Beyond Authenticity, Alternative Approaches to Hadith Narrations and Collections

The studies in this volume go beyond the question of the authenticity of Prophetic narrations, which has occupied the field of Hadith Studies for over a century. By approaching hadith narrations and literature from various perspectives, the authors seek to uncover the potential that hadith material has to better understand the intellectual and social history of Muslim societies. Applying concepts and methods from other disciplines, the authors study the materiality of hadith collections, the places they were read, and the ways they were incorporated in architecture. Additionally, they explore understudied genres such as the forty-hadith, the faḍāʾil, aḥādīth al-aḥkām, and ʿawālī collections. As such, they set a new course to push the field of Hadith Studies in a new direction.

Mohammad Gharaibeh, Ph.D. (2012), University of Bonn, is Professor of Islamic Intellectual History at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He has published on modern reform movements, Islamic creed, Arabic historiography, and Hadith Studies and approaches Islamic intellectual history from the perspective of the sociology of knowledge.