Critical Methods on Hadīth: Self Reflexivity in Hadīth Scholarship

Hadīth narration, I argue, remained an excessively self-critical and selfreflective activity regarding ties, identities, and networks, but not only regarding narrative texts. The Sciences of hadīth, which emerged gradually parallel to the formation of hadīth transmission network, document the way hadīth narrators examined their own network.1 A survey of this literature below will show that narrators developed a differentiated view to hadīth, its narrators and types of their ties. Furthermore, they analyzed patterns in the transmission networks of hadīth to determine the degree of reliability. This critical activity created a system of thought through which narratives, narrators and chains were brought together to create a larger structure.