502 MOHAMMEDISM 



III 



Considering the mere form, there is certainly no seemingly surer 

 kind of authentication than the great volume of reports, recognized 

 as the tradition of Islam, can show to prove its credibility. You 

 there meet with testimonies reaching backwards from generation to 

 generation to the very founders and from trustworthy inform- 

 ants, who, as regards character and moral integrity, are above all 

 suspicion, about words and deeds of Muhammad and of his com- 

 panions, who report the words and deeds of their Master. You will 

 understand with what painful conscientiousness the pious Muham- 

 madans applied themselves to possess the Master's words in authen- 

 tic form as reported by the best witness. On this depended their 

 exact knowledge of the sacred history of Islam, the correctness of 

 their creeds, nay, the very righteousness of their religious and lawful 

 life; in a word, the conditions of their salvation. Holding in mind 

 the importance of this matter, full care was bestowed by Islam 

 upon the proof of authenticity of these documents and also upon the 

 statement of the criteria of trustworthiness. 



We can boldly assert that the criticism bestowed by the science of 

 orthodox Islam upon the transmitted bulk of tradition is in general 

 the oldest example for such critical activity in the literature of the 

 whole world. It is attested to have existed since the eighth and 

 ninth centuries of our era and to have attained its prime in the 

 tenth. And strange to say, we must state here that the merit of 

 having first formed the idea of criticism of religious sources is due 

 to Islamic theology. Influenced by the great accuracy bestowed by 

 conscientious Islamic critics upon their material, Occidental students 

 were in fact benumbed for a long time by the nimbus of authen- 

 ticity and truth surrounding those collections of Muhammadan 

 tradition whose professed end was to separate the chaff from the 

 pure corn by the application of an apparently strict method. 



But no sooner did we make a closer inspection than we had to come 

 to the conclusion that the points of view from which the Oriental 

 critics started could lead to many a delusive result, in spite of the 

 bona fides which they practiced. There are other critical points of 

 view that are of value in our mature historical criticism. Thus you 

 can find in the authenticated Islamic tradition contradictory inform- 

 ation about the same events, and directly opposed utterances and 

 orders of the Prophet on the same subject. You can find a great 

 number of anachronisms which could only as their theologians 

 allow be understood by the admission of prophetic foresight; there 

 are praising and blaming remarks, approving and admonishing 

 sayings, which can only refer to circumstances that occurred long 

 after the time from which those traditions profess their derivation. 



