ABSTRACT
Contemporary information on the life of the founder of Islam is confined—apart from such hints as the Koran itself offers—to anecdotes or “traditions” (hadīth) ascribed to one or other of his many early followers and handed down from generation to generation in a chain of transmission. It was not until the second century of the new faith that serious attempts began to be made to collect and codify this extremely varied and scattered material. The hadīth acquired ever greater importance as the theology and religious law of Islam, already from earliest times the subject of ardent debate and bitter dispute, made increasing demands upon such sources of evidence as might supplement the insufficiently detailed authority of the Koran. The religion now being torn by faction and schism, it became the interest of partisan champions of the clashing viewpoints to gather up—or, as their opponents were quick to allege, invent—Prophetic sanctions to support their rival claims.
