The Classification of Works in Hadith Studies and Its Scientific and Methodological Features

Abstract

This article examines the development of the classification of works in Hadith studies, its principal types and their distinctive scientific and methodological features. It discusses such types of Hadith collection as musnad, muṣannaf, jāmiʿ, sunan, ṣaḥīḥ, muʿjam and mustadrak, explaining the criteria used to classify them and their role in preserving and systematising the Hadith heritage. The relationship between the classification of Hadith works and the two branches of Hadith studies - riwāya (transmission) and dirāya (critical analysis) - is also explored. The article traces the compilation of Hadith from the written record initiated under ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz through the emergence of the collections devoted exclusively to sound Hadith, and follows the formation of the literature of Hadith terminology from al-Rāmahurmuzī to Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī. It is argued that distinguishing the classification type of a work from the reliability level of the Hadith it contains is a necessary condition of a sound scholarly approach.