Hadith and The Myth of the Telephone Game
BY ABDULLAH FERASA common argument today that attempts to undermine the reliability of hadith is the claim that the transmission of hadith is analogous to that of the Telephone Game. The Telephone Game (also known as Chinese Whispers) is a children’s game where a message is initiated by a player and consequently whispered through a series of players. As the message is disseminated through multiple intermediaries, errors in transmission eventually accumulate, and the original message relayed from the first player is mutated. At the end of the game, the initial message is compared with the final redaction reproduced by the final player, and the discrepancies are then humorously observed and pointed out.
The primary motive behind the appeal to Telephone Game analogy is to discredit the reliability of the transmission of hadith. If a report at the end of the isnad embodies multiple accretions, omissions and mutations that have drastically distorted its contents, how can we rely upon the process of transmission in the hadith corpus? The reality of the matter, however, is that this analogy is a false analogy that fundamentally misrepresents the transmission of hadith, ultimately strawmanning classical Muslim scholarship. The appeal to the analogy embodies several subtle unverified premises along with several blatantly fallacious claims. In this article, I shall evaluate the argument in light of its premises and assumptions. Then, I will analyze an authentic Prophetic tradition in light of the claims made by proponents of the Telephone Game analogy.
The Stringency of Muslim Scholarship
The Telephone Game analogy often misrepresents classical Muslim scholarship’s attitude towards hadith, as it implicitly presents traditionalists as an assembly of dogmatists who desperately authenticated Prophetic traditions in an attempt to salvage anything they could find. Classical scholarship, in reality, was much more stringent and critical with the hadith corpus than is claimed by skeptics. Many do not know that Muslim scholarship has, in fact, rejected the reliability of most Ahadith to ever exist.In his book, Al-Tamyiz, Muhamamd b. Ja’far Al-Baghdadi (d. 238) quoted major Muhaddith, such as: Sufyan Al-Thawri, Sho’bah, Yahya b. Sa’id Al-Qattan, ‘Abdurrahman b. Mahdi, Ahmed b. Hanbal and others, stating that the number of authentic Ahadith (excluding repetitions) amounted to around 4400 reports in total. (Ibn Hajar 1/299)
From these ~ 4400 reports, the Ahadith related to fiqh are around 800 in number, according to ‘Abdurrahman b. Mahdi (Ibn Hajar 1/299)
These quotes demonstrate how Muslim scholarship has generally limited the number of authentic reports to around 4400 Ahadith, out of the hundreds of thousands of reports that have been ascribed to the Prophet throughout history. Their attitude with hadith is not that of desperate and blind acceptance as insinuated by ignorant skeptics.
This common misunderstanding, in my experience, stems from a mischaracterization of the hadith cannon, which consists of the “6 books”: Sahih Al-Bukhari, Sahih Muslim, Jami’ Al-Tirmidhi, Sunan Abi Dawud and Sunan Ibn Majah. Skeptics often erroneously assume that these sources are generally representative of the hadith corpus, hence concluding that Muslim scholarship generally assumes the reliability of the majority of the hadith corpus. These sources, in reality, are but a tiny fraction of the hadith corpus. They are extremely refined collections that were filtered out of a pool of hundreds of thousands of reports.
Abu Dawud Al-Sijistani, author of the Sunan, for example, reportedly said:
On another occasion, Abu Dawud said:
Out of the 500,000 prophetic traditions Abu Dawud had transcribed throughout his life, only 4800 reports eventually made it into his collection.If a hadith ascribed to the Prophet is mentioned to you, yet you are not able to find it in my book, then know that it is very weak; unless I had already mentioned it with a different chain of transmission. (Abu Dawud 27)
A similar statement is reported from Al-Bukhari, who described his Sahih, which consists of around 7397 Ahadith, saying:
Many similar statements are reported from other compilers of hadith, and the point of such quotes is to demonstrate the fact that the canonical collections today are severely refined collections that are not representative of the entire hadith corpus.I have refined this book from around 600,000 Ahadith [I had collected]. (Al-Baghdadi 10:327)
One may find himself asking: Where are the rest of the Ahadith that were excluded from these collections? The answer to that question is simple: tens of thousands of weak and rejected reports can be found in a multitude of other hadith works, such as:
A False Assumption
The Telephone Game analogy implicitly makes a variety of false assumptions pertaining to the transmission of hadith. One of those assumptions is that the transmission of hadith was exclusively oral and that the transcription of hadith only occurred much later in history.This assumption simply is inaccurate. Many renowned early prolific transmitters of hadith transcribed hadith. Some companions of the Prophet, such as ‘Abdullah b. ‘Amr, even possessed written collections of Ahadith they had directly transcribed from the Prophet. Dr. Muhammad Mustafa Al-Azami, in Studies in Early Hadith Literature, dedicated an entire chapter to amass the names of notable transmitters who had acquired Prophetic traditions in written form. He listed 50 companions of the Prophet who had possessed written collections of Prophetic traditions (Al-Azami 34-60)
Dr. Azami then amassed the names of several tabi’in who possessed transcribed collections of Prophetic traditions. Under this category, he listed 49 of the early tabi’in and many others (Al-Azami 60-74).
The transcription of hadith simply was not as obscure and rare as proponents of the Telephone Game analogy would like to assume. Let us take the following chain of transmission as an example: Malik b. Anas (d. 179) → Nafi’ (d. 116) → Ibn ‘Umar (d. 73). This is a very popular chain of transmission for hundreds of reports, which can be found dispersed in many hadith collections. Some hadithists even referred to this chain of transmission as “the golden chain” due its reliability and high status among the muhaddithin.
The chain starts with ‘Abdullah b. ‘Umar, who was a primary eyewitness to a variety of key events in the Prophet’s life, and he also had some transcriptions of hadith (Al-Azami 45). Nafi, Ibn ‘Umar’s slave, is the next transmitter in this chain, and he had a written collection of the Ahadith he transmitted from Ibn ‘Umar. (Al-Azami 96).
Next in the chain is the Medinite muhaddith, Malik b. Anas (d. 179), who had authored his own book, Al-Muwatta’, which we possess today. In this book, he included hundreds upon hundreds of reports he transmitted from Nafi’ from Ibn ‘Umar.
As seen in this famous chain of transmission, every transmitter up till the primary eyewitness, Ibn ‘Umar, had transcribed Ahadith into written collections. Many similar examples exist with other chains of transmission across the hadith corpus. Thus, it would be unfair and inaccurate to generalize the Telephone Game analogy upon Malik’s transmission from Nafi’ in his Muwatta’ and other analogous instances of transmission.
Other prolific transmitters of hadith, such as Al-Sha’bi were very keen on the transcription of hadith. It is authentically reported, for example, that Al-Sha’bi (d. 100) told Al-Hasan b. ‘Uqbah:
The point of this appeal is not to comprehensively list every single transmitter who had possessed a written collection of Ahadith, since hundreds and thousands of transmitters would fit under this category. Rather, the point is to demonstrate that the generalized assumption implied in the Telephone Game analogy is simply fallacious and inaccurate. The transmission of hadith was never exclusively oral at any point in history.“If you ever hear anything from me, then write it down, even on the wall [if necessary].” (Ibn Hanbal, Al-‘Ilal wa Ma’rifat Al-Rijal 1:216)