The Ethical in the Transmission of Sunna : Rethinking the ʿUlamāʾ-Quṣṣāṣ Conflict

In a world of information-at-your-fingertips, the idea of transmitting knowledge from a pious individual to others, as seen in the Sunna’s case, might seem regressive and antithetical. While contemporary knowledge practices are but numerous chains of signifiers producing a further number of contexts, the Islamic tradition has held on to a unique system that tries to maintain its link to the Prophet Muḥammad. What is the relevance of such hand-picking and fixation around establishing these links? How can a premodern method of knowledge transmission provide us with material to realise our dissonances in modern comprehension?

This chapter addresses early Islamic ethics and transmission through the premodern ʿulamāʾ-quṣṣāṣ dichotomy. I argue that the qāṣṣ-ʿālim (preacher-scholar) relationship was one of a methodological approach rather than conflict that triggered true and false traditions of knowledge. This can better be characterised as a large scale premodern jadal (argumentation) and munāẓara (debate) that took its gradual course within the Islamic tradition and was not specifically attuned to the operations of rupture or continuity as ascribed by contemporary historians. With the Prophetic tradition being a main site of contention for these two groups, I will first compare ḥadīth and qiṣṣa with an overarching idea of sunan in the background, then I look at that which is desired, in place of a telos, through the activities of the storyteller-preachers and ḥadīth scholars. The chapter moves on to elucidate the kind of selves (and self-lessness) the two groups cultivated and disciplined. This allows us to locate possible genealogies of the isnād and matn approach, shaped by the muḥaddithūn, and how the ʿulamāʾ came to privilege it. Finally, I will end with a suggestion on how to approach such dispersed categories in history without falling for continuity and rupture as the only way out.

Absence and presence are two interconnected themes that direct this chapter – be it mediums analysed or characters cast. Since storyteller-preachers are seen as marginal entities, and are extinct in later centuries, present scholarship has engaged sparsely with them. This chapter then draws attention to the exuberant life of the qāṣṣ and his indubitable role in the everyday ethics of Islam. The work is historical but does not entitle any specific period in the premodern, and rather seeks to contribute to anthropological debates around transmission and inculcation of ethics.

Other Information

Published in: Ḥadīth and Ethics through the Lens of Interdisciplinarity
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
See chapter on publisher's website: https://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004525931_010