Fabricated hadiths retain value as records of later community debates
Evidence
This was not the purely destructive exercise that it seems at first sight. Having discounted them as evidence for what went on in the early seventh century, it then became possible to use Hadiths as a different kind of source – to shed light on the evolving preoccupations and debates within the Islamic community, as they were formulated in order to answer particular problems regarding law, ritual and everyday living in particular communities at particular times during the late eighth and early ninth centuries. The context of this sort of material was, if anything, even more interesting than its content. Hadiths were now seen to be interesting and important for they illustrated evolving trends in law, theology and so forth. A lot of traditions concerning the Prophet and his companions could be seen to have been invented in order to support or oppose the Umayyad caliphs. A lot of early Muslim law that ostensibly referred back to the practices of the Prophet and his companions could be seen to derive from Roman law or pre-existing provincial law. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 347
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: This is a paradigm-shifting move: a source discounted as false for one period becomes invaluable as evidence for the period that fabricated it — a genuinely counterintuitive re-valuation of ‘bad’ evidence.