The First Written Sources of Hadith:

The first and most important issue related to the sources of hadith literature is the argument that is nearly as old as the hadiths themselves, that is, whether it is permissible or not to identify hadiths through writing, and the conclusions drawn from this argument.

Many of the Companions of the Prophet reported that the Prophet forbade the recording of hadith or ordered that hadiths that had been written down be destroyed. However, the same Companions or many other Companions of the Prophet also reported that the Prophet suggested that people who were worried about the impotence of their memory to "use their writing hands". Despite all the narrations against writing down hadiths, from a comparatively early time the need for recording hadiths resulted in an interpretive activity that aims to abate the contradictions which were present. Ibn Kutayba interprets this contradiction by suggesting that the Companions differed in their information level, therefore some of them were allowed to write the hadiths down, while others were forbidden to do so. Al-Hatib Al-Baghdadi (463) was the first scholar who criticized this issue in detail. In his book Taqyid al-ilm, he systematically collected conflicting documents. Through the chronological categorization of information in favor or against the collection, he was able to analyze and present the course of the natural development that favored the recording of hadiths. He stated his thoughts about the reconciliation of the issue as:

"That is, in the first periods of Islam, it was not acceptable to compare things other than Quran with the Quran, or to discard the Quran and become involved in other things."

Contrary to the many incidents in favor of recording hadiths, there are narratives in opposition recorded even by the writers of hadith, and this continued for several centuries. Thus, this fact shows us another side of the prohibition. The narrators put forward such narrations to warn the people who kept the information only on paper instead of keeping it in their minds.

However, in addition to the scholars who hesitated to record hadiths, there are others who cite kitabat (writing down on paper) as being one of the sciences. Even in the time of the tabiin (successors of the Companions of the Prophet), there were people who stated that any unwritten science cannot be a science. But, there was also an insignificant number of people who criticized the recording of hadith in the period of the tabiin and even in subsequent periods.