Chapter 9 Rethinking Authority: Trends in Eighteenth-Century Hadith Studies
In: Islam in der Moderne, Moderne im Islam
Author:
Ahmad Dallal
Ahmad Dallal
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Abstract
The eighteenth century was a period of great intellectual vitality in the Muslim world. Intellectuals from virtually all of its major regions systematically attempted to scrutinize the epistemological foundations of inherited knowledge and to reformulate the traditional Islamic disciplines of learning. The field of ḥadīth scholarship was one of these disciplines in which such a revision was undertaken. By examining the Yemeni tradition of ḥadīth studies, this essay seeks to illustrate the originality of the eighteenth-century theoretical thinking about ḥadīth, and highlights the intellectual as well as the social significance of this tradition of reform.