what was not.
5. The Qur'an calls itself muhaymin, a guardian over the scriptures before it, and Muslims read that as authority to judge earlier scripture rather than to discard it.
6. Because the Prophet Muhammad is called khatam al-nabiyyin, the seal of the prophets, Muslims hold that revelation is now closed. Development after him is development in understanding, not in scripture.

Makkan surahs and their themes

1. The revelation is divided into two periods by the hijrah, the migration of the Muslim community from Makkah to Madinah in 622 CE. Roughly two thirds of the surahs are classed as Makkan.
2. Makkan passages are typically short, rhythmic and heavily rhymed, opening with oaths sworn by the dawn, the fig, the night or the pen. They were spoken to an audience that largely rejected them.
3. Their dominant theme is tawhid, the oneness of Allah, argued against the many deities then honoured at the Ka'bah and against Makkan confidence in wealth and lineage.
4. The second great theme is Yawm al-din, the Day of Judgment. Makkan surahs picture the earth shaking, the graves opening and every deed weighed, and press the hearer to change now.
5. Stories of earlier prophets fill this period, especially Nuh, Ibrahim, Musa and 'Isa. They are told as warnings, since earlier peoples rejected their messengers and were ruined.
6. Social criticism runs through the same surahs, with sharp attacks on neglect of the orphan, the burying of infant daughters, and the hoarding of wealth.
7. Muslims read the Makkan revelation as forming faith and endurance in a small persecuted community. Many of its shortest surahs are the first that Muslim children memorise.

Madinan surahs and their themes

1. After the hijrah the Muslims were a community with treaties, neighbours, courts and enemies, and the revelation of this period answers those conditions.
2. Madinan surahs are generally long, closer to ordinary speech than to the Makkan rhyme, and they often address believers directly with the phrase O you who believe.
3. Their characteristic subject is the ummah, the community itself: who belongs to it, how its members treat one another, and how it deals with outsiders.
4. Legal material concentrates here. Rules for marriage, divorce, inheritance, debt, evidence, food and the collection of zakah are given in long Madinan surahs such as al-Baqarah and al-Nisa'.
5. Passages permitting and regulating fighting also belong to this period, with limits on when it may begin and on how it must be conducted.
6. Relations with Jews and Christians are worked out in Madinan revelation, sometimes in cooperation and sometimes in conflict, and both tones sit in the text.
7. Muslims use the two periods as a reading tool. Knowing whether a passage is Makkan or Madinan tells a reader what situation it first addressed.

Hadith and sunnah

1. Alongside the Qur'an, Muslims look to the sunnah, the established practice of the Prophet Muhammad: what he said, what he did, and what he allowed without objection.
2. The sunnah reaches later generations through hadith, individual reports handed down by named transmitters. A hadith is the report, while the sunnah is the pattern of life the reports record.
3. Every hadith has two parts. The isnad is the chain of narrators who passed it on, and the matn is the text of what was said or done.
4. Muslims hold that the Prophet was divinely guided in his teaching, so the sunnah carries binding authority. The wording of a hadith is still human wording and is never recited as scripture.
5. Shi'ah Muslims extend the same principle to the imams, the Prophet's descendants through 'Ali and Fatimah, whose sayings they hold to be preserved teaching rather than private opinion.
6. Hadith cover far more than law. They record how the Prophet prayed, ate, washed, joked and treated servants, neighbours and animals, and Muslims use them as a model for ordinary conduct.

The main collections

1. Reports circulated by word of mouth for generations before the great written collections were assembled, mostly in the eighth and ninth centuries CE, long after the Companions had died.
2. Sunni Muslims give first place to two works, Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, known together as the two Sahihs. Al-Bukhari is said to have sifted several hundred thousand reports to compile his.
3. Four further works complete the Sunni Kutub al-Sittah, the six books: the Sunan of Abu Dawud, the Jami' of al-Tirmidhi, the Sunan of al-Nasa'i and the Sunan of Ibn Majah.
4. Earlier collections remain in use, including the Muwatta of Malik ibn Anas and the vast Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, which arranges reports by narrator rather than by subject.
5. Shi'ah Muslims use a different set, the Four Books, beginning with al-Kafi of al-Kulayni, which gather the teaching of the imams alongside reports from the Prophet. Nahj al-Balaghah, a collection of sermons and sayings attributed to 'Ali, is read widely in Shi'ah devotional life.
6. Because the collections differ, Sunni and Shi'ah scholars sometimes reach different rulings from the same Qur'anic ayah, and the hadith behind the ruling is often the reason.

Authenticity and historicity

1. Muslim scholars built a science of criticism, 'ilm al-hadith, precisely because they knew that forged reports circulated early, often serving a political or sectarian cause.
2. Its main tool is examination of the isnad. Biographical dictionaries record when each narrator lived, whom they studied with, and how earlier scholars judged their memory and honesty.
3. Scholars weigh the matn as well. A report that contradicts the Qur'an, or attributes something unworthy to the Prophet, is treated with suspicion whatever its chain looks like.
4. Muslims differ over how far the effort succeeded. Most accept the classical gradings, a small Qur'aniyyun current rejects hadith as a source altogether, and many modern scholars call for fresh scrutiny of individual reports.
5. Historians outside the tradition have pressed harder, arguing that a gap of two centuries and a strong motive to invent make an isnad a weak guarantee. Muslim responses point to the scale of the biographical literature and to early student notebooks, and the argument continues among specialists on both sides.