More about Abu Hurairah and the influence of the Torah on his sayings: Abu Hurairah used to sit with Ka’b al Ahbar, a Jew, at Mount Tur, anhd Ka’b would relate to him things from the Torah, according to Al Muwatta, the Sunni Hadith collection collected by Imam Malik, in Chapter 63, Report Number 234. Western historians say that in those days the Jewish books promoted anthropomorphic and fatalist views. The fatalist views appealed to many Arabs because in pre-Islamic Arabia, fatalism was popular. Non- sunnis speculate that Abu Hurairah may have recycled what he heard from Ka’b, mixing it with sayings he had allegedly heard from the Prophet, until the people became confused and couldn’t tell one from the other. There is a report in Sunni books where, after telling a long story, Abu Hurairah was asked by someone in the audience: “Was that story from the Prophet or from Ka’b?” This was when he became influential, as an employee of the Umayyads.
Was Abu Hurairah was a reliable transmitter of ahadith? There are reports, even in the sunni collections, which indicate Abu Hurairah was generally unreliable, e.g. (1)Al Muwatta, by Imam Malik, Chapter 140, report 582 where two men were sent by Marwan, the Governor, to the wives of the Prophet to check if something Abu Hurairah had said about fasting was correct or not. Both wives said Abu Hurairah’s statement was incorrect, and later Abu Hurairah admitted he must have been wrong; he added that he had heard it from some un-named man. (2) Al Bukhari, Volume 5, chapter 11, report 57, where Abu Hurairah says: “The people used to say “Abu Hurairah narrates too many narrations….. I used to ask a man to recite a Qur’anic verse so that he would take me to his home and feed me…” Even so, Abu Hurairah has passed the “stringent criteria” the sunnis say they use to decide which transmitters are reliable. They have 5, 374 narrations of his in their anthologies, compared with less than 1,000 from Ali bin Abu Talib. Of these, only 139 are found in Al Muwatta (collected in Arabia), and the other 5,235 are found in books collected later in other countries. The Shi-ite math-habs regard Abu Hurairah’s narrations as unreliable because of (a) they contradict with the Qur’an (b) he is known to be unreliable, according to sayings of the Prophet’s family. (c) in the short time he was in the company of the prophet, he would not have had time to hear the Prophet say that many sayings.
More about Abu Hurairah and the influence of the Torah on his sayings:
ReplyDeleteAbu Hurairah used to sit with Ka’b al Ahbar, a Jew, at Mount Tur, anhd Ka’b would relate to him things from the Torah, according to Al Muwatta, the Sunni Hadith collection collected by Imam Malik, in Chapter 63, Report Number 234.
Western historians say that in those days the Jewish books promoted anthropomorphic and fatalist views. The fatalist views appealed to many Arabs because in pre-Islamic Arabia, fatalism was popular. Non- sunnis speculate that Abu Hurairah may have recycled what he heard from Ka’b, mixing it with sayings he had allegedly heard from the Prophet, until the people became confused and couldn’t tell one from the other. There is a report in Sunni books where, after telling a long story, Abu Hurairah was asked by someone in the audience: “Was that story from the Prophet or from Ka’b?” This was when he became influential, as an employee of the Umayyads.
Was Abu Hurairah was a reliable transmitter of ahadith?
There are reports, even in the sunni collections, which indicate Abu Hurairah was generally unreliable, e.g.
(1)Al Muwatta, by Imam Malik, Chapter 140, report 582 where two men were sent by Marwan, the Governor, to the wives of the Prophet to check if something Abu Hurairah had said about fasting was correct or not. Both wives said Abu Hurairah’s statement was incorrect, and later Abu Hurairah admitted he must have been wrong; he added that he had heard it from some un-named man.
(2) Al Bukhari, Volume 5, chapter 11, report 57, where Abu Hurairah says: “The people used to say “Abu Hurairah narrates too many narrations….. I used to ask a man to recite a Qur’anic verse so that he would take me to his home and feed me…”
Even so, Abu Hurairah has passed the “stringent criteria” the sunnis say they use to decide which transmitters are reliable. They have 5, 374 narrations of his in their anthologies, compared with less than 1,000 from Ali bin Abu Talib. Of these, only 139 are found in Al Muwatta (collected in Arabia), and the other 5,235 are found in books collected later in other countries.
The Shi-ite math-habs regard Abu Hurairah’s narrations as unreliable because of
(a) they contradict with the Qur’an
(b) he is known to be unreliable, according to sayings of the Prophet’s family.
(c) in the short time he was in the company of the prophet, he would not have had time to hear the Prophet say that many sayings.