Before I begin: I’m only going to talk about the Sunni tradition because that’s what I know and because that’s where the whole hadith thing got started.

So, lots of people have expressed skepticism about the hadith tradition. They tend to point to the fact that many hadith appear to have chains of transmission that were back projected to create must stronger or more widespread chains. Some of these scholars also simply dislike the idea of trusting oral transmission and the transmitter-based citation system, but that is not really an argument as much as an assertion that oral transmission is inherently flawed. Interestingly, this group of scholars focuses on the chain of transmission as their target for undermining confidence in the hadith literature. This is really the same tactic that the compilers of the canonical collections (Bukhari, Muslim, etc.) used—they were much more concerned with the strength and validity of the chain of transmission than the actual content of the report.

Many others have argued that the hadith tradition appears to be largely valid. As with the skeptics, this group of scholars looks at the chains of transmission to show the rigorous verification standards that the Muslim scholars used to create their bodies of hadith. Some of these scholars also point to the widely distributed nature of certain hadith that mostly agree about the details of the report as evidence that such an event likely took place.

According to Wael Hallaq, “The Authenticity of Prophetic Hadith: A Pseudo-Problem” Studia Islamica, No. 89 (1999), pp. 75-90: “Since Schacht published his monumental work in 1950, scholarly discourse on this matter has proliferated. Three camps of scholars may be identified: one attempting to reconfirm his conclusions, and at times going beyond them; another endeavouring to refute them; and a third seeking to create a middle, perhaps synthesized, position between the first two. Among others ('), John Wansbrough (6), and Michael Cook () belong to the first camp, while Nabia Abbott (), E Sezgin (C), M. Azami ("), Gregor Schoeler ("') and Johann Fuick (12) belong to the second. Harald Motzki (,1), D. Santillana (4), G.H. Juynboll (1"), Fazlur Rahman ("') and James Robson (7) take the middle position.” P. 76

The most important and earliest publications that were the driving forces in this discussion: Ignaz Goldziher. Introduction to Islamic theology and law. ca. 1910. Joseph Schacht. An introduction to Islamic law. 1964. Joseph Schacht. The origins of Muhammadan jurisprudence. 1950.

A solid breakdown of where that discussion went: Kevin Reinhart, “Juynbolliana, Gradualism, the Big Bang, and Hadith Study in the 21st Century”

Some scholars (me included) hold that the discussion is basically pointless for a variety of reasons. For me, there simply is not enough evidence from outside the tradition to assess the tradition’s veracity. (This is also true of much of the earliest Islamic history, such as the nature of the early Muslim community, the intent and usage of the Constitution of Medina, and the existence and life of the historical Muhammad.) At the end of the day, the tradition itself is almost the entirety of the evidence that we have, so arguing its truth one way or the other is largely pointless. Too often, discussions of the truth or falsehood of the tradition devolve into “he said, she said.” I agree with Reinhart that “there are other questions in ḥadith studies besides “did Muḥammad do it or not?” (p. 413) and that these other questions are more interesting.

For Hallaq in “The Authenticity of Prophetic Hadith”, it is pointless to argue about the veracity of the tradition because “traditional Muslim scholars have already solved the problem for us.” The core of his argument is that the hadith scholars compiling collections were judging the validity of the chain of transmission, not the content of the report. Very, very few hadith are mutawaatir (having many individual valid chains of transmission with individual start points and no choke points in the chain). Mutawaatir is basically the strongest evaluation of a chain of transmission and are a miniscule part of the body of “Sahih” hadiths (“less than a dozen,” according to Hallaq, between Bukhari and Muslim). What is more, the evaluation of a hadith as sahih was not classically accepted by a majority of scholars to indicate that it was necessarily historically accurate, only that the chain of transmission was valid and, as judged by the compilers’ methods, untampered with. For Hallaq, each hadith needs to be verified individually because criticism of the method is unproductive, as demonstrated by the debate we can see in Reinhart (above).

Hallaq has a complicated and nuanced argument, but basically, he says that very few classical scholars actually held that “sahih” meant it definitely happened. It only meant that it likely happened because the chain of transmitters was good, and that individual jurists should undertake their own investigation to see if the body of the report could be brought to bear on their own legal issues.

I apologize if this is a little bit rambling.