THE WAR AND ISLAM 345

War has three dangerous enemies, which are more than

its match: the Russian knout, the English pound, and
the universal indolence of Moslem races. As a national
state Turkey still possesses vital forces. Islam as a.
world-power is an extinct volcano ; in the depths of its
crater there may still be rumblings, but i t has lost any
power of eruption.”*
Here the writer serioudy quotes a report in the
Vossische Zeitung (March 18th and 19th, 1915) of a new
Mahdi in the Sudan called Derwish Mabur el Afl. “ He
is said to have annihilated the British troops under
General Hawley in December, and by the beginning of
March to have conquered tohewhole of the Sudan with
the capital Khartoum and a great part of Nubia. Dan-
gerous as this success is for the British Government in
the Nile Valley and although it plays directly into the
hands of Turkey, it cannot be regarded as the result of
the summons to the Holy War. For this revolt would
have broken out apart from the Turkish jihad, and even
if Turkey did succeed in conquering Egypt it would
have to suppress this rising in the Sudan.”t His con-
clusion is, that in view of the unparallelled changes in
national relationships through the war, “ t h e task of
Missions to Moslems will assume a new aspect, consequent
on the contrasted relations of the European powers to
Islam.”$
In the supplement to the May and June numbers of
the Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift, Herr Enderlin, of the
Sudan Pioneer Mission, founded a few years ago in
Assuan, gives a sketch of “ Tendencies and Currents in
Egyptian Islam.” He is of opinion that Mohammedan
sympathies are with the German cause, and that they pray
“ especially for Hag (Mecca-Pilgrim)Mohammed Ghalyum

-i.e., the Emperor Wilhelm.” Some years since, in a

remote village of Upper Egypt, an Egyptian gentleman
who first received him with suspicion, on finding he was a
German brought out a bottle of scent with a picture of
the Sultan Abdul Ha8midand the German Emperor arm
in arm, saying, “ They are friends, they belong together ” ;
and the company responded, “May Allah lengthen his
* Ibid., p. 163. Ibid., p. 154. $ Ibid., p. 157.
346 THE MOSLEM WORLD
days.” To the writer (p. 63) “it =ems aa if Germany were
destined by the will of God to present to Mohammedans
a better picture of Christianity ” than Russians or Anglo-
Saxons. It may be added that this last article is in a
feuilleton of the review, and the passages quoted are in
small print ; so it may be presumed that they are not
regarded as of first class authority.
The solution of the problem thus presented to German
Christians must wait for the verdict of the peace settle-
ment, when that comes. But if the war so far has shown
that national and religious oppositions are very far from
running parallel, we may hope that any change in
political relations between Germany and Turkey need
not bar the rising tide, hitherto perceptible in German
missionary circles, of interest and sympathy towards the
Christian witness to the Moslem world.
H. U. WEITBRECHT.
 A VETERAN’S MESSAGE 347

A VETERAN’S MESSAGE.
-. .0:-

IN the April number of THEMOSLEMWORLDwe had a

greeting from the Bishop in Jerusalem, who was just
girding on his armour for the new work which lay before
him. The Editor has kindly asked me for a brief message
from one who is just laying aside his armour and retiring
from the Front. To my great sorrow, the doctors have
forbidden me ever to return to Persia, and ill-health
makes it necessary for me to leave the firing line and
to join the ranks of those who are engaged at the home
base. It is some comfort to realise that the work and
prayers of those a t home are needed as much as the
labours of those abroad. We are being constantly re-
minded that the present war will be won in the workshops
quite as much as in the trenches. The only thing that
matters is that each citizen who rejoices in his heavenly
citizenship should be in the place chosen for him to
faithfully serve his King.
The thought uppermost in my mind, which I should
like to pass on to you, is the absolute certainty of the final
victory of our King. We are on the winning side, however
long the final victory may be delayed. Christ has con-
quered the forces of sin and Satan. We see not yet all
things put under Him, but that “ not yet ” speaks to us
of the crowning day that is coming, in which every
stronghold of error shall be cast down, and every tongue
- e v e n in what are now Moslem lands--shall confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father !
It is sometimes helpful to look back as well as to look
around. My thoughts go back to a voyage up the
Persian Gulf nearly twenty-six years ago. That grand
old veteran, Bishop French, was witnessing for his Master
a t Muscat, and was, a few months later, to lay down his
life for Him there. But with that solitary exception the
Banner of the Cross was being uplifted nowhere in the
348 THE MOSLEM WORLD
Persian Gulf between Karachi and Baghdad. Zwemer
and Cantine had not yet appeared on the scene to pros-
pect for the Arabian Mission. Bruce, with two col-
leagues, was at work in Julfa, an Armenian village close
to Tsfahan, and the C.M.S. had then no other work in
Persia. The Bible Society’s work in the Persian agency
was almost in its infancy. The American Presbyterian
Mission in Northern Persia was much less fully developed
than it is to-day. There were no special signs that an
era of progress was a t hand. But to-day we thank God
for the vigorous work that for many years has been
carried on at Muscat, Bahrein, Busrah, Kuweit, and
elsewhere, by missionaries of the Arabian Mission. Some
of them already rest from their labours ; but their works
do follow them. One of them, George E. Stone, who
died at Muscat, left a message which has often been an
encouragement to others, “ We are getting the dynamite
under this rock of Islam, and some day God will touch it
0 f l . f ’ ’ The C.M.S. work in Persia has been greatly
developed during the past quarter of a century. Hospitals
for men and women have been built in the Mohammedan
cities of Jsfahan, Yezd, and Kerman, while educational
work has been established in those centres. Faithful
work has also been done for some years at Shiraz, though,
alas, that scene of Henry Martyn’s labours is a t the
present time unoccupied by any ambassador of the
Cross. Itinerating tours have proved that there is in
the country an open door for evangelisation everywhere.
Medical missions do more than unlock the doors ; they
take them off their hinges. The BAbi and Baht% move-
ments, and the persecutions to which their adherents
have been subjected, have in many directions created a
craving for religious liberty, and stimulated a search for
truth. God has wrought and is manifestly working with
us to-day ; let us take courage, making the words of
Henry Martyn our own, “ I f there is one thing which
refreshes my soul above all others, it is that I shall behold
the Redeemer glom‘ously triumphant at the winding up of
all things .f ” That time may not be distant.
CHARLESH. STILEMAN
July, 1915. (Bishop in Persia).
 MOHAMMEDAN TRADITION AND GOSPEL 349

MOHAMMEDAN TRADITION AND GOSPEL

RECORD

THE HADiTH AND THE INJIL*

[In this tjrticle, sections I and I1 lay claim to no originality of research.

They are simply and solely a study on Goldziher’s epoch-making
essay on the Hadith in his ‘‘ Mohammedanische Studien,” vol. 11. ;
and the concentration of the attention on certain conclusions which it
seems right to draw from the things there proved. .
In section 111 the attention of the reader is called to the bearing
of the concluaiona thus reached upon the queetion of the reliability of
some of the earliest Christian documents.-W. H. T. G.]

THEREis nothing in Christianity which particularly

invites comparison with the Koran, as a book in which
t.he Deity is ostensibly the sole speaker throughout, and
which has come down to us practically verbatim from its
promulgat,or. More commensurate are the Mohammedan
Traditions and the Gospels. In both of these the basis
is narrutive, or reports of sayings. Both have come down
to us, to a greater or less extent, through oral tradition
in the first stages, their committal to writing and authori-
sation being later. Both directly concern the all-
important subject of the life and teaching of a religion-
founder. And both (though in different ways) are
treated a8 sacred books ; for although modernising
Moslems refuse to consider any book except the Koran
absolutely authoritative, the vast majority still regard
their Bukhari as a Book on which an oath may just as
rightly be taken as the Koran itself.
It is strange, therefore, that with these u prim’
resemblances, the two sets of record8 should present
such immense and citriking differences. The most im-
portant of them are (1)the much more modest dimensions
of the Christian records as compared with the Moslem ;
(2) the lateness with which the Moslem records were
* See “Trendation of the Chapter on Hadith iind the New
Tcatament,” by F. &I. Y. S.P.C.K. London, 1902.
350 THE MOSLEM WORLD
collected into book form as compared with the Christian ;
(3) the absence in the Gospels of i s n d (i.e., the citation
of the pedigree of each report, whether of incident or
saying), and the all-pervading and all-important part
played by isndd in the Traditions.
It is these differences which force upon us the question
of the relative reliability of the records which we call
“ the Gospels,” and the records which are called “ the

Hadith.” And this is the general subject of the present

article. But before we can discuss this definitely, it will
be necessary to concentrate attention exclusively on the
Hadith, a8 being less fa,miliar to us, both in history,
form, and content ; deferring the comparison between
Hadith and Gospel until the end.
I.
All information whatsoever about matters historical,
theological, social, ritual, legal, etc., was passed down
by the Moslems through the first centuries of Islam in
the form of oral traditionp, each tradition (or hadith,
literally “ talk ”) consisting of (a)the pedigree ( i m d d ) ,
( b ) the text (main). The former gives the chain of trans-
mitters connecting the final recorder with the original
speaker or narrator. The latter gives the information
thus supplied, usually in the shape of a short paragraph,
often consisting of no more than a few sentences, some-
t.imes a single sentence.
The volume of these t,raditions grew in the course
of a few centuries to be quite prodigious, running into
hundreds of tho.usands, and touching upon every imagin-
able subject, however great and however trivia.1. The
efforts of the great Traditionists, like al-BukhEiri, were,
therefore, far more efforts of criticism than of collection,
The difficulty was not. the getting, but the sifting.
But what was their canon of criticism ? That is the
important thing for us to know.
In the first place, their criticism was never, under
any circumstance, intermil. Provided that the chain of
transmitters was sound, no intrinsic improbability, im-
possibility, or absurdity in the substance of the tradition
itself, was allowed to weigh for a moment. Even con-
 MOHAMMEDAN TRADITION AND GOSPEL 351
tradictiona were allowed to stand, and the existence of
them created another branch of the trditionist science,
the task of which was to explain and harmonise the
differences away. We see in this total absence of intemzcrl
criticism a grave defect in the Moslem method. For
although our own Biblical critics have undoubtedly relied
too much on internal criteria, and have probably in
consequence proceeded very one-sidedly and precar-
iously, it ia still more evident that a cautious employment
of the internal method by the Moslems, to reinforce the
external one, would have saved them from an infinity of
ddu&on.
In the second place, then, their method waa wholly
external; that is to say, it consisted in criticising the
genuineness of the chain of guarantors. To some extent
this criticism was impersonal-e.g., if the chain exhibited
chronological or other impossibilities (the birth-years,
death-years, and habitations of the guarantors being
known), the tradition was called in question or put on
to the black list. But a still mcre important criterium
waa the personal one, and consisted of a naqd ir-rijdZ,
or critique of the guarantors themselves ; their truthful-
ness and general reliability.
Admitting, with admiration, the wonderful learning
which such a method involved, and its success in the
impersonal aspect, how are we to account. for the serious
failure of Moslem criticism in regard to the traditions ?
We have already seen one cause in its resolute barring
of internal evidence. A second, and more important
cause (it seems to us), wm the breakdown of even its
external critique, when i t came to criticising the trans-
mittera themselves.
Generally speaking the Moslem critic found himself
less inclined to criticise the reliability of ir-rijul (" the
men") the farther back he went. His own contem-
poraries and the preceding generation or two would be
the most liable to suspicion. The Tiibi'iin (or second
generation after Mohammed) were not to be lightly
touahed with suspicion. But the Sahiiba, or contem-
poraries, were practicaZZy exempt. For it is a surprising
fact that even where there were admitted suspicions,
352 THE MOSLEM WORLD
they were never allowed, actually and practically, to
weigh. We shall see examples of this strange fact in
moment; but meanwhile let us clearly realise the
drastic results of such a defect. For it is manifest that
impurity a t or near a source is far more important than
lower down. The Moslem criticism of “ the men”
should, therefore, have been m e unsparing in pro-
portion as it approached the source; whereas in fact,
owing to the practical impeccability attributed to the
Companions, it was relaxed exactly in proportion as it
was needed, and suspended exactly at the point where
it became absolutely indispensable. For it is now certain
that the three or four Companions whose contributions
to the traditions probably exceed all the rest put together,
are precisely those upon whose word least reliance can
be placed.
This last point is the one which must now engage
our particular attention. If we study for a moment the
chronological table of names, with their dates, which
accompanies this number, we are a t once struck by the
fact that nearly all the best of the Companions died off
between twenty and thirty years after the death of
Mohammed, namely, during the period of the wars, both
foreign and civil, which completely fill Islamic history
down to the establishment of Umayyad power. And it
is precisely these Companions, whose veracious recol-
lections of speech and event we should first desire to
possess, who are represented by the isniid’s as having
passed down to us nothing, or next to nothing. Still
more remarkable is the fact that even one of this class
like Sa‘d b. WaqqB, who survived some twenty years
into the Umayyad period, has handed down little or
nothing. To whom then do we owe (or are represented
as owing) the vast bulk of the traditions about Moham-
m e d ? To the younger Companions, and above all to
three men, Abti Huraira, Ibn ‘Abbcis, and Anas b. MBlik,
to which names may be added that of ‘A’isha,the favour-
ite wife of Mohammed. No objection can be levelled
against the latter on the score of brevity of companion-
ship, or slightness of intimacy, with Mohammed. The
objection to her is her utter ~~nscrupulousness,her
 MOHAMMEDAN TRADITION AND GOSPEL 383
passionate partizanship, and general want of sound
character. But the former three, in addition to certain
grave personal defects, were only in touch with Moham-
med for the last few years of his life, and in those days
were exceedingly juvenile persons at that. Ibn ‘Abbb,
to whom we owe thousands of traditions on all manner
of subjects, and especially the Prophet’s own alleged
explanations of Koran texts and alleged legal decisions
(that is to say, traditions involving masses of most
intricate detail), was only fourteen years of age a t
Mohammed’s death! and his contact with him was
limited to the last four years of his life, that is to say,
from the tenth or eleventh of his life ! Abii Huraira,
to whom also thousands of traditions are ascribed, only
islamised four years before Mohammed’s death, and was
a youth of no mark whatever during that time. Anas
b. Malik, likewise a man of no birth, standing, or educa-
tion, was only nineteen a t the death of Mohammed. Yet
Caetani estimates that more than half of A1 BukhWs
7275 traditions are ascribed to these three youths-one
might almost say, boys! In Tabari’s monumental his-
tory Ibn ‘Abbas is cited 286 times, Abii Huraira 52, An-
47,while the first four Khalifas are not cit,ed so much as
once.
The biographer Al Waqidi (died A.H. 207) is evidently
struck by this fact., and accounts for it by saying that
the older Companions died “before there was any
necessity of referring to them.”* But in another place
he attributes the fact to a much morc suggestive cause,
namely, “ their fear ” (Le., of giving forth traditions
erroneously).t Thus ‘IJmar said, “ If it were not that I
feared lest I should add to the facts in relating them, or
take therefrom, verily I would tell you.” Similar words
are attributed to ‘Uthmi%n,$Ibn Mas‘tid and Ibn Zubair.
No such modesty, unfortunately, characterised the less
responsible Abii Huraira, Ibn ‘Abbiis, etc.--least, of all
the irrepressible ‘A’isha : their popularity and fame,
as we shall see, depended on the substitution of an
extreme boldness, not to say effrontery, for this fear.
* Quoted in Muir’s Life.”
“ (Intro., p. L., note ; new edition).
t Ib., p. LXVI.,note. $ Ib., p. XXXVI., note.
Y
364 THE MOSLEM WORLD
Still more significant is a remark attributed t o Sa‘d
b. Waqqa. He waa dmost the only one of the more
reputable Companions who survived well into the period
of the Umayyads, and i t is, indeed, very significant that
not even from him do we receive traclitions-especially
when we read the reason which he himself gives for hie
abstention. “ I fear,” he said, “ that if I tell you one
thing, ye will go and add thereto, &B from me, a hun-
dred!”* Frankness could no further go in the way
of commentary upon the proceedings of Trditioniste,
within eighteen years of the death of ‘Ali. Clearly the
less scrupulous were already hard at work ; and clearly
(moreover) they were not only inventing traditions but
also isna’s to match (cf., “ as from me,” above). The
point is important ; for i t shows (1) how little objective
value an apparently impeccable isnad may really possess,
(2) how little it need really safeguard the tradition
which i t vouches, and (3) how futile is any argument for
reliability which is based on the absolute integrity of
the first generation of Moslems. For it is surprising
that as early as this we find indications of the unscrupu-
lousness to which Sa‘d alludes so candidly. Even in
‘Uthmgn’s time, less than twenty-four years after
Mohammed’s death, the thing had begun ; witness
‘Uthman’s strmge and significant command : “ It is
not permitted to any one to relate a tradition as from
the Prophet which he has not already heard in the time
of Abii Bakr and ‘Umar ! ” The words are their own
commentary.
We may be pardoned for thinking, in particular, that
these caveats were not without tacit allusion to the very
traditionists whom we have already mentioned, especially
Aba Huraira, Ibn ‘Abbiis, and ‘A’kha. I n the case of
one of them, indeed, Abii Huraira, there are many
indications of the low opinion hold by his contemporariefi
of his truthfulness and reliability, which definitely justify
the suspicion. If similar indications are wanting in the
caae of Ibn ‘Abbkq, the interest of his descendants in
protecting the ancestor of their dynasty from everything
and anything that might discredit him, is sufficient to
* Ib., p. LXVI., note.
 MOHAMMEDAN TRADITION AND GOSPEL 355
account for the fact. For from all we know of the man*
and the circumstances of his conversion, and from a
rational judgment on his work, it is impossible to place
him any higher than Abii Huraira.
If we place the allusions of his cont,emporaries t.0 Abii
Huraira in an appendix,? it is not that they are of
secondary importance, but only because their dispro-
portionate fulness might disturb the flow of our argu-
ment. On the contrary, they are of first-rate importance
and should be most carefully studied. The points to
notice here are :-
(1) if, in the face of these contemporary strictures,
the name of Abii Huraira is passed by later criticism m
beyond criticism, simply on the score of his being a
Companion, this shows that later criticism simply had
a blind spot. in relation to the first generation of Moslems.
And this is the more serious, for :
(2) the nearer falsification can be proved to the
source the mwe serious it becomes. But here we have
evidence of falsification at the very source. If a well-
spring has been poisoned, what avails the most careful
guardianship of the streams and reservoirs below i t ?
Yct Bukhsri increased the strictness of his n q d QT
r i j d the later their lives occurred, diminishing the strict-
ness to zero as he ascended the stream. We now see
that both on general and particular grounds the process
should have exactly been reversed. The Fathers of
Mohammedan tradition were, in one word, entircly
unworthy of such blind trust.
Nor, as we descend the stream again, do we find the
banks and reservoirs well-guarded. Goldziher, in his
epoch-making study on the Traditions in “ Moham-
medanische Studien,” has shown with what utter un-
scrupulousness the business of tradition-falsification went
on during the Umayyad and the first part of the ‘Abbasid
period. Now political partisans coined hadith’s to
In order to acquire authority ior a certain tractition concerning
the details of certain ritual lustrstions at night, he claims to have
more than once passed the night in the aame bed with Mohammed
and one of his wives, and thus to have observed the lustratione iu
question ! It is Bukhti who preserves this story.
t See appendix to thia article.
366 THE MOSLEM WORLD
support various political parties, and now, similarly,
hadith’s were coined to support the various schools of
jurisprudence (fiqh), or to supply material for the lawyers
upon which to base their systems. The number of tradi-
tions grew from thousands to tens and hundreds of
thousands. So gross was the business that Moslems do
not deny, and never have denied, that fabrication went
on ; the whole raison d’6tre of al-Bukh8ri waa to reduce
these hundreds of thousands to a very few thousands, a
confession in itself to the correctness of the verdict of
modern times. But this is not the point. The real
point is not that fabrication went on, but that there is
the gravest suspicion that the best men were not above
it, and that, therefore, even Bukhhri’s critique and whole
method are still further compromised. It is well worth
while pausing to consider this point more in detail.
The times were in many respects out of joint in the
world of Islam. The House of Umttyy which, with
Mu‘gwiyah, had seized the Khalifate were reckoned by
pious Moslems as usurpers on the one hand and semi-
heathen on the other, worthy sons of those reprobate
Meccan aristocrats whose conversion to Islam had only
been secured by force of circumstance and hope of gain.
It was absolutely necessary for such men to get religious
sanction for their rule. The oracle of Hadith was freely
manipulated to this end, and the ‘Ulama in the govern-
ment-offices were pressed into the service of giving
Pmayyad rule a religious complexion in this and other
ways. The strictest Moslems, therefore, refused entirely
to serve under the Khdafd’ al-j a w (Tyrant-Khalifas).
And yet it was not entirely men of their own kidney who
consented thus to serve. Under such circumstances
there will always be found men of a mediating turn of
mind who will make the attempt to serve God in Mam-
mon’s court, and Mammon for God’s sake.
Of these wm one who is the typical traditionist of his
generation,* Zuhri (d. 125). This man’s name occurs in
the isntid’s of his generation more frequently than any
other. And this very fact is enough to shalie our already
* Just as ‘Urwa b. Zubair was typical for the previous generation,
and Ibn . A b b t and the others we have mentioned for the firat.