Fundamentals of Hadith Interpretation

In this monograph Amin Ahsan Islahi (1904-1997) a renowned Pakistani scholar, author of a nine-volume commentary on the Holy Qur’an, Tadabbur-i Qur’an (Urdu), addresses fundamental questions on Hadith literature, which constitutes, for the classical and medieval Muslim jurists, the second most important source of religious knowledge in Islam after the Holy Qur'an. These questions include those pertaining to the criteria for evaluating the authenticity of Hadith reports, the difference between the Sunnah and the Hadith and the importance of Isnad (chain of narrators) and its inherent limitations. He sets forth principles of understanding the Prophetic Hadith as well as the methods of sifting the sound from the unsound reports. It is a seminal work insofar as it offers bold, creative and scholarly opinions on some major controversial and outstanding issues in the disciplines of Usul al-Fiqh (Jurisprudence) and Usul al-Hadith.