ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a certain type of text that shows the just-mentioned three characteristics (chain of transmitters, narrative frame, core). It also explores sunna which is best rendered as habitual practice, customary procedure. Habitual practice needs a focal point in the past. Therefore, usually individuals or groups with whom a particular practice is associated are chosen as such. The chapter focuses on the historical development of hadith and sunna in the 7th–8th and the 9th–10th centuries. It discusses the transmission and collection of hadith, the early argumentation with the various sunnas and the influential role al-Shafi played in merging both phenomena. The chapter mentions the development of hadith scholarship after al-Shafi and then turn to the shaping of Sunni identity due to the interplay of hadith, prophetic sunna, and theological treatises. The process of increasing "Sunnism" can also be observed within the various hadith collections.
