Islamic Law

and
Society

Islamic Law and Society 15 (2008) 408-423

www.brill.nl/ils

Book Reviews
Encyclopedia of Canonical adth. By G.H.A. Juynboll. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2007.
Pp. xxxiii + 804. ISBN 978 90 04 15674 6. 209; $289.00.
This hefty volume comprises first an introduction presenting the latest version of
Juynbolls method of adth criticism, second a long, alphabetical list of persons
with whom canonical traditions may be associated, then a list of 45 traditionists
also identified as abdl, an index to the alphabetical list, and finally an index of
Qurnic passages cited. Juynboll expounded his basic method, with appropriate
credit to Joseph Schacht, in Muslim Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 1983).
He collects and compares the asnd to any particular adth report and looks for
the Common Link, the earliest person in the complex who evidently dictated this
basic text to multiple auditors. In subsequent articles, he has introduced many
refinements, notably the Partial Common Link, a teacher with multiple auditors
besides the evident Common Linkthe more of these, the more plausible the
identification of the Common Link above them; the dive by which someone
reports having heard the same adth report through an otherwise unattested chain
from the Common Links own reported source; and the spider, a collection of
single strands, uncorroborated lines of transmission up to the putative source.
These are clearly and succinctly described in the introduction to the Encyclope
dia.
600
500
400
300

Hadith invented

200
100
0

10s

30s

50s

70s

90s 110s 130s 150s 170s 190s 210s 230s

Juynboll lists about 150 traditionists, to whom he assigns 2,280 adth reports,
with texts in translation (necessarily ignoring most variant wordings). Here is a
time line of the invention of adth, according to his estimates:
Juynboll credits Ibn Abbs with two adth reports, or at least holds that their
content is conceivably from the time of the Prophet; he credits ishah more
confidently with six. The great age of inventing adth, or more precisely mutn
as they appear in the Six Books (i.e., not counting the invention of alternative
Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2008

DOI: 10.1163/156851908X366174

Book Reviews / Islamic Law and Society 15 (2008) 408-423

409

asnd), appears to be the lifetime of alShfi and the half-century before, contra
Schacht, who asserted that it was his lifetime and the half-century after. The
champions are alZuhr with 86 to his credit, alAmash with 153, Sufyn b.
Uyayna with 175, Shuba with 316, and Mlik with 373. Juynboll expresses some
interesting preferences among later collectors; e.g., for Ibn Ab Shayba over Abd
alRazzq, Amad b. anbal, and other major collectors of the 3rd/9th century
and, among the Six Books, for Bukhr and Muslim over the other four where
they include a adth report that Bukhr and Muslim do not.
Let me review a sample entry, chosen at random: Mlik b. Mighwal (d. 157
or 159/774 or 776)regrettably, Juynbolls conversion from Hijri to Common
Era is usually approximate, without split dates, and sometimes erroneouswas
an Arab who lived in Kufa. After a few comments on his reputation, Juynboll
quotes the one adth report that he will identify Mlik b. Mighwal as inventing:
ala b. Muarrif asks Abd Allh b. Ab Awf, Did the Prophet leave a will?
No, he said. But, ala went on, why are the Muslims enjoined to leave a
testament at all? Said Abd Allh, He charged us to follow the Book of God.
After quoting this matn, Juynboll follows it with a series of citations, beginning
with the number of this adth report in alMizz, Tufa. Juynboll then notes,
Mlik b. Mighwal has three PCLs and several SSs in this bundle which supports
one version of a MC, so he is in any case the (S)CL (see pp. 404-05). Abbreviated,
here are some common terms of Juynbolls: Partial Common Link, Single Strand,
Matn Cluster, and Seeming Common Link. The persistence of parentheses around
seeming is an example of the provisional, speculative nature of Juynbolls evalua
tions, often expressly acknowledged. Furthermore, t[irmidh] is quoted that
Mlik b. Mighwal tafarrada bihi, which amounts to saying that he is probably
the CL of this tradition . What substantiates Mlik b. Mighwals position in
this bundle as (S)CL is the fact that in ilya, V, p. 21, lines 14-18, a number
of people are enumerated that emphasize his key figure position even more
convincingly. Juynboll is fairly disparaging of the Islamic tradition of adth
criticism, asserting, for example, that although noticing the phenomenon of
Common Links, pre-modern critics fail to draw plausible conclusions (xxiii).
Sometimes, I think he is overly harsh, as when he alleges that absence of a year
of death is mostly a sure sign that a certain figure is a majhl (p. 417). Sixty
percent of the transmitters in the Six Books have no dates at all attached to them.
Mostly minor figures, perhaps they are so many unknowns. But even major figures
are often associated with multiple proposed death dates, like the figure Juynboll
has just called a majhl; e.g., alAwz and Sufyn alThawr. I would say that
uncertainty about a transmitters death dates is due to biographers inferring data
from the asnd in which he appeared, which showed them who had been able
to meet and relate adth from him. Accordingly, I doubt whether the biographical
record is an independent source when it says that someone met someone else, but
I also doubt whether uncertainty about death dates must have come from the
invention of names in asnd. Nevertheless, as the entry on Mlik b. Mighwal
illustrates, Juynbolls actual method depends heavily on pre-modern scholarship

410

Book Reviews / Islamic Law and Society 15 (2008) 408-423

the Encyclopedia is generously dedicated to Abd a-amad Sharaf ad-Dn, first

editor of the Tufaand seems rather more complementary to it than Harald
Motzkis method.
Students of early Islamic law will probably wish to consult Juynboll on all the
adth reports they consider, giving his assessments more or less weight as they
consider his method more or less reliable. For an article I recently completed about
judicial procedure, especially the principle that proof is incumbent on the plaintiff,
an oath on the defendant, succinctly stated in a famous adth report, I wished
that Juynbolls index were more detailed. I find no entry for defendant, plaintiff,
or law suit. Under oath, there are 26 page references without further analysis.
After working through them, I did find the one I wanted, which happened to be
the thirteenth. Juynboll attributes the adth reports preface (about the need to
restrain human cupidity) and second half (about the defendant) to Ibn Jurayj (p.
220). But, because he omits to consider most literature apart from the Six Books,
he does not mention advocacy of the principle by the anafi school (where the
earliest sources attribute the saying to Followers, not to the Prophet), to which I
would characterize Ibn Jurayjs adth report as a response.
Another test: in an article about women in mosques, I began with a treatment of the adth report, Forbid not Gods handmaidens to enter the mosque
(Whether to Keep Women out of the Mosque: A Survey of Medieval Islamic
Law, Proceedings of the 22nd Congress of LUnion Europenne des Arabisants et
Islamisants). Fortunately, in Juynbolls index, women is not one entry. Rather,
the index has one reference for women in the mosque, which led me to Sufyn
b. Uyayna (d. 198/814), whom Juynboll credits with the version, When a mans
wife asks to go to the mosque, he should not stop her. Another entry, women
forbidden to go to mosque, led me to this, which Juynboll ascribes to the Kufan
alAmash (d. 148/765-6?): Ibn Umar related the Prophets words: Do not prevent
your women from going out in the night to the mosque. Then a son of Ibn
Umars said: We will not let them go out to defile the place. Whereupon Ibn
Umar scolded him and said: I said that the Messenger of God said this, and you
say: We wont let them?! I have supposed that the controversy was older than
alAmash, but this particular wording need not be older. Forbid not Gods
handmaidens to enter the mosque is not in the Encyclopedia because, evidently,
it is supported only by single strands, about which Juynboll will draw no conclu
sions. I observed that these permissive adth reports were Medinese in their upper
reaches (Companion and Follower levels), whereas Kufan sources reported negative
positions of Ibn Masd and Ibrhm alNakha, from which I inferred that Kufa
was the home of opposition to womens going to the mosque, opposition that
survived in the relatively restrictive position of the anafi school. Juynbolls analysis
would suggest nothing of the sort, although harmonization is possible: if alAmash
was indeed the author of this form of the report, then he gives us a dissident
Kufan view, also a clear terminus ante quem for the principle that the Prophets
dicta have priority over Followers. What I conclude is first that one dare not end

Book Reviews / Islamic Law and Society 15 (2008) 408-423

411

an investigation of some early legal controversy at Juynbolls verdict, but second

that one may expect such an investigation to be enriched by consulting Juyn
boll.
I think this is enough to justify adding the Encyclopedia to ones library. The
introduction becomes the first place to send a student for an exposition of Juynbolls
method, as I think I would send the same student first to Harald Motzki, Dating
Muslim Traditions, Arabica, lii (2005), 204-53, for an exposition of his method
and to Eerik Dickinson, The Development of Early Sunnite adth Criticism (Leiden:
Brill, 2001), chapter 6, for an exposition of 9th and 10th-century Sunni methods
(as distinct from the list of technical terms that has usually served for a description
of pre-modern adth criticism, I suspect by incautious reliance on the literature
of ul alfiqh).
Christopher Melchert
University of Oxford