The Science of Hadith: History, Philosophy, and Methodology Localization

Islam marked a watershed in the history of science for Arabs. This separation between the two eras, the before-and-after of the advent of Islam, was not due to scientific production; scientific production was based on the different methodologies governing the cognitive system—that is, the set of procedures, principles, and concepts that gave the Arab mind its own structure in writing, research, teaching, and learning.

This methodology was formed through a number of scientific practices that deal with sources of legislation first, through the Noble Quran and the Sunnah of the Prophet, and sources of thought second, through Usul ad-Din and Usul al-Fiqh.

The importance of hadith stems from here, as does its role in the localization of scientific methodology and its use in a practical manner in Islamic society. By Sunnah, it is not the hadiths and narrations that are intended, but rather the technicalities of the term hadith – that is, the scientific procedures followed in the narration, the combination of narrations, and the weighting and critiquing of narrations.

These procedures have contributed to emphasizing the role of argument in resolving ijtihad. Its true importance stems from its ability to refute and ratify, in order to prove its worth in denoting its content through specific mechanisms. These greatly helped determine the scientific behaviors of the members of the scientific community in the Islamic world, as well as the emergence of the scientific revolution in medicine, engineering, mathematics, astronomy, and other sciences, through mechanisms of consideration, testing, and argument. These mechanisms purified thought processes and saved humanity from paganism, myth, and superstition, and laid the groundwork during the first four centuries of immigration to bring about the civilizational development that began about a thousand years after that.