منهج النقد الحديثي في زمن النبي-صلى الله عليه و سلم-و الخلفاء الراشدين بعده

الملخص EN

The Prophetic hadith has been narrated since the lifetime of the Messenger of God (pbuh).

Naturally, both unintentional and deliberate mistakes of the narrators were somehow expected.

There is no doubt that criticism of the accounts must have started with the beginning of narration.

The present research paper is devoted to inferring the critical methodology used at the era of the Prophet (pbuh) through investigating the historical reality of the narrations in the lifetime of the Prophet (pbuh) and his companions.

This is followed by an analysis of the critical attitudes that occurred in the significant eras of the Prophet (pbuh) and his rightly-guided caliphs.

The study has reached the following conclusions: Criticism of hadith narration in the Prophetic era was based on a clear methodology consisting of two levels: one is explicit and the other implicit; the age of the rightly-guided caliphs continued to follow the same methodology.

The details of this approach, however, expanded slightly in their time on both levels, based on the historical changes that took place then.

The explicit criticism revolved around criticizing the narrators, so that a report or an account was rejected when its narrator could be someone inclined to lying, or known to be immoral.

The implicit criticism was centered around verifying the authenticity of the narration of trustworthy narrators and making sure that one was free from error in the case a mistake was presumed.

Among the means of criticism in the era of the Prophet (pbuh) was asking his learned companions about the authenticity of the narration, since they were more capable of observing consistence of the narration with their knowledge about the Qur'an and the Sunnah.

This means of criticism continued in the era of the rightly-guided caliphs.

In addition, there existed in the era of the Prophet (pbuh) the most efficient critical tool, namely asking the Prophet (pbuh) about the authenticity of narrations that he was reported to say.

Although this means of criticism was of course missing after the lifetime of the Prophet (pbuh), the Prophet's Companions made up for this by asking one another about his tradition, which they knew well.

Therefore, their era was second to that of the Prophet (pbuh) in terms of its efficient criticism.

In the era of the Companions, presumptive judgments on hadiths were sometimes made.

Since their era, hadith critics have differed in judging some particularities of narrations.

In the era of the Companions, hadith critics varied in their levels of critical accuracy.

The present study concludes that scholars of hadith in their successive eras have not deviated from the clear lines demarcating the critical methodology that was in the era of the Prophet (pbuh) and his Companions after him.

Nevertheless, it has expanded in its minute details.