Qur'an, Hadith and Sirah: The Three Sources of Fiqh

Qur'an, the sacred scripture of the Muslim faith, was edited and compiled during the lifetime of the Prophet of Arabia (570?-632 AD) after which his immediate successors (Abu Bakr and Umar [the first and the second Caliphs, respectively]) managed to transform it into the shape of a manuscript. Uthman (d. 656 AD) erased (by arson) all the versions written in the non-Qurayshite Arabic dialect and what remained has been considered the unadulterated word of God by Muslims throughout the history (with several exceptions, of course, which can be traced back to some hadiths in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih al-Muslim). However, the consensus among Sunni, Shiite and Kharijite jurists has always been in favor of the Uthmanid manuscript being the original Mohammedan Qur'an which he claimed to have received from the Almighty via Gabriel.

Muslims believe that all of the Qur'an is the word of God. Qur'an has 114 chapters, divided into sentences termed as ayahs. There are 6000+ ayahs or verses in the Islamic scripture. The surahs are currently organized with respect to the the length of each chapter. There are seven manzils in Qur'an for the ease of a person who wished to finish recitation within a week. If a Muslim desires to finish the entire book in a month, there are thirty juzs or parahs of Qur'an. The 30th one has the heaviest number of chapters. Some chapters take more than two parahs to be written into. Each chapter begins with the supplication known as tasmiyah. It goes like: "(I begin) in the name of God (who is) the beneficent (and) the merciful." The celebrated tasmiyah is only included twice in Qur'an as a verse i.e. only two Qur'anic ayahs include the tasmiyah. All other surahs don't include tasmiyah as a verse but a qari or a reader of the Qur'an is bound to recite it before the beginning of a new chapter, with the Chapter #9 (al-Tawbah) being an exception.

Qur'an is an essential part of a devoted Muslim's life. He reads its chapters and supplications in his daily prayers and spends most of his Ramadan fasts reciting the holy book. The word of God help him in his periods of stress and weakness when he invokes his Lord's mercy with the ayahs of Qur'an. Amulets are made by writing Qur'anic inscriptions in them. Muslims memorize Qur'an and are called huffaz. Muslim scholars have penned down many exegeses of Qur'an called the tafsir books in which they use hadiths of Muhammad, quotes of his Companions and other elders, biblical testimonies, natural observations and common sense to explain the meanings hidden in each and every verse of the final revelation of God to humanity. If you prefer to read a tafsir work, you can search for Ibn Kathir's, al-Tabari's, al-Qurutbi's, al-Razi's, al-Alusi's, Zamakhshari's, Baydawi's, Tha'labi's, Suyuti's and many more. As a matter of fact, exegeses are available even for hadith encyclopedias such as Fath al-Bari which is an interpretation of Sahih al-Bukhari and al-Nawawi's one elaborates the narrations recorded in Sahih al-Muslim. One must learn that the exegeses written for Qur'an and hadiths take up several volumes. Cool, eh?

After the death of Muhammad, his Companions published his message all over the world and spread the declaration of monotheism in the continents and Asia and Africa. The Companions (Sahabah) are the well-respected generation of the early Muslims who shared Muhammad's teachings to the generation that came after i.e. the Followers (Tabi'in). The Followers made Taba Tabi'in (I don't know how to translate it perfectly). The Taba Tabi'in were succeeded by the Aslaf and that's the word we use for all the future successors of the Taba Tabi'in. Arabs had mastered the art of memorization well before the advent of Islam. Thus, it was an easy task for Muhammad's primary students to impregnate the second generation (the first one which failed to be taught directly by Muhammad) with the pure teachings of the Apostle. The Followers memorized the instructions of Muhammad and taught the Taba Tabi'in of the secrets and mysteries of Islam. The Taba Tabi'in realized that they needed to write down the material they were being supplied with. That's how we get hadith literature. 

Muhammad passed away in 11 AH (the eleventh year of Hijrah [Migration]).The first account of written hadiths can be traced back to Ali ibn Abi Talib and Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al-'As. They had scribed down Muhammad's teachings but their work got destroyed after them. Malik (d. 179 AH) of Medina, who was a student of the Taba Tabi'in, wrote his well-known Muwatta. Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 241 AH), who lived during the Abbasid era, compiled his huge Musnad. Then al-Bukhari (d. 256 AH) and al-Muslim (d. 261 AH) came up with their Sahihs, initially ignored but then well-received forf their political correctness. However, the Musnads of Abu Bakr ibn Abi Shaybah (d. 235 AH) and Abd al-Razzaq (d. 211 AH) will never cease to be referred to as the main source of information for Muslim muhaddithin and mu'arrikhin. Other noteworthy hadith compilations include Musnad ibn Mubarak (by Abdullah ibn Mubarak [d. 181 AH]), Sunan al-Darimi (by al-Darimi [d. 200 AH]), Musnad al-Tiyalsi (by Abi Da'ud al-Tiyalsi [d. 204 AH]) Sahih ibn al-Khuzaymah (by Ibn al-Khuzaymah [d. 311 AH]) and many more. 

It must be noted that these three six books are often counted as the major hadith canon of Sunni Islam:

⦁ Sahih al-Bukhari

⦁ Sahih al-Muslim

⦁ Sunan Abi Da'ud (later demoted because of inclusion of many weak hadiths)

⦁ Sunan Tirmidhi

⦁ Sunan Nisa'i

⦁ Sunan Ibn Majah

Contrary to the widespread belief among laymen, Bukhari's magnum opus is not 100% authentic as he has referred to many unreliable narrators. Ibn Hajar admits that weak hadiths exist in Bukhari's compilation. Bukhari has committed the crime of tripping hadiths to make them look politically correct. Thus, he had avoided to admit any hadith or any part of a hadith in his great album of narrations where a prominent Companion of Muhammad is maligned. For instance, he records a hadith in which Muhammad's widow Aishah mentions how Muhammad visited Masjid al-Nabawi while being supported by Fadl ibn Abbas and another person. When the narrator inquired Ibn Abbas (another Companion) of the identity of that mysterious second person, Bukhari quotes Ibn Abbas saying, "It was Ali." The actual hadith, recorded by Ibn Hanbal and the likes, record Ibn Abbas answering, "It was Ali but Aishah was incapable of mentioning him positively." As the hadith depicts the strained relationship between Muhammad's widow and son-in-law, Bukhari tactically trimmed the controversial part out of his encyclopedia.

As for the biography of Muhammad, much of it can be deduced from Qur'an and hadiths. But Muslims have devoted a different science to the study of their Messenger's life events, called Sirah. The first book of sirah ever written was not Muhammad ibn Ishaq's (d. 151 AH) treatise on this subject. Ibn Ishaq became famous among the Orientalists as the first biographer of Muhammad. Ibn Hazm (d. 135 AH) and Musa ibn Aqabah (d. 141) accomplished the task of combining the battles of the Prophet into a single manuscript some time before Ibn Ishaq. Such books were known as maghazi. Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri (d. 124) shone both in the fields of hadith and history. Muhammad ibn Umar al-Waqidi (d. 207 AH) influenced his scribe Muhammad ibn S'ad (d. 230 AH) who penned down the first trustworthy and resourceful account of Muhammad and his immediate successors in his Tabaqat. Ibn Hisham (d. 213 AH) rewrote Ibn Ishaq's sirah. But the science of recording historical narrations reached a magnificent peak with the rise of Muhammad ibn Jurayr al-Tabari (d. 310 AH), the author of a tafsir of Qur'an as well as his globally-respected Tarikh al Muluk wa'l Umam (History of Kings and Nations), that was referred to by succeeding historians such as Ibn Kathir, Ibn Khuldun and Shahristani. 

Hadiths became highly useful when Muslims encountered several problems they were unable to solve with Qur'an. Thus, people began to fabricate hadiths in the favor of their beliefs. To check whether a certain hadith is authentic or not, Muslim scholars used to make sure all the people involved between the passage of hadith from the lips of a Companion to the fingers of the author are trustworthy. This is called the science of men (ilm e rijal). Many books were written regarding the hadith narrators. Bukhari was also the author of one such encyclopedia. Ibn Hibban, al-Mizzi, Dhahabi, Ibn Hajar and many more wrote volumes describing thousands of men. Lisan al-Mizan and its likes provide the reader with detailed accounts of the narrators. Taqrib al-Tahdhib and its likes give us just a short sketch of the guy's/lady's status. Yeah, fellows, there were ladies narrating the hadiths as well!

Unfortunately, people have mistakenly applied the science of hadith on the history books and tried to reject a great portion of the early Islamic history (involving Abu Bakr's election, the riddah wars, Hashimite claim on the throne, Uthman's election, the mutiny against him, the Civil War during Ali's reign, Yazid's character, Husayn's execution, the cruelty of the Umayyad dynasty and other incidents) on the basis that they were transmitted by weak/false people. Indeed, many transmitters were described as being weak or rejected by the rijal masters, but only in the matter of transmission of hadiths, not in the mention of transmission of historical narrations. You can see that Shafi'i condemns al-Waqidi in his Kitab al-Um as a liar but also relies upon his book, ­al-Maghazi, by quoting from it. If a person is weak in hadith, it doesn't mean that he is weak in history. We have evidence that Sunni historians even recognized famous fabricators of hadith as reliable when it comes to chronicles. Sayf ibn Umar, Abi Mikhnaf, al-Waqidi, Nasr ibn Muzahim and the Kalbi family were all rejected in the matter of hadith transmission. But their historical records were relied upon by grand scholars such as al-Tabari. Ibn Kathir begins his chapter on Husayn's (d. 61 AH) martyrdom at Karbala by explicitly stating that he would not let any Shiite fabrication malign the genuine account of Husayn's execution he was presenting. Then he initiates by narrating from Abi Mikhnaf, a staunch Kufan Alid, showing that a Muslim researcher can show flexibility in the matter of history. 

Now, we can turn our attention towards the books of fiqh or the jurisprudence. They were written to describe the Mohammedan law. Malik's student Shafi'i was the author of Kitab al-Um. We have Ibn al-Qayyum's, Ibn Hazm's and Ibn Taymiyah's works of the shari'ah. Ibn Qayyum (d. 751 AD) was Ibn Taymiyah's student. Ibn Taymiyah was the founder of the Salafi movement in Islam. Ibn Qayyum and Ibn Kathir were taught under the famous Syrian jurist who became controversial for his views assumed sacrilegious by the orthodox Muslims. Ibn Qayyum's works can be referred to for a detailed study of the inner belief system laid down by Muhammad, especially those Islamophobs who believe that Islam is a religion of intolerance and instructs its adherents to massacre all non-Muslims. Just search for his Ahkam Ahl al-Dhimmah. Other works of great esteem include Abi Yusuf's A'thar. He was a student of Abu Hanifah, the first Imam of Sunni Islam. There are four, by the way: Abu Hanifah, Malik, Shafi'i and Ahmad ibn Hanbal.  Are you familiar with Averroes? Well, that ancient Spanish Muslim (Ibn Rushd [d. 595 AH], if you please) scientist was also a Maliki jurist and the author of Bidayah al-Mujtahid. But isn't the Hanafi fiqh the mainstream Islamic shari'ah? Well, if it pleases you to read Hanafi school, for God's sake, stay away from books like Fatawa Alamgiri or Fatawa Tatarkhani. Study al-Nasafi's (d. 710 AH) Kanz al-Daqa'iq. Though I'm a Shiite myself (Usuli Ithna 'Ash'ari Imami Ja'fari), I seriously suggest further study of Ibn al-Qayyum's works such as Zad al-Ma'ad and Turuq al-Hukmiyah.

Muslim jurists have authored books and booklets on individual subjects in shari'ah such as Abi Yusuf's Khiraj (on taxes) and Ibn Abi Asim's Diyat (blood money). And this is just the beginning. Most authors I have mentioned were Sunni Muslims. Zamakhshari was a Mutazilite though. I haven't even begun with the Shiites such as Shaykh Saduq ibn Babawayh, Tusi, Hilli and others. Kharijite jurists have also been failed to be mentioned by me.

In short, Islam is a very complex and complicated belief system once you begin to study it deeply. It's not like you offer prayers and marry multiple women just to murder some Judeo-Christians in the end and get seventy-two virgins in paradise. The shari'ah is wearisome and extensive. If you think that you have learned Islam just by looking at a few military instructions of Qur'an and studying some instances of Muhammad beheading Jews recorded by al-Tabari, I daresay you're not just wrong, you're misguided. 

If you wish to see a modern and liberal version of Islam, just Google the name: Jonathan Andrew Cleveland Brown. This American student converted to Islam from Christianity and is a mullah. He will teach you Islam from its actual roots. His videos are also available on YouTube. For further research, I suggest you look up al-Yaqeen Institute's web articles.