Contributions of the Hadith Transmission Network to the Inter-regional Collective Culture

The social network hadith transmission is the largest and longest ever network of social relations that is recorded and known today. No other network of a comparable scale has ever been discovered by social scientists. Likewise, no civilization other than Islam contains such a network system. As the scholars of hadith themselves proudly stated, the isnad is unique to Islamic civilization only. Moreover, the tradition of giving references to sources in a systematic and critical way is a very recent phenomenon in other civilizations. In the Christian and Jewish traditions in particular, no such tradition has ever existed. Although the system of the narration of traditions in these two civilizations has some similarities to the Islamic isnad system, their structure could not compare to the Islamic hadith transmission network as a system.

In the era of the Companions of the Prophet (pbuh), the center of the transmission of hadiths was Medina. In later periods, Medina’s central position was replaced by Damascus, Baghdad and then Iran. Eventually, a multi-centered social structure emerged in this system, with no one single center enjoying the status of prominence (see Figure 1 below). If the of transmission of hadiths remained confined to Medina, the prophetic tradition would not be able to disseminate to the entire Muslim world but would influence the life and culture of a limited group of people. However, this situation did not occur, and the sunna of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) traveled to wherever Islam reached since the very beginning. This also points to the fact that Islam cannot be imagined without the prophetic sunna.

It is also a fact, however, that the isnad, or the chain of the narration of hadith, which survived 14 centuries, was cut in some parts of the Muslim world, including Turkey among others, in the 20th century. Despite this, in many parts of the Islamic world, transmission of hadiths within the isnad system still continues, even though to a limited extent. Thus, we know that the isnad tradition has been going on particularly in Syria, India and Pakistan, though it has been weakened in these areas as well.