THE HANIFIYYAH

by David Ross

8 Mar - 19 Oct 2005

Introduction

Theodor Nöldeke in 1860 (v.2 pp. 180-1) noted three witnesses to a variant text of sura 98, which he listed: Attirmidî 639. Mabânî IV. Itqân 525. The Encyclopedia of Islam more recently cited Ahmad, vol 5 p 132; Tirmidhi, vol 5 p 370; Hakim, vol 2 p 224; Itqan, vol 3 p 83.

My intent here is to lay out the versions of which I know. It is as a result unfinished.

The Secondary Sources

The number in the case of Nöldeke's Itqan refers to a page number in a manuscript, which can be found in the occasional library reproduced in Chronica Indica. The case is similar for his Tirmidhi, published in Delhi 1871. I cannot even comprehend his "Mabani" reference. And while I do have Tirmidhi and Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, I don't have the editions mentioned either by Nöldeke or in the Encyclopedia. Finding the originals for these would be expensive and difficult.

Fortunately, finding them is also now unnecessary. The Mabani has since been edited and published, in Arthur Jeffery's Two Muqaddamahs. I can further assure the reader that the Itqan just cites Hakim a-Naysaburi's Mustadrak, which is more accessible now than it was in the 1800s. Nöldeke himself did not cite the Itqan's "isnad" or Tirmidhi's isnad, and it is likely that he did not then suspect the continued existence of the Mustadrak Naysaburi and the Musnad Tayalisi. Ahmad and especially Tirmidhi meanwhile are canonical collections, at least in the Islam which publishes most profusely in the US (Hanbali Sunnism), and so it is almost more of a challenge for the researcher not to run across a copy; although admittedly Tirmidhi is not a primary source for this tradition either.

The Base

Ibn Hanbal

This tradition has this isnad: 'Ubayd Allah b. 'Umar al-Qawariri < Salam b. Quthybah < Shu'bah (more on Shu'bah below). This version puts the Hanifiyya verse first and separates it from the Greed of Man verse, second.

And this tradition has this isnad: Muhammad b. Ja'far and Hajjâj b. Muhammad < Shu'bah. This version puts the Greed of Man verse first and follows it with the Hanifiyya verse without separation.

Ahmad Ibn Hanbal put both in the "Musnad al-Ansâr" section. He died in 855 CE.

Tayalisi

Abu Dawud al-Tayalisi's take on it exists in three versions of which I know: the Musnad which his student Yusuf b. Habîb compiled; the Mustadrak of al-Naysaburi which quoted Abû al-'Abbâs Muhammad b. Ya'qûb from a second student, Ibrâhîm b. Ahîm b. Marzûq; and the Collection of al-Tirmidhi which quoted a third student Mahmud b. Ghaylan.

In the Musnad proper:

In the Mustadrak:

Tirmidhi put it twice in the section al-Munâqib (not al-Tafsîr):

But with this appendix:

Tayalisi apparently was quoting Shu'bah directly. Tayalisi died in 818 CE. This version puts the Hanifiyya verse first and separates it from the Greed of Man verse, second.

Al-Mustadrak

The Mustadrak includes its own supplement to the tradition.

Suyuti's Itqan later quoted it thus:

Suyuti has the plus ذاب, which is probably a conflation with Naysaburi's quote from Tayalisi's أن ذات and also the preceding مَن تَابَ.

The Mustadrak's author al-Hakim al-Naysaburi died in 1014 CE. He cited it with this isnad: 'Abd al-Rahman b. al-Hasan b. Ahmad al-Asadî < Ibrâhîm b. al-Husayn b. Dîsayl < Adam b. Abî Iyâs < Shu'bah. This version puts the Greed of Man verse and then the Hanifiyya verse in one flowing speech.

Al-Mabani

The Mabani starts its isnad at Shu'bah (as did Tayalisi). It was written in 1033 CE. This version puts the Greed of Man verse and then the Hanifiyya verse but separately.

On Shu'bah

The Orientalist does not approach the Hadith with the Muslim's appreciation for the piety and learning of the Hadith's transmitters. Accordingly Orientalists have devised other criteria for verification. In the case of substantive law, Joseph Schacht proposed that if a lawyer failed to employ a hadith in favor of a point where it would have helped, then said lawyer likely did not know said hadith; depending on the learnedness of the lawyer, then, the hadith may not have been accepted at this time. Michael Cook later pointed out, building on the work of Madelung, that apocalyptic hadith can be dated based on the events they purport to predict; for example, this famous hadith parallels the career of 'Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr and so is likely Zubayrid propaganda. These criteria do not apply for stories about variants in the Qur'an text, though.

In a case like this, the first place to look is the "common isnad". And there is one: the isnads of the Mabani, Ahmad, Tayalisi, and Naysaburi all share this at their start point - Shu'bah < 'Asim b. Bahdala < Zirr b. Hubaysh. Naysaburi commented that the hadith was sahih [authentic] in the isnad; and since the isnad following Shu'bah is verified elsewhere, we should take this as an endorsement of the isnad preceding him. Al-Dhahabi also labeled the hadith authentic in his commentary on al-Mustadrak.

Shu'bah b. al-Hajjâj b. al-Ward was an early-'Abbasid-era Yemenite, of the tribe of Azd. According to al-Muraja'at,

Born in Wasit but lived in Basra, Abu Bastam is the first to inquire in Iraq about traditionists, and he is credited with helping the weak and the abandoned. He is considered among Shi`a nobility by many highly intellectual Sunni scholars such as Qutaybah in his Al-Ma`arif, and al-Shahristani in his Al-Milal wal-Nihal. Authors of the six sahih books and others have all relied on his authority. His hadith is ascertained in Bukhari's and Muslim's sahih books as transmitted by Abu Ishaq al-Subai`i, Isma`il ibn Abu Khalid, Mansur, al-A`mash and others. In both Bukhari's and Muslim's books, his hadith is cited by Muhammad ibn Ja`fer, Yahya ibn Sa`id al-Qattan, `Uthman ibn Jabalah and others. He was born in 83 and he died in 160 A.H., may Allah be merciful on him.

Shu'bah lived in both Wasit and Basra, and the codex of Ubay was popular in Syria (c.f. Jeffery). In between the two was and is Kufa, the center of Iraqi Shi'ism during the first centuries AH. Shu'bah's home town of Wasit was founded by Kufan citizens, many from Shu'bah's tribe of Azd. Kufa was a locus of at least one alternate text, that of "Ibn Mas'ud".

Shu'bah related other reports of lost verses, in one case reading "Turn not away from your fathers for this is godlessness on your part" (Abu 'Ubayd al-Qasim b. Sallam, Fadail al-Qur'an, transl. Arthur Jeffery apud Ibn Warraq Origins of the Koran p. 153). This verse is known from Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri (Bukhari / Ahmad 313, 368 by al-'Ilmiyah reckoning / Sirah of Ibn Hisham Pub. by Issa al-Babi al-Halabi of Egypt 1955, v2, p658), and as an "Abu Hurayra" saying from Ja'far b. Zabî'a (d. 136 AH; Bukhari 6270 / Muslim 94 / Ahmad 10393).

Of Shu'bah's sources, both 'Asim b. Bahdala and Zirr b. Hubaysh were Asadis living in Kufa. 'Asim transmitted a similar tale 'an Zarr, concerning sura 33 this time; of which Ubay's version was the length of sura 2 and contained the Verse of Stoning (Ibn Warraq p. 151). The same hadith was in Ibn Mardawayh's tafsir according to al-Muttaqi's Mukhtasar Kanz al-Ummal on Musnad Ahmad volume 2 p. 2 on chapter 33, but concerning 'Umar instead of Ubay. Similar stories are, I am told, in Ibn Hazm and Zamakhshari.

It is likely that Shu'bah was relating faithfully what 'Asim had told him.

'Asim's Text

The "Greed of Man" portion of Shu'bah's ayah candidate is only tangentially relevant to the sura's topic, which is clear belief. Also, where his source 'Asim knew of a famous missing verse elsewhere - the Verse of Stoning - its tradition tried to locate it in a specific sura and attributed it to Ubay against opposition. I conclude that this tradition was over-zealous concerning the proper place for the similarly-popular "Greed of Man" verse, which is what recommended it to 'Asim; and that 'Asim himself was wrong about it being Ubay's.

But 'Asim's other verses exist despite their misattribution. That still leaves the Hanifiyya portion. First, one would need to see how relevant that portion is to sura 98, and if so which version of it best fits the sura.

A Shi'ite Encyclopedia chose to translate al-Hakim's recension:

Certainly the Almighty commanded me to read the Quran in front of you, and he read "The unbelievers from the people of the Book and the pagans will not change their way until they see the evidence. Those who disbelieve among the people of the scripture and the idolaters could not change until the clear proof came unto them. A Messenger from Allah, reading purified pages..." And of the very excellent part of it: "Should Ibn Adam ask for a valley full of wealth and I grant it to him, he would ask for another valley. And if I grant him that, he would ask for a third valley. Nothing would fill the abdomen of Ibn Adam except the soil. God accepts the repentance of anyone who repents. The religion in the eyes of God is hanîfiyah rather than Yahudiyya (Judaism) or Nasraniya (Christianity). Whoever does good, his goodness will not be denied."

Nöldeke attempted a century and a half ago a critical text of the hanîfiyya verse.

Externally, a sura 98 with dîn 'inda Allâh provides another parallel with 3:18-9, which it already parallels at 98:4 ("And the people of the Book differed not"). Internally, the dîn of hanîfiyya matches 98:5's dîn hunafâ'.

From Ibn Hanbal and Tayalisi against the Mabani and Naysaburi, we can now see that the description of the hanîfiyyah being samha is not attested prior to the eleventh century CE. samha is out of place anyway; it means "tolerant" and the rest of the sura is about asserting a "proof" (bayyinah) against other faiths. It is most likely represents a harmony / corruption of the original hanîfiyya verse, with a saying attributed to the Prophet elsewhere in Tirmidhi's day: "the deen beloved of God is the Hanifiyyah, the Tolerant" (Bukhari cited this saying as a chapter heading, and Ibn Hanbal included a hadith).

We cannot know as yet if hanîfiyyah had another modifier at this time; Tirmidhi's al-muslimah does have the advantage of paralleling 3:67 (Abraham as the first hanîf muslim), but the word muslim does not occur elsewhere in sura 98, nor even the Mustadrak's recension of their shared source Tayalisi.

Ibn Hanbal's ghayr al-mushrikah further agrees with 98:1 and 98:6 in collecting the People of the Book with the mushrikîn. Tayalisi also wondered if there should be a third entry in the list of un-hanîfic religions, although his al-majûsiyyah was the dîn of Persians and not of a People of the Book. Meanwhile, ghayr lingered from Ibn Hanbal's day up to that of Hakim's. With ghayr as first in a list of three divided elsewhere with wa-lâ, it separates the mushrikîn from the pair of Peoples of the Book; using one to define the other. Both ghayr and the list of three components likely stem from an original best preserved in Ibn Hanbal's Musnad Ahmad.

With the new evidence, I submit that Shu'bah had told his students: إِنَّ الدِّينَ عِنْدَ اللَّهِ الْحَنِيفِيَّةُ غَيْرُ الْمُشْرِكَةِ لََا اليَهُودِيَّةِ وَلَا النَّصْرَانِيَّةِ . وَمَنْ يَفْعَلْ خَيْرًا فَلَنْ يُكْفَرَهُ .

The Original Hanîfism

The anti-Islamic polemicist John Gilchrist in Jam' al-Qur'an has relayed two of the above references according to Nöldeke, Suyuti and Tirmidhi; although as shown above neither are primary. Gilchrist found particularly notable the Shu'bah version's correlation of the dîn 'inda Allâh with al-hanîfiyyah rather than with Islam as in 3:19.

The mediaeval Andalusian [Muslim-Spanish] commentator Abu Hayyan had written a titanic commentary, the Bahr al-Muhit, which claims that in Kufa, the Codex of 'Abd Allah [b. Mas'ud] once read al-dîn 'inda Allâh al-hanîfiyyah at 3:19 as well. Arthur Jeffery used the Bahr's 1910 Cairo edition in his famous traditional-variant index Materials. From there its al-hanîfiyyah became famed in Orientalist circles, cited by e.g. Montgomery Watt.

The "orthodox" sense of 3:19, that dîn 'inda Allâh is al-Islâm, is quoted on the Dome of the Rock as of 690 CE, making for one of the earliest datable quotes from the Book and one of its earliest datable doctrines. In addition, 3:87 ("God will not accept a din other than Islam") depends on a definition of din that is Islam, preferably in that selfsame sura. If some codex somewhere had read al-hanîfiyyah for 3:19 before 690 CE, then what was in its 3:87? We seem to have no record of an alternate 3:87.

Abu Hayyan aside, his contemporary commentators by and large ignored 3:19, preferring debates over 3:39 and 17:23.

Abu Hayyan's 3:19 seems spurious, perhaps based on a parallel like 10:19.

Conclusion

Shu'bah and 'Asim were half-right, in that the hanîfiyyah verse of Sura 98 was likely part of the original.

As such, sura 98 is an early witness to the hanifiyya version of Q.3:19. It follows that Abu Hayyan was honestly relating a version of 3:19 of which he had heard. However that does not mean that this version of 3:19 was anterior to that of the canon, as seen on the Dome of the Rock.

Both variants - ayah 3:19 and surah 98 - should predate 690 CE, when the Dome of the Rock made reading hanîfiyya impossible. If Estelle Whelan was right that the mosque in Madina had all the later suras inscribed on its wall, including sura 98; there was no mention of such a variant as of 'Umar b. 'Abd al-Aziz's gubernatorial stint, 88 AH / 706 CE to 91 AH / 710 CE.

Any thoughts? e-mail me :^)

Other Links

• Journey to Allah An 'Uthmanic alteration
• By The Age And The Misfortune Of Time Another 'Uthmanic alteration
• Back to The House of David

Bibliography

• Jeffery, Arthur. Two Muqammidahs. Cairo. 1954.
• Jeffery, Arthur. "Abu 'Ubaid on the Verses Missing from the Koran". in Ibn Warraq Origins of the Koran, pp. 150-3. Prometheus. 1998.
• al-Naysaburi, al-Hakim. al-Mustadrak. Riyadh. 1968.
• Nöldeke, Theodor. Geschichte des Qorans. Gottingen, Dietrisch. 1860.
• Tirmidhi. Jami'.
• Suyuti. Chronica Indica.

Miscellany

28 Feb 2005, started. 8-10 Mar, posted. 15 Mar, Tayalisi clarification & hadith study. 18 Mar, Mustadrak. 25 Mar, on 'Asim and other, similar tales. 19 Oct, found Tayalisi's Musnad.