prevalent idea that the Muslim critics of Ḥadīth have never gone beyond the transmission line, and that the subject-matter has been left quite untouched. Suggestions have also been made that even the Companions of the Holy Prophet were at times so unscrupulous as to fabricate ḥadīth, while it should be common knowledge that the strictest Muslim critics of the transmitters are all agreed that when a report is traced back to a Companion, its authenticity is placed beyond all question. A European writer makes the suggestion that Abū Hurairah was in the habit of fabricating ḥadīth: “A most significant recognition within ḥadīth itself of the untrustworthiness of guarantors is to be found in Bukhārī. Ibn ‘Umar reports that Muḥammad ordered all dogs to be killed save sheep-dogs and hounds. Abū Hurairah added the word au zar‘in; whereupon Ibn ‘Umar makes the remark, Abū Hurairah owned cultivated land. A better illustration of the underlying motive of some ḥadīth can hardly be found.”39
In the above quotation zar‘in means “cultivated land”, and the suggestion is that Abū Hurairah added this word for personal motives. In the first place, Abū Hurairah is not alone in reporting that dogs may be kept for hunting as well as for keeping watch over sheep or tillage (zar‘). Bukhārī reports a ḥadīth from Sufyān ibn Abū Zubair in the following words: “I heard the Messenger of Allāh say: Whoever keeps a dog which does not serve him in keeping watch over cultivated land or goats, one qīrāt of his reward is diminished every day. The man who reported from him said, Hast thou heard this from the Messenger of Allāh? He said, Yea, by the Lord of this Mosque.”40 Now this report clearly mentions watch dogs kept for sheep as well as those kept for tillage, but not dogs kept for hunting, which the Holy Qur’ān explicitly allows.41 Abū Hurairah’s report in the same chapter, preceding that cited above, expressly mentions all these kinds, watch dogs kept for sheep or tillage and dogs for hunting, which only shows that he had the more retentive memory. And as for Ibn ‘Umar’s remark, there is not the least evidence that it contained any insinuation against Abū Hurairah’s integrity. It may be just an explanatory remark, or a suggestion that the latter took care to preserve that part of the saying, because he himself had to keep
39 Guillaume, Tr. Is., p. 78.
40 Bu. 41:3.
41 Cf. The Holy Qur’ān, 5:4.