The Multi-Channel Architecture of Hadith Criticism: Deconstructing Methodological Heterogeneity and Editorial Agency in the Sunan al-Arba‘ah
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.62730/syaikhuna.v17i2.7905Keywords:
Sunan al-Arba‘ah, compilation criticism, tarājim al-abwāb, sanad al-kitāb, hadith transmission, source criticism, Islamic legal epistemologyAbstract
This study re-evaluates the enduring assumption that the Sunan al-Arba‘ah constitute a methodologically monolithic corpus subordinated to the Ṣaḥīḥayn. Grounded in compilation criticism and qualitative comparative text analysis, this investigation examines 48 parallel thematic clusters (192 hadith units) across Kitāb al-Ṭahārah and Kitāb al-Ṣalāh. The analysis reveals four distinct methodological paradigms: Abū Dāwūd’s legal utilitarianism, al-Tirmidhī’s critical pedagogy, al-Nasā’ī’s narrator scrutiny, and Ibn Mājah’s thematic expansion. Compilers operationalized critical judgment through a multi-channel model comprising explicit taxonomy, normative chapter rubrics (tarājim al-abwāb), tacit chain juxtaposition, and regional legal praxis (al-‘amal). Furthermore, manuscript audition certificates (samā‘āt) and recensional divergence empirically decouple codex transmission (sanad al-kitāb) from the evidential authenticity of individual narrations (sanad al-ḥadīth), demonstrating that canonical authority was negotiated through pedagogical utility rather than blanket isnād infallibility. Finally, the study clarifies that these qualitative structural findings provide indispensable taxonomical metadata for future computational network modeling, preventing automated algorithms from misinterpreting classical collections as flat transmitter databases.
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