Bekir Kuzudişli, Hadis Rivayetinde Bağlam: Sebebü îrâdi’l-hadîs [Hadith Transmission in Context: Sabab īrād al-ḥadīth] (İstanbul: Klasik, 2020), 316 pages.

A new book by Prof. Dr. Bekir Kuzudişli, (the Head of the Islamic Studies Department of Istanbul University, Faculty of Theology) explores the modes of ḥadīth transmission in the first/seventh century of Islam with a special focus on a source that is rarely used in the studies in the period under question – ḥadīths themselves. Hadīths, with the paratexts they contain, offer the researcher the opportunity to shed light on this era in which they were narrated and from which very few sources have reached our time.

In fact, Kuzudişli had already systematized the pre-tadwīn modes of transmission in one of his older books, Hadis Tarihi (History of Ḥadīth), and named them “transmission-when-needed” and “semi-systematic transmission.” It is possible for readers to peruse these subjects in Hadith Transmission in Context in more detail, as well as the motives that prompted the Companions to narrate aḥādīth. In addition, while examining the first/seventh century in the frame of sabab īrād al-ḥadīth, the author succeeds to reevaluate some of the modern scholarly debates concerning the era, consequently granting the reader with a better understanding of the story behind ḥadīth transmission in the earliest century of Islam, in which the groundwork was laid for the emergence of the Islamic sciences.