Blindspot!
From Issue: 983 [Read full issue]
Side Effects
One of the first systematic attempts to set the hadiths down in writing was made by Caliphs Abd al-Aziz ibn Marwan (d. 86 ah/705 ce) and Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz (d. 101 ah/740 ce) - his son - together with the jurists of their day. Noting the numerous disputes that had arisen over where religious authority lay, these men sought to adopt the Sunnah as a substitute for the various juristic schools of thought. Abd al-Aziz and his son Umar believed that if they collected all hadiths relating the words and deeds of the Prophet and placed them in people's hands alongside the Quran as the means of elucidating the Quran's meanings and how they were to be applied, this would prevent Muslims from dividing themselves into sects, schools, factions and denominations.
As Caliphs Abd al-Aziz and his son Umar viewed things, the purpose behind the collection of narratives about the Prophet's life was not to create a corpus of additional or autonomous legislative evidence that would stand alongside the Quran, since the Quran's relationship to the Sunnah was such that it would not have allowed for this kind of understanding. However even the best of medicines can have unwanted side effects, and the side effect that accompanied the collection of oral narratives was that - just as the leaders of the first Muslim generation had feared and cautioned against - people became so preoccupied with these narratives that they lost their focus on the Quran. It was for fear of this eventuality that the first Caliph, Abu Bakr, had hesitated to collect hadiths, and that Umar ibn al-Khattab, soon after collecting a number of hadiths, had them erased.
Compiled From:
"Reviving The Balance: The Authority of the Qur'an and the Status of the Sunnah" - Taha Jabir Alalwani, p. 98