Dating of Isnād and Western Scholarship

Isnād system is the distinction of Muslim Ummah which is praised by its critics too because it is a source of access to the origin of every information. Muslim scholarship called it religion and did not accept hadith without Isnād . Especially after the first Civil War -when the fabrication of hadīth appeared in Muslim society- the Muhadithūn thoroughly scrutinised the traditions and transmitters to differentiate the authentic Aḥādīth from the weak and fabricated. On the other hand, when Western scholarship started source criticism, they considered Isnād system as a source of dating Ḥadīth. Therefore, most of their theories and conclusions about the authenticity of Ḥadīth based on it. They put in question the Isnād system as Prophetic Ḥadīth and tried to find out its dating in their studies. Some of them claimed that Muḥadıthūn fabricated it in the second century and onwards while the others argued that it was used after the first half of the first century. However, both considered it later addition to the hadith literature. This study deals with the theories of Western scholars about the dating of Isnād and its comparison with historical facts.