The value of the stories which were narrated from the prophet (Pbuh) in terms of the hadith methodology

This thesis named "The value of the stories which were narrated from the Prophet (pbuh) in terms of the Hadith Methodology" firstly endeavours to determine the stories which were narrated in the Hadith collections and their evaluation according to hadith methodology. The stories of the Quran have been the subject of many scholarly studies unlike the stories of hadith collections especially in Turkey. Hence this study will hopefully fill this gap. In order to reach healthy results the hadith collections have been studied as well as shcolarly works on these collections. Hence many PhD and master thesises have been studied in addition to many other secondary works. In the chapter of the conceptual perspectives, we have identified 33 stories narrated from the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), having said we do not claim that this number is unchangable. There are 17 narrators of these stories, although Abu Hurayra is the central person who narrated these stories. He himself narrated 19 stories alone by himself. However this is not special to him and other companions also narrated such stories as the only narrator of the story, such as : Suheyb b. Sinân er-Rûmî, Ebû Sa'îd el-Hudrî, Abdullah b. Mes'ûd, Abdullah b. Omar, Abdullah b. Abbâs, Ubey b. Ka'b ve Jundub b. Abdullah el-Bajali. Stories narrated from the prophet (pbuh) are at times mentioned in the Quran and at times in the Bible. Some others having no resources in the holy books. Some of these stories are inspirations to the prophet, in one particular case the prophet was made to watch the incident and at another one, the story was informed to the prophet by the Archangel Jibril. The stories have different subjects varying from believing in God, to committing suicides, hence a wide range of interesting subjects. One of the stories narrated by Abu Hurayra has been criticised by the scholars due to its content and carrying Israiliyyat news. The criticism cantered over the subjects of extraordinary phenomena like miracles, karamat which are contrary to the reason. This story was also criticised because it was in the bible. All these criticism in the classical resources was limited to the content and no one ever blamed this story as fabrication. However, the modern Muslim researchers as well as some orientalists blamed this story as fabrication hence it could not be attributed to the prophet himself. The epistemological value of the stories mostly interested the Usulis rather than the muhaddith scholars. Usulis have consensus over the issue that these stories cannot be taken as a source in faith issues since they are narrated only by a single companion. However Muhaddith scholars think that these ahad narrations carry important information for us. The subjects of the stories can be categorised in the following way: faith, worship, divine rulings, good morality, covering all the walks of life, and setting good examples for the humanity. In conclusion the prophetic stories which were not studied as much as the Quranic ones have been studied thoroughly in this thesis hence endeavouring to fill the gap in this field. Keywords: Qissa/story, mesel, cognitive resources of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), Israiliyyat, the laws of the people of the book, aslu's-sanad