Hadith theft

The Hadiths of the Prophet Muhammad (Pbuh), which are granted as one of the main sources of İslâmic law and shed light on the lives of Muslims, have faced certain dangers in the historical process. Particularly, had the events like the onset of Hadith fitting activities shortly after the death of the Prophet, the increase in these activities with the death of narrator friends of Prophet (s.a.v), and the spread of the narrators and their narrations in various parts of İslâmic geography impelled the scholars to take action and thus the Hadiths which were accumulated by the great efforts of the muhaddiths could be conveyed up to now. Hadith scholars, who took the role as a conveyors of the Hadiths since the period of the friends of the Prophet (Pbuh) had organized Hadith journeys to protect, record and convey the narrations after verifying them. As a result of these journeys, some scientific criteria have emerged over time to seperate the true Hadith from the weak one. Al-Jarh wa't-Ta'dil, the branch of knowledge which explains the degree of reliability of narrators and the authenticity of the narrators' chain (sanad), and the Hadith science al-Tahammul and al-Adâ' which determines the ways of conveying the Hadiths had emerged. We come across the expression "yasriq' al hadith" (stealing hadith) that the muhaddiths use during Jarh process as an expression referring to the criticism of the narrators who stole Hadith and this concept constitutes the main subject of our thesis. Our study called 'Hadith Theft' has been prepared to examine the theft methods of some narrators called as "hadith stealer/plagiarist" and thus rejected by Hadith scholars because of their unmethodical narrations of Hadiths and to examine main reasons of muhaddiths' using this term.