Ḥadīth and the Concept of Adab as Moral Education

This chapter discusses the interaction between ḥadīth and the concept of adab as sources for moral education and training. The term “adab” has wide semantic implications and nuances that have evolved over time due to religious, cultural and social development in Muslim societies (Sperl 2007, 459; Alshaar 2017, 1–48). However, for the purpose of this chapter, the term adab will be treated from the point of view of its ethical dimension and will be considered here, as rightly suggested by Stefan Sperl, as “practical ethics” (Sperl 2007, 459). In other words, knowledge that is a call to action and a required form of training for those aspiring to good manners, proper etiquette and cleansing of their souls.

Ḥadīths originated in an oral society, which was, with the introduction of writing and the documentation of the Qurʾān, slowly changing into a new community by adopting the religious authority of the divine scripture and the Prophetic paradigm (Neuwirth 2014, 72). The Prophet was endowed with the authority to teach and interpret the divine scripture and he had the opportunity to put his teaching into practice. This Prophetic model of dictating the Muslim community’s moral norms underlined the intersections of the private and public domains, as well as the role of interpretive narrative in forming patterns of moral behaviour and standards for different situations.

Building on existing literature, including Sperl’s seminal work on the ethics and aesthetics of ḥadīth literature and classical Arabic adab compilations of the third/ninth century (Sperl 2007), this chapter will explore the interaction between Prophetic traditions and the term adab in two ways: at an epistemological level, and at an authoritative level. The epistemological level underlines how the circulation of certain ḥadīth materials shaped the conceptualisation of adab and its moral paradigm, which was a shift from viewing adab as solely informed by customary law and human knowledge to viewing it as dictated by divine commands and aligned to religious sensitivity. The authoritative level demonstrates the role of the Prophet as an uswa (qudwa, role-model) who has provided Muslims with a living example of how to behave in different situations. It also explains the role of ḥadīth narratives as explanatory and interpretive vehicles that erect ethical discourses and invoke moral and religious authority, as well as a linguistic authority. This linguistic authority emerges from the famous maxim that the Prophet had been endowed with “jawāmiʿ al-kalim,” a phrase that came to be interpreted as the ability to express oneself with brevity, wit and fluency.

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_004