Research Information System
Ankara Universitesi Ilahiyat Fakultesi Dergisi, vol.66, no.2, pp.691-711, 2025 (Scopus, TRDizin)
In the Islamic tradition of authorship, almost every type of book has been written with specific objectives in mind. Many works of ḥadīth literature also reflect this characteristic. In particular, it is known that works in the genres of jāmiʿ and sunan were composed with the aim of producing jurisprudential knowledge centered on ḥadīth as opposed to raʾy-based jurisprudence, becoming arenas of intellectual struggle between Ahl al-Ḥadīth and Ahl al-Raʾy. Similarly, musnad-type works were also authored with specific purposes, though these purposes varied according to the intellectual and scholarly orientations of the authors, as well as the needs of the time and context. On a more specific level, it is observed that figures from both Ahl al-Ḥadīth, and Ahl al-Raʾy, followers of Abū Ḥanīfa, compiled musnad works in the imam’s name. Considering the relationship between these two schools, the question arises whether these musnads were authored with the same purpose in mind. In order to reach the correct answer, the Musnads of Abū Ḥanīfa must be examined with consideration of the authors’ respective schools of thought, and a judgment should be made thereafter. Previous researchers who have addressed the musnads of Abū Ḥanīfa have generally neglected to approach the issue from this perspective. Our study, on the other hand, focuses on the reasons behind the compilation of the Musnads of Abū Ḥanīfa by addressing individually the works that have either survived from the 4th/10th century to the present or about which we have some information or inferred conclusions. As a result of the conducted examinations, it has been concluded that the Musnads authored by the Ahl al-Raʾy were written with the intention of defending him by presenting Abū Ḥanīfa’s ḥadīth scholarship; whereas among those compiled by the Ahl al-Ḥadīth, some were composed with the aim of criticism namely, to demonstrate that the Imam’s knowledge of ḥadīth was inadequate and his retention (ḍabṭ) was weak while others, conversely, were written to establish his position in the science of ḥadīth, serving in a sense as a form of defense.