Did Muhammad Exist?: An Inquiry into Islam's Obscure Origins (13 page)

The Umayyads even put words in the mouth of Ali, having him praise his two foremost rivals as Muhammad's closest companions. In a hadith, Ibn Abbas recalls:

While I was standing amongst the people who were invoking Allah for Umar bin Al-Khattab who was lying (dead) on his bed, a man behind me rested his elbows on my shoulder and said, “(O Umar!) May Allah bestow His Mercy on you. I always hoped that Allah will keep you with your two companions, for I often heard Allah's Apostle saying, ‘I, Abu Bakr and Umar were (somewhere). I, Abu Bakr and Umar did (something). I, Abu Bakr and Umar set out.’ So I hoped that Allah will keep you with both of them.” I turned back to see that the speaker was Ali bin Abi Talib.
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The partisans of Ali made fun of Uthman for having run away during some of the early battles of the Muslims. One follower of Ali mocked Uthman in verse: “You can accuse me of no other sin than that I have mentioned him who ran away from Khaybar. I mention the man who fled from Marhab, like a donkey runs from the lion.”
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Uthman exonerated himself by referring to the words of Muhammad. One hadith tells the story of an Egyptian who has come to Mecca for the hajj and asks an elderly Muslim, Abdullah ibn Umar, son of the second caliph: “Do you know that Uthman fled away on the day (of the battle) of Uhud?”

When Ibn Umar says that yes, he did know that, the Egyptian has more: “Do you know that Uthman was absent on the day (of the battle) of Badr and did not join it?”

When Ibn Umar again says yes, the Egyptian comes back with a third question: “Do you know that he failed to attend the Ar-Ridwan pledge and did not witness it?” This pledge was a declaration of loyalty to Muhammad that his closest companions made after the Islamic prophet concluded a treaty with the pagan Quraysh; the treaty of Hudaibiya, as it is known in Islamic tradition, was disadvantageous to the Muslims in numerous particulars.

For the third time, Ibn Umar says, “Yes.” The Egyptian responds, “Allahu akbar!”—in this case, an expression of indignation and dismay. Then Ibn Umar explains, saying that Allah “excused” Uthman and forgave him for being absent from Uhud, although he does not explain the absence. As for Badr, Ibn Umar says that Uthman was not there because he was obeying Muhammad: “The daughter of Allah's Apostle was his wife and she was sick then. Allah's Apostle said to him, ‘You will receive the same reward and share (of the booty) as any one of those who participated in the battle of Badr (if you stay with her).’” Finally, Ibn Umar explains Uthman's nonappearance at the Ar-Ridwan pledge of allegiance by saying that Muhammad sent Uthman elsewhere, and “had there been any person in Mecca more respectable than Uthman (to be sent as a representative), Allah's Apostle would have sent him instead of him.” In fact, while Uthman was absent, Muhammad “held out his right hand saying, ‘This is Uthman's hand.’ He stroked his (other) hand with it saying, ‘This (pledge of allegiance) is on the behalf of Uthman.’” Ibn Umar tells the Egyptian: “Bear (these) excuses in mind with you.”
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Not only did this tale exonerate Uthman by invoking Muhammad
himself; it also exalted him beyond all rivals as being “more respectable,” and even showed Muhammad acting as his proxy. How, then, could anyone favor Ali's claim to the caliphate over Uthman's? That is, at least until the party of Ali invented another hadith in favor of its champion. This hadith describes the siege of the oasis of Khaybar, home of the last Jewish settlement in Arabia after Muhammad (according to still other hadiths) exiled two of the three Jewish tribes of Medina and massacred the third. Muhammad sends Abu Bakr, Umar, and Uthman—here again, the first three caliphs and Ali's rivals—in turn against one of the Khaybar forts, but they cannot capture it. When he sends out Uthman, Muhammad refers to his reputation for cowardice and sticks up for him: “Tomorrow I will give the flag to a man who loves Allah and his apostle. Allah will conquer it by his means; he is no runaway.” But even Uthman fails, so Muhammad summons Ali, heals him miraculously from an eye ailment, and sends him against the fort. Ali, of course, succeeds.
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The various Muslim factions produced a steady stream of hadiths defending their leaders or attacking those of their opponents. The Umayyad side invented a hadith defending the Umayyad governor of Iraq, Khalid al-Qasri (d. 743), whom pious Muslims hated for his brutality in governing. Khalid is redeemed in a hadith in which Muhammad is made to say, “O God, let thy victory and the victory of thy religion take place through the offspring of Asad b. Kurz,” Khalid's ancestor.
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But opponents of the Umayyads had Muhammad disparage the caliph al-Walid (705–715). In the hadith, Muhammad confronts a man who has just named his newborn son al-Walid: “You name your children by the names of our Pharaohs. Verily, a man with the name al-Walid will come who will inflict greater injury upon my community than ever did Pharaoh upon his people.”
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A later transmitter of this hadith notes that while it was initially believed to refer to al-Walid I, once al-Walid II (743–744) began committing his own atrocities, it became clear that Muhammad had actually been referring to
him.
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Riddled with Contradictions

The consequence of all this was inevitable: utter confusion. Since warring parties were all fabricating hadiths that supported their positions, the Hadith are riddled with contradictions. Many of these, but by no means all of them, revolve around differences in Islamic ritual practice, probably reflecting regional variations. For example, among the hadiths compiled by the renowned ninth-century imam Muhammad Ibn Ismail al-Bukhari is one recording that, according to Ibn Abbas, “the Prophet performed ablution by washing the body parts only once.”
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But Bukhari reports that another companion of Muhammad, Abdullah bin Zaid, said that “the Prophet performed ablution by washing the body parts twice.”
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And yet another hadith collected by Bukhari has Muhammad praising Uthman for performing the ablutions not once or twice but thrice, saying that if he does it that way while avoiding distractions, “his past sins will be forgiven.”
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Bukhari puts these three hadiths together without comment or attempt at harmonization.

In a hadith recorded by another ninth-century imam, Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj al-Qushayri, we are told that Muhammad “disapproved the drinking of water while standing.”
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Yet Muslim also reports that when Ibn Abbas gave Muhammad some sacred water from the well of Zamzam in Mecca, Muhammad—whose conduct is always exemplary for Muslims—“drank it while standing.”
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Contemporary Islamic apologists point to a hadith in which Muhammad “forbade the killing of women and children” as evidence of the humaneness, unusual for its time, of Islam's rules of warfare.
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Immediately following that prohibition, however, Muslim includes another hadith in which Muhammad, “when asked about the women and children of the polytheists being killed during the night raid, said: They are from them.”
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In other words, the children of the polytheists are from the polytheists and deserve to share their fate.

Other contradictions involve details of Muhammad's own life, the Islamic eschatological scheme, and more. Consequently, the ninth-century
scholar Asim an-Nabil (d. 827) threw up his hands in despair: “I have come to the conclusion that a pious man is never so ready to lie as in matters of the hadith.”
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Collecting and Codifying the Hadith

Islamic authorities realized that some effort had to be made to bring order out of all this chaos. In the latter part of the eighth century, the Abbasids initiated the collection and codification of the Hadith. By doing so, they exponentially expanded specific knowledge about what the prophet of Islam had commanded and condemned, approved and disapproved. The poet Marwan ibn Abi Hafsa accordingly exulted about the Abbasid caliph Muhammad ibn Mansur al-Mahdi (775–785): “The
amir al-mu'minin
[commander of the believers] Muhammad has revived the sunna of the Prophet with regard to what is permitted, what forbidden.”
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This great effort came to full fruition in the next century, with the appearance of the six most important Hadith collections, none of which date from earlier than two centuries after Muhammad's death. Together these are known as
as-Sahih as-Sittah
: the authentic and trustworthy ones
(sahih
means “sound” or “reliable”). These include, in order of their importance and general reputation for reliability,
Sahih Bukhari
, the most respected and authoritative Hadith collection, compiled by Bukhari (810–870);
Sahih Muslim
, by Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj (821–875); the
Sunan
of Abu Dawud as-Sijistani (818–889);
As-Sunan as-Sughra
, by Ahmad ibn Shuayb an-Nasai (829–915); the
Jami
of Abu Isa Muhammad At-Tirmidhi (824–892); and the
Sunan
of Muhammad ibn Maja (824–887). Although Muslims consider Bukhari's and Muslim's collections to be the most trustworthy, the others are held in high regard as well. Abu Dawud as-Sijistani, for example, reportedly traveled to Arabia, Iraq, Khurasan, Egypt, Syria, Iran, and elsewhere collecting hadiths. One respected imam, Zakariya bin Yahya as-Saji, declared: “The Qur'an is the foundation
of Islam and
Sunan Abu Dawud
is its pillar.” Another, Ibn al-Arabi, added: “There is no need of acquaintance of anything after acquiring the knowledge of the Qur'an and of
Sunan Abu Dawud.”
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The most respected Hadith collection, Bukhari's, began in a dream, according to Dr. Muhammad Muhsin Khan, a Saudi Islamic scholar and Qur'an translator. Dr. Khan writes that Bukhari dreamed that he was “standing in front of Prophet Muhammad having a fan in his hand and driving away the flies from the Prophet.” The imam interpreted this dream as a divine sign that he would “drive away the falsehood asserted against the Prophet.” Accordingly, he spent his life attempting to distinguish authentic hadiths from forgeries. According to Islamic tradition, Bukhari traversed the Islamic world collecting stories about Muhammad's words and deeds—fully 300,000 of them.
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Ultimately he rejected nearly 293,000 of them as fabricated, or at least impossible to evaluate as to their reliability. He chose and published 7,563 hadiths, though these included repetitions; in all, he included 2,602 separate hadiths that he deemed authentic. Even these run to nine volumes in a modern-day English-Arabic edition published in Saudi Arabia.

The imam Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj was Bukhari's disciple. Born in Nishapur in what is now Iran, he is said to have traveled to Arabia, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq to collect hadiths. According to Islamic tradition, he also collected 300,000 hadiths, of which he preserved 4,000 as authentic in his
Sahih.
Most Muslim scholars consider his collection, as well as that of Bukhari, to be almost entirely reliable; Muslims raise virtually no question about the authenticity of traditions that appear in both
Sahih Bukhari
and
Sahih Muslim
—of which there are many. One Internet-based introduction to Islamic faith and practice, which assures readers that “nothing on this site violates the fixed principles of Islamic law,” sums up the prevailing opinion among Muslims: “Sahih Bukhari is distinguished with it's [sic] strong reliability.” It adds that the imam Muslim chose the hadiths that he included in
Sahih Muslim
“based on stringent acceptance criteria.”
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The Proliferation of Forgeries

Yet if the imams Bukhari and Muslim had to go to such extraordinary lengths to find a relatively small number of authentic hadiths, this means that hundreds of thousands of stories about Muhammad were either completely unreliable or of doubtful authenticity. The problem was beyond their, or anyone's, ability to control. Ignaz Goldziher, the pioneering critical historian of the Hadith, notes that “the simplest means by which honest men sought to combat the rapid increase of faked hadiths is at the same time a most remarkable phenomenon in the history of literature. With pious intention, fabrications were combated with new fabrications, with new hadiths which were smuggled in and in which the invention of illegitimate hadiths were condemned by strong words uttered by the Prophet.”
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Muhammad was accordingly made to acknowledge: “After my departure, the number of sayings ascribed to me will increase in the same way as sayings have been ascribed to previous prophets.”
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In another hadith he prophesies, “In the later days of my community, there will be people who will hand you communications which neither you nor your forefathers have ever heard. Beware of them.” And even more strongly: “At the end of time there will be forgers, liars who will bring you hadiths which neither you nor your forefathers have heard. Beware of them so that they may not lead you astray and into temptation.”
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But how was a pious Muslim to know the true hadiths from the false? A hadith cites Muhammad proposing a solution: “What therefore is told you as a saying of mine you will have to compare with the Book of God (the Qur'an), and what is in accordance with it is by men, whether I have in fact said it myself or not.”
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Ibn Abbas adds another criterion, community acceptance: “If you hear from me a communication in the name of the Prophet and you find that it does not agree with the Book of God or is not liked by the people, know that I have reported a lie about the Prophet.”
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