The hadith transmission network, or chains of narration, which has covered the entire Islamic world, from Malaysia to Central Asia, and from Hijaz to Morocco for fifteen centuries, functioning as the nervous system of the Muslim world, is an interesting form of social organization, which makes social transmition of knowledge / information possible between generations and among different regions. This social network is the largest and longest ever network of social relations that we know of today. In no other religion and civilization than Islam is there such a social phenomenon, which has been recorded for centuries.

Today, however, the transmission system, which is a distinguishing characteristic of Islam, is largely ignored by even the scholars of hadith themselves, due to the fact that the hadith education has undergone a process of “academization” because of modernization and westernization. Thus, the transmission of hadiths has disappeared today, and its education has become formalized loosing its individual character. Unfortunately, this way Islamic societies are themselves throwing into the dusty pages of history a social structure that has for centuries served the transmission of a kind of knowledge and practice in an authentic way -even if relatively- and that has distinguished the Islamic civilization from other civilizations and religions; whereas this social structure has helped the survival of the Islamic society, its integration and the protection and expansion of Islam as a religion throughout its history.

Those scholars who are specialized in the study of hadith have recently sought for originality in employing the new technology in the service of their own disciplines by establishing sound connections with the past. For, originality or creativity in the study of hadith cannot result from ‘finding’ or putting forward a new hadith –the type and criterion of originality is different in every scientific discipline and artistic branch. When we look at the scholars who have been prominent in the study of hadith, we see that they are the ones who have made it easier for others to keep, have access to, and understand hadiths better, by successfully inventing new literary genres. The originality and creativity in the study of hadith, therefore, are found in the better protection of the hadith material and in establishing the connection between this material and contemporary social problems, as well as its presentation to the general public with a literary genre that could best serve in meeting existing social and cultural needs.

Today, if a scholar of hadith is looking for creativity or originality, he or she should be concerned with a better integration of the hadith with the existing social structures and with the serious problems that we observe in terms of the role played by the sunna of the Prophet (pbuh) in the construction of a social life at the level of individual and the family, by trying to re-establish the relationship between the sunna and the society. Throughout the history of Islamic societies, hadith scholars have played important roles by presenting the model of the prophetic sunna as a solution to existing social problems, including first and foremost ethical problems, and trying to strengthen and re-construct the social structure on the basis of this model; rather than as experts on a literature that no longer has any say for the contemporary society.

The history of the hadith transmission network can be divided into three periods that partly overlap, and thus are difficult to distinguish with clear boundaries:

• The period dominated by the transmission of single hadiths,
• The period dominated by canonical compilations of authentic (sound) hadiths (starting especially with al Kutub al Sitta [the Six Books] in the 4th cenury (AH))
• The period of academization, when the hadith education has been re-institutionalized within the modern university system, and the hadith transmission has disappeared or left to traditional institutions (especially since the second half of the 20th century).

Of these, the essential element of the first period included single hadiths and chains of narration; that of the second period included the canonical compilations of hadith on which there was social consensus –even though in relative terms- and their chains of narration; and that of the third period includes master’s and PhD theses completed in academic hadith departments. In this final period, the Dar al-hadith type educational institutions that used to offer traditional hadith education have been replaced by hadith departments in universities, which are organized in a modern and western style. Similarly, the approval (ijaza) and narrative chain (isnad) granted by a particular scholar/teacher (shaykh) himself have been replaced by diplomas given by universities, which are approved by the state. Therefore, each period has come into being under the impact of certain social, cultural and technological factors on the one hand, and each transformation has had certain influences on both the structure of the hadith transmission network and the relationships between the religion, the ulema and the society at large, on the other.