Mathematical Hadith Verification PDF

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Mathematical Hadith Verification

Ikram Hawramani / Mar 27, 2019 10:09 AM / / 818 views
Islam’s hadith literature (reports about the actions and sayings of the Prophet ) is
one of the most problematic aspects of the religion due to the issues concerning the
reliability of transmitters. How do we know if a report going back six or seven
generations to the Prophet truly and accurately reports what the Prophet
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said or did?
So far the science of hadith has largely limited itself to verifying the authenticity of
hadiths by verifying the trustworthiness of each person in a hadith’s chain of narrators.
If all the transmitters are trustworthy, the assumption is that the hadith is ṣaḥīḥ
(“authentic” or “sound”) unless the hadith reports things that are clearly false or
contradictory to other hadith narrations. The problem is that a hadith scholar’s own
beliefs and biases can strongly affect whether they consider a strange and rare hadith to
be authentic or not. A good example is the following hadith in Imām al-Bukhārīʾs
collection:
Narrated Abu 'Amir or Abu Malik Al-Ash'ari that he heard the

Prophet (‫ )ﷺ‬saying, "From among my followers there will be some
people who will consider illegal sexual intercourse, khazz (a type of
clothing), the wearing of silk, the drinking of alcoholic drinks and the
use of musical instruments, as lawful. And there will be some people
who will stay near the side of a mountain and in the evening their
shepherd will come to them with their sheep and ask them for
something, but they will say to him, 'Return to us tomorrow.' Allah will
destroy them during the night and will let the mountain fall on them,
and He will transform the rest of them into monkeys and pigs and
they will remain so till the Day of Resurrection."
(Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 5590)
A non-scholar who reads this hadith will be greatly troubled by the implication that the
use of musical instruments is a characteristic of misguided and impious Muslims. And
since the hadith is authentic and present in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, they will face the difficult
choice of either believing musical instruments (and hence all music) to be forbidden in
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Islam, or ignoring the hadith and going with the commonsense and widespread Muslim
belief that music is permissible in Islam.
By introducing probability theory into the science of hadith, we gain an extremely

powerful tool that enables us to judge just how seriously we should take any particular
hadith. This is especially useful in the case of hadiths that seem to be contradicted by
other hadiths. For example on the issue of musical instruments we have the following
hadith:
Narrated Aisha:
Abu Bakr came to my house while two small Ansari girls were singing
beside me the stories of the Ansar concerning the Day of Buath. And
they were not singers. Abu Bakr said protestingly, "Musical
instruments of Satan in the house of Allah's Messenger (‫ "! )ﷺ‬It
happened on the Ìd day and Allah's Messenger (‫ )ﷺ‬said, "O Abu
Bakr! There is an Ìd for every nation and this is our Ìd."
Sahih al-Bukhari 952
An authentic version of this hadith (Sahih Muslim 892 b) tells us that the girls were
using the instrument daff (“tambourine”). So here we have the Prophet approving
of the use of musical instruments in his own home, yet the other hadith implies that
musical instruments are wicked and unlawful.
Probabilistic hadith criticism helps solve the dilemma of having to choose between two
hadiths that are both judged authentic by hadith scholars by telling us which one is
stronger.
As it happens, the hadith mentioning the Prophet’s approval of musical instruments is
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far more “authentic” and believable than the hadith in which he disapproves of them.
In this essay I will use these hadiths on music as an illustration of the probabilistic
hadith verification method.
Gathering the hadiths approving of music
The first step in hadith verification is to gather all existing versions of a hadith and
their chains and to draw a diagram representing all of its transmitters. Below is a
diagram of the version of the “two singing girls” hadiths found in Sahih al-Bukhari:
The blue box is the hadith, and the gray boxes are its transmitters. The first transmitter
is Aisha, may God be pleased with her, wife of the Prophet . The second
transmitter is Urwa b. al-Zubayr, her nephew. The third transmitter is Urwa’s son
Hisham. The the fourth transmitter is the highly respected hadith scholar Hammad b.
Usama b. Zayd. The fifth transmitter is Ubayd b. Ismail, a respected hadith transmitter.
This transmitter gave the hadith to Imam al-Bukhari who recorded it.
The second version of the hadith is also in Sahih al-Bukhari:
Narrated Aisha:
That once Abu Bakr came to her on the day of Ìd-ul-Fitr or Ìd ul
Adha while the Prophet (‫ )ﷺ‬was with her and there were two girl
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singers with her, singing songs of the Ansar about the day of Buath.
Abu Bakr said twice. "Musical instrument of Satan!" But the Prophet
(‫ )ﷺ‬said, "Leave them Abu Bakr, for every nation has an Ìd (i.e.
festival) and this day is our Ìd."
Sahih al-Bukhari 3931
Below is a diagram of this hadith’s chain:
You may note that the first three transmitters are the same as those of the previous
hadith. So we can join their diagrams into one as follows:
Next is the chain found in Sahih Muslim 892 a:
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This chain is exactly the same as the al-Bukhari’s first chain except for the last
transmitter. We can therefore join it with the rest as follows:
We now therefore have three chains going back to the same hadith. Imam Muslim
mentions two additional chains which we add to the diagram as follows:
We now move on to other collections that mention the same hadith. The first one is a
version mentioned in Abu Uwaana’s Mustakhraj, which we add to the diagram as
follows:
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I have indicated the new chain in green. After further research, I was able to discover a
further chain in Sahih al-Bukhari as indicated below:
Al-Bukhari mentions an alternative version of this new chain as indicated below:
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The scholar Abu Uwana adds two of his own supporting chains to this version as
follows:
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We now have a fairly complete picture of all of the different chains of this hadith.
Adding the probabilities
To understand this section, some previous knowledge of probability theory will likely
be required.
In order to start, we have to agree on an important assumption. How trustworthy is a

single transmitter? This is a matter of intuition. After trying out various probabilities, I
have settled on the value of 60%. This means that each trustworthy transmitter in a
chain has a 60% chance of truthfully and correctly transmitting the hadith they
transmit. This may seem low, but it actually works very well to represent the issues
inherent in hadith transmitter verification.
According to probability theory, if you have a witness with 60% probability of
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truthfulness saying something, and then a second witness also with 60% probability of
truthfulness comes along and says the same thing, the probability of both of them
saying the truth increases, since we have two witnesses saying the same thing. We
calculate this increase by multiplying the falsehood probabilities of the two persons as
follows:
Person 1: 60% chance of truth = 40% chance of falsehood
Person 2: 60% chance of truth = 40% chance of falsehood
The chance of falsehood for both = 40% * 40% = 16%
The chance of truth of both = 100% - the chance of falsehood =

100% - 16% = 84%
Below is a diagram of an imaginary chain that represents these facts:
We have two people each of whom say that the Prophet said something. Each of
them has a 60% probability of truthfulness and accuracy, but the two of them together
have a 84% probability of truthfulness and accuracy, so the above imaginary hadith has
an 84% chance of truthfulness and accuracy.
As we add more transmitters, the probability continually goes up:
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Now we have four supporting witnesses, so their probability of truthfulness can be

calculated as follows:
Falsehood probabilities: 40% * 40% * 40% * 40% = 2.56%
Truth probability: 100% - 2.56% = 97.44%
What this means is that if you have four Companions transmit the same hadith from
the Prophet , the chance of the hadith being truly and correctly transmitted is
97.44%, which is a very high chance.
In probability theory 1 represents 100% and 0 represents 0. So another way of doing

the above calculation is as follows:
0.4 * 0.4 * 0.4 * 0.4 = 0.0256
1 - 0.0256 = 0.9744
The benefits of the 60% assumption will become clear as we go through the
verification process of the chains we gathered earlier. We will first deal with the top
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part of the diagram, which is as follows:
First, we will fill in the original 60% assumption by writing 0.6 in each bubble:
We do not add the 0.6 to the bubbles on the far right because those are written books,
so they virtually have a 100% chance of reliability. What concerns us are unwritten, oral
transmissions. The first step is to combine the three middle transmitters’ probabilities
vertically, as follows:
Falsehood chances: (1-0.6) * (1-0.6) * (1-0.6) = 0.064
Truth chance: 1 - 0.064 = 0.936
Above, each of the three transmitters has a 100% – 60%, or 40% likelihood of falsely
transmitting the hadith. But in order to get the probability of all of them falsely
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transmitting the hadith at the same time, we have to multiply these chances together:
40% * 40% * 40% = 6.4%. So the chance of all of them having falsely transmitted the
hadith is only 6.4%, meaning that there is a 93.6% chance of them having truly and
accurately transmitted this hadith.
We will call this “vertical combination”. We vertically combine all of the probabilities of
the truthfulness and accuracy of the transmitters to get a single number, in this case
93.6%, which represents the authenticity of all them combined together.
We next have to do a horizontal combination. All three transmitters transmit the hadith
from Hammad b. Usama, who also has a 0.6 (60%) chance of authenticity.
In the case of horizontal combination, rather than multiplying falsehood probabilities,

we multiply truth probabilities. The reason is that as information passes down through
a chain of transmitters each of whom have a 60% chance of authenticity, the chance of
the information being correctly passed down decreases. There is more chance for error
and fabrication. If you hear a Companion say that the Prophet said something,
that is far more trustworthy than another person saying they heard their father say that
their grandfather said that a Companion said that the Prophet said that.
So we multiply 0.93 by 0.6 to get 0.558, which means 55.8%. We now update the
bubble for Hammad b. Usama to represent this new probability:
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Hammad b. Usama’s probability went down from 0.6 to 0.558 because we did not hear
the hadith directly from him, but from three people who claim to have heard him.
Since those three people have a combined probability of 93% truthfulness and accuracy
(rather than 100%), this slightly decreases the probability of the truthfulness and
accuracy of the information we get from Hammad b. Usama.
We now move on to al-Bukhari’s second chain, which is as follows:
Using horizontal combination:
0.6 * 0.6 * 0.6 = 0.216
So this second chain has only a 21.6% probability of truthfulness and accuracy. The
reason is that we do not have any supporting transmitters. We only have Muhammad b.
al-Muthanna’s word for it that Muhammad b. Jaafar said that, and we only have
Muhammad b. Jaafar’s word for it that Shu`ba said that. The deeper a chain goes back
in time, the lower its probability of authenticity and accuracy becomes.
We next deal with two chains from Sahih Muslim:
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Using vertical combination for the middle transmitters, we get a probability of 0.84 or
84%. Multiplying that by 0.6, we get 0.504, meaning that Abu Muàwiyah has a 50.4%
probability of authenticity.
Next we have the more interesting task of combining all the chains we examined above.
We have to vertically combine the probabilities of Hammad (0.558), Shu`ba (0.216) and
Abu Muàwiyah (0.504):
Falsehood probabilities: (1-0.558) * (1-0.216) * (1-0.504) =

0.171877888
Truth probability: 1 - 0.171877888 = 0.828122112
So the probability of the truth of the information coming from these three transmitters
is 82.8%.
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Now we horizontally combine this with Hisham b. Urwa’s 0.6 probability, resulting in
0.496873267
We repeat these same steps for the remaining chains, as follows:
And by vertically combining the left-most probabilities (Hisham b. Urwa’s 49.68% and
Muhammad b. Abd al-Rahman’s 21.04%), we get 0.602766552, so the information has
a 60.27% probability of authenticity at this stage.
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We next multiply this 0.602766552 by Urwa b. al-Zubayr’s 0.6 (horizontal combination),

resulting in 0.361659931.
In the final step, we multiply this result by Aisha’s 0.6:
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The result is 0.216995959. This means that the hadith with all of its chains has a
21.69% chance of authenticity and accuracy. This seems very low, but it is natural for a
hadith that comes from a single Companion, through a single transmitter.
In my methodology, a hadith that reaches 20% or higher is ḥasan, a hadith that reaches
30% or higher is ṣaḥīḥ, a hadith that reaches 60% or higher is ṣaḥīḥ al-ṣaḥīḥ (a
degree above ṣaḥīḥ), and a hadith that reaches 85% or higher is mutawātir (“widely
transmitted”, a degree above ṣaḥīḥ al-ṣaḥīḥ).
Different scholars may prefer different probabilities for what they consider
ḥasan or higher. Personally these are the numbers I have settled on that my heart is
comfortable with and accepts.
The hadith disapproving of music
We now move on to Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 5590, the hadith that says misguided Muslims
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will approve of musical instruments. Below is a diagram of the hadith’s chain:
The hadith comes from a single chain that does not branch out, meaning it is an
extremely questionable chain, which I call a “precarious” chain. To calculate its
probability of authenticity, we horizontally combine all the 0.6 probabilities as follows:
Probability of truth = 0.6 * 0.6 * 0.6 *0.6 *0.6 *0.6 = 0.046656
This hadith therefore has a 4.66% chance of authenticity, which is extremely low. In my
methodology a hadith between 10% and 20% is munkar (strange and likely to be false),
while a hadith below 10% is ḍaʿīf (“weak”, i.e. almost certainly false). As discussed in
another article, there is another reason to consider this hadith false: it says misguided
Muslims will consider khazz (a type of clothing) lawful. But we know 20 Companions
of the Prophet wore this type of clothing, so this makes the hadith even more
dubious.
The verdict
So this hadith in which the Prophet says misguided Muslims will consider musical
instruments lawful has only a 4.66% chance of authenticity, while the hadith in which
the Prophet approves of musical instruments has a 21.69% chance of
authenticity. Thus the hadith in which the Prophet approves of musical
instruments is 4.6 times stronger than the hadith in which he disapproves of them
(21.69 ÷ 4.66 = 4.65).
Based on this, we can confidently say that the evidence in support of the lawfulness of
musical instruments is far stronger. Therefore approval of musical instruments is a
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vastly better representation of the Prophet’s sunna (tradition) than disapproval of them.
Defending the assumptions
The assumption that each transmitter has a 60% chance of accurately and truthfully
transmitting the information needs to be defended. This assumption makes most
ṣaḥīḥ narrations get an authenticity around 30%. If we treat these numbers empirically,
it would mean that most authentic narrations are more likely to be false than true. For
this reason I have chosen to treat all hadiths that reach 30% or higher as ṣaḥīḥ /
authentic despite the fact that empirically they fall beneath the truth threshold of 50%.
My reasoning is that by choosing these assumptions, we create an interface between the

empirical research world and the classical hadith studies world. A non-Muslim scholar
may choose the 30% verdict on an authentic narration as a cause for skepticism, while
a Muslim scholar can continue to make use of probability theory while adopting the
traditional view of considering individual, low-truth-probability hadiths as authentic.
Another reason for the 60% assumption is that it gives us a very wide range of results.
Some hadiths will reach close to 100%, many others will hover between 50% and 20%.
This allows for representing a scholar’s empirical intuitions about these transmitted
pieces of information, while also allowing them to remain in the classical hadith
criticism world if they wish by choosing lower numbers, such as 30%, to represent full
authenticity.
The study of Islam works on the basis of the autonomous consensus of the
researchers, a concept I have defended elsewhere.[1] Therefore introducing probability
theory into hadith criticism will require the involvement of many researchers until a
consensus emerges on the best assumptions to be chosen. Therefore my assumptions
in this article are merely preliminary suggestions intended to illustrate what a
probabilistic study of hadith would look like.
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Conclusion
Combining probability theory and hadith criticism can greatly help in resolving issues
surrounding contradictory hadith narrations by making it clear which hadiths are
superior to which ones. It would be extremely helpful if we could build a new hadith
collection that shows the probability of authenticity of each hadith rather than merely
saying whether it is authentic or not. But such a work would require many years of
work.
There is also the issue of sub-par transmitters. While I have chosen a probability 60%
for reliable transmitters, for transmitters who are mudallis, non-qawī, non-ḥujja, or
considered weak by some scholars and not others, lower probabilities will have to be
used where necessary.
There are also different levels of weak transmitters. Some are considered weak for
ideological reasons (because they held beliefs that hadith scholars considered
unacceptable), while others are considered weak because they were caught lying or
fabricating hadiths. Different probabilities will have to be used for different levels of
weakness.
Further applications of the probabilistic method
Below is a list of studies I have conducted on certain topics of hadith criticism where I
use the methodology developed in this article:
Ikram Hawramani, “Islam and magic”, The Hawramani Institute, http://hawramani.com

/islam-and-magic/, Apr 02, 2019, retrieved April 22, 2019.
Ikram Hawramani, “Is ruqya part of Islam? A study of the hadiths on ruqya using
probability theory”, The Hawramani Institute, http://hawramani.com/is-ruqya-part-of-
islam-a-study-of-the-hadiths-on-ruqya-using-probability-theory/, Mar 24, 2019,
21 of 22 6/24/19, 8:48 AM
retrieved April 22, 2019.
Ikram Hawramani, “A study of “the majority of people in Hell are women” hadith”,
The Hawramani Institute, http://hawramani.com/a-study-of-the-majority-of-people-in-
hell-are-women-hadith/, Mar 26, 2019, retrieved April 22, 2019.
Footnotes
1. See Ikram Hawramani, “Solving the Problem of the Codification of the Sharia”,
The Hawramani Institute, http://hawramani.com/solving-the-problem-of-the-
codification-of-the-sharia/, Apr 16, 2019, retrieved April 22, 2019. 
« Are misfortunes punishments from God?Do we have to pray sunnat that are and aren't muakkada? »
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Mathematical Hadith Verification

Narrated Abu 'Amir or Abu Malik Al-Ash'ari that he heard the

(Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 5590)

By introducing probability theory into the science of hadith, we gain an extremely

Sahih al-Bukhari 952

As it happens, the hadith mentioning the Prophet’s approval of musical instruments is

Gathering the hadiths approving of music

The second version of the hadith is also in Sahih al-Bukhari:

Sahih al-Bukhari 3931

Below is a diagram of this hadith’s chain:

Next is the chain found in Sahih Muslim 892 a:

Al-Bukhari mentions an alternative version of this new chain as indicated below:

Adding the probabilities

In order to start, we have to agree on an important assumption. How trustworthy is a

According to probability theory, if you have a witness with 60% probability of

Person 1: 60% chance of truth = 40% chance of falsehood

Person 2: 60% chance of truth = 40% chance of falsehood

The chance of falsehood for both = 40% * 40% = 16%

The chance of truth of both = 100% - the chance of falsehood =

Below is a diagram of an imaginary chain that represents these facts:

As we add more transmitters, the probability continually goes up:

Now we have four supporting witnesses, so their probability of truthfulness can be

Falsehood probabilities: 40% * 40% * 40% * 40% = 2.56%

Truth probability: 100% - 2.56% = 97.44%

In probability theory 1 represents 100% and 0 represents 0. So another way of doing

0.4 * 0.4 * 0.4 * 0.4 = 0.0256

part of the diagram, which is as follows:

Falsehood chances: (1-0.6) * (1-0.6) * (1-0.6) = 0.064

Truth chance: 1 - 0.064 = 0.936

In the case of horizontal combination, rather than multiplying falsehood probabilities,

We now move on to al-Bukhari’s second chain, which is as follows:

Using horizontal combination:

0.6 * 0.6 * 0.6 = 0.216

We next deal with two chains from Sahih Muslim:

Falsehood probabilities: (1-0.558) * (1-0.216) * (1-0.504) =

Truth probability: 1 - 0.171877888 = 0.828122112

We repeat these same steps for the remaining chains, as follows:

We next multiply this 0.602766552 by Urwa b. al-Zubayr’s 0.6 (horizontal combination),

In the final step, we multiply this result by Aisha’s 0.6:

The hadith disapproving of music

will approve of musical instruments. Below is a diagram of the hadith’s chain:

Probability of truth = 0.6 * 0.6 * 0.6 *0.6 *0.6 *0.6 = 0.046656

Defending the assumptions

My reasoning is that by choosing these assumptions, we create an interface between the

Further applications of the probabilistic method

Ikram Hawramani, “Islam and magic”, The Hawramani Institute, http://hawramani.com

retrieved April 22, 2019.

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Probability of truth = 0.6 * 0.6 * 0.6 0.6 0.6 *0.6 = 0.046656