EXEGETICAL CULTURES 2 | 191Besides being scripture, and exegesis of earlier scriptures, the Qurʾān was
also itself the object of exegesis from a tender age. About the rationalizing
and ultimately philosophical exegesis espoused by a learned minority, some-
thing was already said in chapter 5. More accessible and influential, as well as
earlier, were the sayings or traditions (hadīth) attached to the Prophet or his
Companions.^130 These brief, sometimes anecdotal texts, whether oral or
written, set out to convey the Prophet’s sunna or practice, to make vividly
present (in the manner of a relic^131 ) but also to routinize his charisma, and to
remedy what were perceived as gaps or obscurities in scripture. The earliest
specimens eventually received into standard collections seem to date from
the late seventh century. They were especially in demand when it came to
matters of religious practice, law, commerce, and personal conduct, also the
political leadership of the community, about which the Qurʾān said nothing.
Textual exegesis of the Qurʾān itself was also a major concern: exegetical
hadīth were commonly attributed to the Prophet’s companion Ibn ʿAbbās (d.
c. 686–88). Hadīth were also deployed to support divergent versions of his-
tory and doctrine proposed by the parties and sects which soon made their
appearance. Many were inauthentic,^132 but obsession with this question in
modern scholarship has not advanced appreciation of their sociohistorical
context. The death in the 720s of Abū Tufayl, the last person who had en-
joyed any personal contact with Muhammad, did not restrain their prolifera-
tion.^133 It became customary by the end of the second Muslim century to
validate each report by attaching a chain of authorities, or isnād.
Some early Muslim believers opposed (fruitlessly) the circulation and es-
pecially writing down of hadīth, fearing emergence in Islam, as in the other
monotheist traditions, of a body of sacred literature competing with scrip-
ture, and consequent splits in the community—or wishing to maintain the
oral monopoly of a rabbinic- style clique.^134 There were also, certainly by the
late eighth century, many legal scholars who believed, like the Muʿtazilites,
in rational reflection (raʾy), and cultivated antagonisms with the tradi-
tionists.^135 Thanks especially to the prestigious legal scholar Shāfiʿī (d. 820),
130 G. H. A. Juynboll, “Sunna,” EIs^2 9.878–81; C. Melchert, Ahmad ibn Hanbal (Oxford 2006)
19–57.
131 Cf. E. Dickinson, “Ibn al- Salāh al- Shahrazūrī and the isnād,” Journal of the American Oriental
Society 122 (2002) 481–505 (mainly Ayyubid materials, but some earlier).
132 Donner, Narratives [3:87] 39–61, 89–93.
133 On Abū Tufayl, see al- Isfahānī, Kitāb al- aghānī [ed. ʿA. ʿA. Muhannā and S. Jābir (Beirut
1982)] 15.143–52.
134 Donner, Narratives [3:87] 93–94; Schoeler, The oral and the written [5:112] 111–41 (also
comparing early Islamic with rabbinic orality); cf. T. Fishman, Becoming the People of the Talmud (Phila-
delphia 2011) 10, 20–64 (opposition to writing down of oral traditions in rabbinic milieu in Islamic
Iraq).
135 Schacht, Introduction to Islamic law [6:47] 34–36; C. Melchert, The formation of the Sunni
schools of law, 9th–10th centuries C.E. (Leiden 1997) 1–13.