ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some ideas on what is a necessary revaluation of Islamic traditions in the light of our present knowledge. It shows how the natural desire to push back the frontiers of the unknown, caused some scholars after lgnaz Goldziher to presume the authenticity of more and more traditions until they found themselves back in the generation of the Companions, in the thirty years after the death of the Prophet. From making the last step into the time of the Prophet himself, they were prevented by the influence of Goldziher's achievement and by their own critical sense. But then they had to credit the Companions of the Prophet, during the first thirty years or so after the death of their master, with the largescale fabrication of spurious and contradictory information about him. Goldziher has pointed out that those traditions that were in the Umaiyad period, were hardly concerned with law but rather with ethics, asceticism, eschatology, and politics.
