Some
prophetic traditions (ḥadīth) express that Medina is a ḥaram region, similar to Mecca.
A majority of them do not specify the boundaries of Medina’s ḥaram region,
citing only geographical formations like mountains and stony areas. According
to a tradition in the ṣaḥīfa of ‘Ali b. Abū Ṭālib, however, ʿAyr/ʿĀʾir and Thawr
Mountains were clearly determined as the north-south boundaries of the region.
This tradition has been criticized since the early period on the basis that
Thawr Mountain was unknown to the inhabitants of Medina. Moreover, it was also
argued that a particular part of the tradition — the part that contains Thawr
Mountain — was added as a result of the transmitter’s delusions. Al-Qāsim ibn
Sallām and other scholars found the mention of Thawr in the tradition to be
unsound, given the details that the inhabitants of the city did not know about
the mountain.
It has been argued that, influenced
by the criticism, some transmitters and scholars categorizing the tradition
made some changes to the relevant parts of the tradition. Al-Bukhārī and his
work, al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ, stand at the center of criticism. This article
aims to examine criticism addressed to the transmitters of the tradition that
determines the boundaries as ʿAyr and Thawr as well as to al-Bukhārī who
included this tradition in his collection. It also hopes to locate the
reflections of initial critiques on the tradition’s text. Therefore, it aims at
underlining the fact that, aside from certain (un)intended additions to the
tradition’s texts, some additions may have been intended to compensate for
critiques of the texts.
First, the article explores whether
the mountains ʿAyr and Thawr actually exist in Medina based on geographic
sources and studies of the city of Medina. Indeed, we understand that two small
mountains do exist — one of them is to the south of the city with the name ʿAyr
and the second one stands behind Mount Uhud, named Thawr. Then the article
outlines the scholars who criticized the tradition and their arguments in
chronological order. These critiques could be due to several factors, including
the small size of Thawr, the reputation of Mount Uhud and the existence of
another small mountain named Thawr in Mecca. These scholars’ suggestion that
the mountain mentioned is Mount Uhud instead of Thawr does not seem to be
accurate, due to the fact that the transmission has flaws in its isnād; it does
not appear in the sound collections of prophetic traditions and it remains
marginal to other transmissions.
When we compare all the chains of
transmissions, including the ḥaram status of Medina, some chains are
recorded vaguely in the form of “kadhā”. Some scholars explain this
difference by memorization deficiencies on behalf of transmitters. Some of
them, on the other hand, suggest that the transmitters and collectors of
prophetic traditions made intentional changes in response to critiques.
We locate this vagueness only in
al-Bukhārī’s work. The transmitters he received from were criticized, as was
he, for leaving the second boundary blank and replacing it with the word
“kadhā”. When we contextualize the transmission chains through the light of
biographical dictionaries, the transmitters seem not to have made any changes
to the tradition during the process of transmission. Therefore, the critiques
are attributed to al-Bukhārī. In addition, al-Bukhārī’s work notes that the
form of this tradition with Thawr is incorrect. However, Ṣaḥīḥ includes
this tradition with Thawr, which could mean that he would not make any changes
to the text of the tradition based on this note. Indeed, some scholars such as
Ibn Ḥajar try to neutralize the critiques by emphasizing this fact. The
accounts on diverging information based on various copies of al-Bukhārī’s work
manifest that defending al-Bukhārī from the phrases including Thawr is
inaccurate. They also indicate that some transmitters/editors of al-Bukhārī’s
work made some changes to the related section. Someone
may think that al-Bukhārī made the change originally because his work quotes it
in the form of “kadhā”, contrary to other tradition cataloguers, despite their
mutual transmitter sources and because al-Bukhārī states openly that the use of
the word Thawr is incorrect. However, various copies of al-Bukhārī’s work have
diverging texts on the related part, leading us to approach the critiques of
al-Bukhārī with caution. Initial critiques of the tradition and al-Bukhārī’s
opinion might have influenced the later copy editors and they might have made
some changes to the related section. The accounts relate that some copies left
the place of Thawr blank and some others crossed out the word Thawr. This
article discusses the possibility of changes by later copy editors after the
composer al-Bukhārī to the relevant section of the tradition.
We
can argue that the copy editors of Ṣaḥīḥ made changes to the text of the
tradition and the differences in the tradition in various copies could be due
to the editors’ alterations. However, we are not sure whether this alteration
intended to clarify a vague point and repeat a blank section, or whether it
intended to make a section ambiguous because of the critiques to the
transmission of the second boundary and al-Bukhārī’s opinions on the subject.
This latter possibility is supported by certain examples of editors’
alterations on al-Bukhārī’s text in order to correct or complete it, phrases on
their open changes on the word Thawr in the tradition in the ṣaḥīfa as
well as by some points for which al-Bukhārī’s notes were applied to the text.
Some other works stating that clear boundaries were made ambiguous also support
this argument. According to this, al-Bukhārī made no
change to the text of the tradition and it was, in fact, the copy editors who
added the word “kadhā”. Besides, various answers appear to the question
why certain manuscripts of Bukhārī’s work record Thawr as the second boundary.
If the later editors made an alteration at this point, we would expect them to
do the same thing throughout the entirety of the transmissions. First,
manuscripts that mention the second boundary as “kadhā” rarely mention Thawr
with a clear signifier of boundary. Therefore, it has been suggested that some
editors may have missed it. In addition, while one source records the boundary
as blank in a manuscript, another source reports it as Thawr in the same manuscript.
It seems probable that an editor left a blank space, which other editors filled
in with Thawr with the help of notes in other sources.
Ultimately,
it seems that Ṣaḥīḥ has survived to us through alterations by
al-Bukhārī, who included the tradition in his work, or by later editors as a
result of the critiques of some scholars, principally Qāsim b. Sallām. Some
critiques of the commentators who tried to bring extreme interpretations to the
transmission were influential. Editors were in some way certainly involved in
the process of some alterations of the tradition’s transmission. Most likely,
they changed the boundary, which was mentioned clearly in Saḥīḥ al-Bukhārī,
to an ambiguous form. As for al-Bukhārī, he does not seem to have made a clear
alteration to the text.
By
looking at similar examples in the literature of prophetic traditions, we can
trace the influence of critiques at various stages, such as transmissions,
records on books, commentaries and reproductions of books and on the texts of
traditions. Studies of this sort will bring more stable ground for discussions
on the reasons for differences in manuscripts, the process of transmission of
works, the attitudes of transmitters/cataloguers and al-Bukhārī and his work.
