of judgment. In fact, they had started a work which was to continue for generations. If possible, a hundred more canons of criticism might be laid down, but it would still be the judgment of one man as to whether a certain ḥadīth should be accepted or rejected. Every collection is the work of one collector, and even if ninety-nine per cent of his judgments are correct, there is still room for the exercise of judgment by others. The Western critic errs in thinking that infallibility is claimed for any of the collectors of Ḥadīth, and that the exercise of judgment by a certain collector precludes the exercise of judgment by others as to the reliability of a report.

We must also remember that, however much the collectors might have differed in their judgments as to the necessity for rigour in the rules of criticism, they set to work with minds absolutely free from bias or external influence. They would lay down their lives rather than swerve from what they deemed to be the truth. Many of the famous religious personalities preferred punishment or jail to uttering a word against their convictions. The fact is generally admitted as regards the Umayyad rule. As a European writer says: “They laboured to establish the sunnah of the community as it was, or as it was thought to have been, under the prophet’s rule, and so they found their bitterest enemies in the ruling house”.60 The independence of thought of the great Muslim divines under the Abbaside rule had not deteriorated in the least. They would not even accept office under a Muslim ruler: “It is well-known,” says Th. W. Juynboll in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, “that many pious, independent men in those days deemed it wrong and refused to enter the service of the Government or to accept an office dependent on it” (p.91).

Different classes of Ḥadīth

Ibn Ḥajar had dealt with different classes of Ḥadīth in the Sharḥ Nukhbat al-Fikr at great length. The most important division of Ḥadīth is into mutawātir (continuous) and aḥād (isolated). A ḥadīth is said to be mutawātir (lit. repeated successively or by one after another) when it is reported by such a large number that it is impossible that they should have agreed upon false-hood, so that the very fact that it is commonly accepted makes its authority unquestionable. To this category belong