Isra'iliyat

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Part of a series on the Science of hadith
Terminology
History of Hadith — ... Ilm ar-Rijal — ... Narrators of hadith — ...
Terminology
Isnad — chain of narrators Matn — hadith text Riwayah — narration
technical terms
Musnad — supported Mursal — hurried Ahaad — single narrator Munqati — broken muttasil — uninterrupted isnad Gharib — strange/rare Shadhdh — irregular Munkar — denounced/rejected Mudraj — interpolated Da'if jiddan — very weak Isra'iliyat
Regarding authenticity
Mutawatir — agreed upon Sahih — authentic Hasan — fair Da'if — weak Mawdo — fabricated Mudtarib — shaky
Other
Sharh — comments Hadith collection This box: view • talk • edit

Isra'iliyat is a term in the Science of hadith who referes to material that origin from Judeo-Christian traditions, rather than from the Islamic prophet Muhammad ^[1].

Muslims classify them in three categories ^[1]:

"Those known to be true because the revelation to the Prophet Muhammad confirms them."
"Those known to be false, because the revelation to the Prophet Muhammad rejects them."
"Those not known to be true or false, and we do not say they are true or false."

[edit] Sunni view

A Sunni site, islamic-awareness.org, states:

We find that Wahb Ibn Munabbih and Ka`b al-Ahbar are considered as trustworthy narrators of hadith because they transmitted the Islamic traditions faithfully along with isra'iliyyat traditions. Just because they had also transmitted isra'iliyyat traditions along with the Islamic ones does not make them 'untrustworthy' or 'fabricators' of hadith because they did not attribute these isra'iliyyat traditions to the Prophet(P). Muslim scholars have rejected the isra'iliyyat traditions on the basis that they do not satisfy the critieria of truthfulness according to the above set of rules.

In a response to an accusation against Ka`b al-Ahbar, Wahb Ibn Munabbih, and others who had knowledge in the previous books and transmitted it in the Islamic literature, Dr. Muhammad Husayn al-Dhahabi says:

As for his saying [i.e., the critic]: "In general they [Ka`b and the others] introduced to the Muslim's creed and knowledge a lot of what had left bad affects." If [the critic] wanted to put the blame of the bad affects upon Ka`b and the others then we don't agree on this, because whatever Ka`b and the others narrated from the People of the Book they didn't say it is from the Prophet, peace be upon him, and [thus] they didn't lie to Muslims about it, but they were only reporting it as the Israelite tradition which existed in their own books. We are not obliged to believe anything of it nor we are requested to trust it...." ^[2]

^[3]