Zakariyya Harnekar – Naseehah Intro to the Science of Hadith 31 Jan 2021
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Once again to everyone.
I was with both of the class and
the now with you today.
So, we welcome the 2nd year class into
the class.
I don't know if you guys are getting
early promotion or what, but,
welcome, anyways. So
the plan going forward is this,
you just messaged me this morning,
requesting for me to take both the 2nd
year class and the Dora classes for the
Nasirha session.
And,
I said, okay. That's fine. So what what
needs to happen now is,
once the
second period is concluded in the 2nd year
class,
the main time 2nd year class should join
the the DAORA class.
We
will then have our period.
Whereafter,
we will have a 15 minute break,
and then
will join back in the classes.
You must remain basically in the same class,
and
will then,
meet up with you after that even later.
So that that's the plan going forward, from
now on.
What you're gonna do in this, though,
is
I I've said this many, many times before,
and I you know, we amongst us, we
all fight about the Nasihai period because it's
really difficult
to do.
The reason it's very difficult to do because
is generally something given on a,
on a personal level. It's dependent on individual
problems and individual circumstances, etcetera.
So what we discussed
regarding the
Nasihapirian is that
when there's pertinent,
issues in the community
that are in the face that need to
be discussed, etcetera,
we will do that in that time.
All pressing topics that come about and, you
know, if somebody has a question about it,
we may defer,
having a proper discussion to the Naseja Naseja
session.
But as for other times,
we will
we will do something a little bit more
systematic than that.
What we're gonna do is because
the
our course as a whole is very focused
on the Quran. Right? But
Islam doesn't only have as its primary source
the Quran.
The Hadith literature is also a,
some would call it a primary source of
of Islamic law. Some would call it a
secondary, but really,
a very, very highly ranked
source of Islam as a whole. It gives
us the prophetic example.
Allah
says in the Quran that Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam,
must teach us the Quran.
And, also,
you know, Rasulullah
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is the manifestation of the
Quran to us. And so we have a
window into that prophetic
explanation of the Quran through the hadith.
So what we
discussed doing was taking
like, look. We can't take a book like,
Sahih al Bukhari
or Muslim or those compilations are usual or
take forever to get through.
So what we intended doing
was looking at
various
compilations of footi ahadith.
It was it became a practice of the
the Muhaddithun,
the scholars of Hadith,
that they would gather
compilations
of footi a hadith.
There's a there's there are narrations that actually
speak of a virtue about regarding it. Those
narrations are not authentic.
Right?
So
we don't we're not doing it because of
those narrations. We're doing it simply because it
became a habit or custom
of the people of Hadith
that they would
that they would gather compilations of footi hadith
with different purposes.
So you will get a compilation of footi
hadith on archery. You'll get a compilation of
footi hadith on the virtues of the Quran.
You'll get a compilation of 40 Hadith on,
on medicine. You'll get a compilation of 40
Hadith
on
various topics.
Right? You and
recently, one of our teachers in fact, the
teacher of all of the teachers at this
institute,
he wrote a compilation of 40 hadith on,
contagion pandemics and,
and and probably the most famous compilation of
hadith
is the,
the Arbaoun
and Nawawiyah. The footy hadith of al Imam
Nawawiyah
which really gives you a comprehensive
understanding of of the team.
So what we intend to do is
when there are these pressing issues or when
anybody,
raises concern of of of of something like
that, we will discuss those issues.
But for other weeks, we will look at
compilations
of.
I might I might, do one compilation selections
from 1 compilation, and then move on to
another compilation. Or I might say, okay. We're
gonna look at here's 5 compilations of. Now
select from one of these,
combinations,
every
week, depending on what I see
fit to discuss. We will like that.
Yeah. So if there's any suggestions or comments
on that, you may,
direct them towards me, or you can you
can save them.
We because of the pertinence of this issue,
we decided to start off with
a hadith or 2 a hadith from.
Molinata has compilation of 40 a hadith on
on contagion and pandemics.
Right?
The book is
you might have seen it before.
The book is named Fleeing from Fate to
Fate for a Hadith and Contagion and Pandemics
by
M. T. Karen.
That's Maulana Mohammed
Paha Karen.
That's, this is all introduction and all of
those things. Maulana wrote this in English, so
it's not, it's not something that you find
commonly in the English,
in the English language. And so, alhamdulillah, we're
privileged
to have that.
The book is available to anyone if
we will have the PDF sent to everyone.
And for all of the compilations that I
use,
it was sent to us as well during
the. Okay. Perfect. So
for all of the compilations of,
I will have them sent to you even
later.
Right? Sometimes it's gonna be completely Arabic books.
Don't be scared or frightened by that.
Sometimes
I may be able to find,
translations of those books,
and then I'll prefer sending you those.
But we are essentially students of Arabic. And,
you know, after engagement with the Quran, it's
important for us to also engage with Hadith
literature.
And,
hopefully, this is a step in that direction.
As was his design,
guide us through the words of his messenger,
we'll start with this hadith number 1.
The study of hadith is is,
generally slightly different
to study of Quran
in a number of ways,
but
I'll explain to you just some basics about
it.
Firstly, a question arises. What's a hadith?
Can anybody maybe
have a a go with that? What's a
hadith?
Naritions of
in short Right.
Perfect. That's
I mean, that's that's essentially captured as what
encapsulates what it is. It's a narration
either an action,
statement,
or tacit approval of Rasulullah
SAWAYAWA WHALEAM.
It may also include
a description of Rasulullah SAWAYAWA
WHALEAM's hulk,
his physical makeup,
or his huluq,
his internal character.
So that's a hadith, it's narration.
But the action,
statement,
tacit approval. What do I mean by tacit
approval? When Rasoolullah Sallallahu Alaihi when something happens
in his presence or in front of him,
and he doesn't say anything about it. So
it's like, by his silence, he's saying it's
okay.
Action, statement,
tacit approval,
description of his features, physical features, or his,
or his internal characteristics.
That's a hadith.
What you must know when we engage with
a hadith is that the hadith is made
up of 2 parts.
Two parts. When we read the Quran, we
just come we read the Quran.
We start reading the words of the Quran.
But when we read hadith, we don't do
that.
Hadith is comprised of 2 parts.
I'm just gonna highlight in the red
where the parts
differentiate differentiate
themselves here.
What we have in the compilations that we
will be reading for the by and large
is that the first part is truncated at
scatter.
But the 2 parts that a hadith is
made up of is
the first part that we call
the SANAD.
The Sannid
Sannid
means a chain of narration, or you can
call the as well. It means a chain
of narration.
Chain of narration.
So what does a chain of narration mean?
It
it means exactly what the literal meaning says.
A chain a full chain of narration
will be, I'm telling you something. If there
was I'm telling you Rasoolullah
said something. So my chain of narration would
be, I
am narrating
from my teacher, Muhammad
who narrates from his teacher,
said Hamid ibn Alawi Al Kaf,
who narrates from his teacher,
Sheikh Yasin al Faidani,
who narrates from his teacher, Omar Hamdan al
Maharsim,
who narrates from his teacher,
etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, until it comes to the
person
who who narrates from Al Bukhari,
who narrates from
the Sahabi,
or sorry. Not,
who narrates from this,
scholar, who narrates from this who narrates from
this Sahabi who narrates from Rasulullah
So it's an entire chain of narrations. Each
person says who they got this piece of
information from and how they got the piece
of information from them.
Sometimes they would say, this person narrated to
me. Sometimes they will say, I heard from
this person. Sometimes they will just say, from
this person. Sometimes they will say,
I was informed that this person said.
For example, there's different words that they will
use to say how they receive this information.
Sometimes they will say, I got this information
via Ejazah.
Meaning,
I had the information with myself, and then
he just,
allowed me to transmit it from him. Sometimes
they'll say, I got it via,
which will mean,
like, somebody a scholar gifted me a book,
and this information was in that book. He
didn't verbally tell it to me, but he
gave it to me in a book, and
he allowed me to transfer that, transmit that
book from him. So those are all different
words that will get used, but we're not
studying all of that in Gethsemane. That's
that's olumal hadith. That's the sciences related to
hadith, and it's a very, very rigorous
and critical science.
In fact,
unparalleled
in,
in the world of of,
historic reporting.
There is no science like the science of
Hadith.
So here, we have, by and large, truncated.
It doesn't say here
at the beginning from Zakaria
or I Zakaria narrate you from Adi Muhammad
Park. I can actually present that to you.
Maybe 1 week, I'll please
I'll narrate the hadith with a full transmission
so that you can then say after that,
you can then say after that to your
children, I see I'd narrate to you from
my teacher,
who narrates to you from his teacher, Muhammad
Al Karan, who narrates to his teacher, etcetera,
and join
the chain of narration,
to Rasoolullah.
The scholars of Hadith would say,
you know, it's sufficient for us
to
to get Ijazah,
for our name to be mentioned at the
end of a chain of names that conclude
in the name of Rasulullah
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
So in our time, because of the the
fact that hadith,
the ratio
or compilations
are imprint and pretty well preserved,
there's some level of that's mostly for tokenism,
etcetera, and also to continue the tradition.
But why we have this chain of names
is not for no reason.
We preserve and are are very preservant of
the of this chain of names or the
senate
because it allows us to scrutinize
every single person in the chain.
What do I mean by that?
You would you might ask yourself, how on
earth am I going to scrutinize somebody by
the name of Yassin al Faidani?
How am I gonna scrutinize somebody by the
name of Omar Hamdan al Maharshi?
How am I gonna scrutinize somebody by the
name of,
maybe?
So we have a genre
of of literature in our Islamic library
called,
works of Jahwata Adi or Asma'u Ujjal.
There's an entire genre we have, basically, dictionaries.
The I you know, if I was at
my own house and I could have shown
you one, like, 24 volume book,
that 24 volume book only comprises
biographies of people. So every single person's name
that comes in a senate
and that is integral in the in the
workings of the narration of Hadith, even up
until our time.
They have their name
and their biography.
Who their teachers were, who their students were,
who they,
you know, when they had those students, whether
they committed any sins, whether there was any
problem known to them, whether they just did
things that were, like, not even, like, culturally
acceptable.
Yeah. That recorded in books.
Especially and very rigorously
for narrators from the time of Rasulullah Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam up until the compilers of,
the main books of hadith.
So for example,
literally dictionaries that I mean, I don't even
know if some people can actually imagine what
I'm saying. Somewhat unfathomable. The first time I
was introduced to it, I was like amazed.
Seriously.
Like some people, you can go look in
a dictionary for somebody's, in alphabetical order for
a meaning of a word.
In our Islamic tradition, you can go look
in those books in alphabetical order for the
name of a person,
with his father's name, and his grandfather's name,
and his
way he lived and all of those things.
We have that genre of of literature. And
it's something that really blows your mind away
because it shows you really how critical
the scholars of Hadith were in accepting narrations
from Rasulullah SAW. Why? Because they had a
a very very strong
desire to know
what actually came from Rasulullah
SAW. And what might be interpolations
from someone else?
What might be a mistake for someone else?
And, you know, in the sense of Hadith,
when you study its history, you will you
will find people,
saying that I heard the same narration. I
traveled from Khufa to Basra. I traveled from
one place to another place far away from
here.
Just to hear this narration from from with
a particular person
when I already heard the exact narration from
20 other people.
And remember that time they're traveling on horseback.
Sometimes they're walking. Sometimes on camel, on donkeys.
That's how they should travel. 1000 of kilometers,
the Muadaddi team would travel
to hear a narration that they already heard
before. Why?
So that they can get an another chain
of narration.
Compare the chains of narration and see if
there's any discrepancy what the people are narrating.
They're playing almost a broken telephone over 1,000
of kilometers. Why?
Just to check if this thing can truly
be attributed to Rasulullah
So I can guarantee you, there is no
no field of history as rigorous
as the field of hadith.
And I think, you know, even if we're
not even if we don't have time today
to get into speaking about a specific hadith,
it's sufficient to have confidence in hadith,
to know these, facts. Because in our time,
we find that this
people are increasingly becoming infatuated with the idea
of being Quran only. We only follow the
Quran. We don't follow the hadith.
Little do they know that the Quran commands
you to follow hadith.
And without hadith,
there's certain parts of Islam that you can
never know.
Integral parts. The Quran doesn't tell you how
to make salah.
There's no way in the Quran where the
Quran tells you how to make salah. The
only way you can come to know about
how to make salah is through the hadith.
And and the specifics of many things
come in hadith.
And there's a rigorous science to authenticate it.
And so it's important that we have confidence
in the science of hadith, and we attach
value to hearing these words of Rasulullah.
And so,
I think
we will
we'll stop there today. You know, we didn't
actually get into a hadith.
We're using that to our control. There was
a bit of time taken in in terms
of the transition of classes.
Hopefully, that will be smoother next time, but,
also,
we we needed to have some introductory
discussions to the science of hadith, and inshallah,
next week we'll get into hadith. I'll send
you some compilations of what they hadith in
due time. And,
every week inshallah, we will, you know, look
at 1 or 2 of those hadith and
have some discussion
around him.
And I would appreciate your,
your input and your interaction as well.
So the classes can remain as you are.
Is with us recently, so he will take
over in a few moments. So maybe, we
can just give him a few minutes or
so.