Hadith as Oral Literature through Early Islamic Literary Criticism

Abstract

Although the study of ḥadīth (the Prophet’s speech) has advanced significantly in recent decades, several of its literary aspects remain unexplored within Euro-American scholarship. The epistemological status of ḥadīth within balāghah, the premodern Islamic theory of literary analysis, has received little scholarly attention. Drawing on Inimitability and Conciseness (Kitāb al-Iʿjāz wa al-Ījāz), written by the literary critic, Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī (d. 1038 CE), I show how during the oral stages of its development, ḥadīth was a living tradition that was highly flexible in terms of its wording and content. I empirically explore the interface and interactions between oral and written media in the employment of individual ḥadīths as literary texts, showing how an in-depth exploration of the oral nature of ḥadīth illuminates the approaches of modern literary criticism to appreciate literary texts of oral origin. In conclusion, I suggest that the early Arabic discourse of literary criticism offers an emic (culture-specific) perspective that fosters recognition of the literary reception of ḥadīth and its profound integration into the Islamic literary culture.