from these partially fabricated lists of transmitters. This approach, generally known as common-source analysis, compares all the various isnāds assigned to a particular tradition in different sources in order to identify the earliest transmitter on whom all the highly varied chains of transmission converge, the so-called common link.38 As Schacht rather reasonably concludes, this figure is most likely the person who first placed a particular tradition into circulation, since numerous isnāds all unanimously identify him as a source. Otherwise, it is difficult to explain how these highly variegated chains of transmission could converge on this single individual as their earliest common source. The alternative, that somehow all of these different isnāds have by chance invented the same early transmitter, is comparatively unlikely. Thus some degree of confidence may be placed in identifying the common link with the earliest history of a particular tradition, although as will be seen in a moment, even this seemingly fail-safe method is not without significant problems and uncertainties.
An inherent skepticism pertains to the list of transmitters preceding the common link, however. By definition these figures do not vary in any (or almost any) of the isnāds transmitting a particular tradition, which could on the surface seem to speak for their authenticity. Nevertheless, there are considerable reasons for doubting the historical accuracy of these earliest transmitters, and it seems rather likely that these oldest links in these chains were invented early in the process of transmission in order to give these traditions sanction by linking them with Muhammad and other revered figures from the earliest history of Islam. Particularly important is Schacht’s famous observation that isnāds tend to grow backwards. Schacht has argued rather compellingly that the earliest links of many isnāds, particularly those identifying the Prophet, the Companions, and the Successors as sources, are in fact the most likely to be falsified. Moreover, he concludes that the closer the original source of the tradition is to the Prophet himself, the more likely that the isnād and the tradition itself are counterfeit and late, making traditions ascribed directly to Muhammad both the latest and most likely to be forged.39 Recent studies by several scholars who are otherwise sympathetic to Schacht’s methods have cast significant doubt on his second principle, and the notion that isnāds ascribed to earlier authorities are categorically more likely to be both recent and inauthentic has come into question.40 Yet while many of these studies have shown that such traditions are not necessarily more recent than others, they nonetheless generally confirm that their ascriptions to early authorities are overwhelmingly false, verifying the most important aspect of Schacht’s hypothesis. Suspicion of these earliest transmitters is further warranted by the fact that prior to the second Islamic century isnāds usually were not used in the transmission of early Islamic traditions, including the sīra traditions in particular.41 At this late stage, chains of transmission suddenly had to be constructed, as is evident in Ibn Isḥāq’s use of only a very basic and nascent form of isnāds.42 When there was uncertainty regarding a tradition’s origin, which surely was often the case after over a century of anonymous transmission, traditions were ascribed to great figures from the past, and from this chronological distance it seems rather likely that the nearer the isnād approaches to Muhammad, the less likely it is to reflect an actual pattern of historical transmission.
Despite the apparent promise of Schacht’s approach, however, significant unresolved issues remain concerning its reliability, and several recent studies have raised important concerns about the accuracy of common-link analysis for dating early Islamic traditions. The most dramatic challenge to the method has come from an article by Michael Cook, which demonstrates that in certain instances where one can actually test the reliability of common-link analysis through alternate means of dating, the method fails to date material accurately.43 Cook’s study examines several early Islamic eschatological traditions, all of whose dates can be determined from their content, using a rather standard method for dating apocalyptic material. These traditions all purport to predict the future, and up to a certain point they exhibit astonishing accuracy, which is undoubtedly due to the fact that they were written after the events that they correctly predict. Then, suddenly, the author’s prognostic powers fail, and his predictions of the future no longer correspond with the historical record. The point at which this transition occurs reliably indicates the time of the tradition’s composition: here is where its author has truly begun to speculate regarding the future. This moment of the prophetic spirit’s departure can thus be compared with the date of the tradition as determined by common-link analysis of the isnāds, and for each of the three traditions that Cook considers, the common link fails completely as a means of dating. How could such a seemingly well-reasoned method perform so poorly?44
The most common explanation for the common link’s failure to provide consistently accurate and reliable dating of early Islamic traditions involves the so-called spread of isnāds during the process of transmission.45 As Schacht first recognized, it is altogether likely that these authoritative chains of transmission were altered by the complications of transmission over an extended period of time as well as by the editorial interests of an evolving Islamic tradition. The result is that many isnāds are contaminated and do not preserve an accurate record of historical transmission, particularly in the earliest stages of this process. According to Schacht, the “spread of isnāds” involves “the creation of additional authorities or transmitters for the same doctrine or tradition.” This phenomenon is particularly evident in material ascribed to Successors of the Prophet, and it can often create the illusion that the common link, and thus the tradition itself, circulated earlier than it actually did.46
Nevertheless, Motzki and others advocating the reliability of this method have largely rejected out of hand such concerns about any significant spread of isnāds, inasmuch as their approach demands accurate records of transmission. As these scholars seek to mine ever deeper within these transmission histories in hopes of securing traditions even closer to the beginnings of Islam, a much more optimistic view concerning the reliability of these textual genealogies is required, particularly in regard to the early transmitters. While occasionally this approach has convincingly dated certain traditions to the beginnings of the second Islamic century, Motzki often argues aggressively for an even earlier dating, to the first Islamic century. Yet in doing so he generally must engage in special pleading on behalf of early tradents,47 and as several critics have noted, these efforts to push certain traditions into the seventh century are methodologically problematic and not very convincing.48 Motzki seeks to further enhance these claims of authenticity by raising the stakes and forcing a decision between either accuracy and genuineness or outright forgery and vast conspiracy. If the reliability of these pedigrees is to be doubted, then one must suppose the existence of a widespread and deliberate conspiracy of forgery within the early Islamic community on a scale that is historically improbable.49 The rhetorical effect of this position is effectively to shift the burden of proof, requiring any skeptics to account for what is reckoned to be the only alternative to “authenticity,” a grand conspiracy of forgery.
These are not, however, the only two possibilities, as many less sanguine scholars have remarked, and generally one would not want to insist on such a severe bifurcation in analyzing the formative period of a religious tradition.50 G. R. Hawting, for instance, has critiqued this falsely posed either/or well in his review of Motzki’s book, the full extent of which is worth quoting:
It seems unlikely that this stark contrast is an adequate view of what is a religious tradition, produced during a relatively long period of social and political disruption when the institutions for safeguarding the transmission were only beginning to be formed, subject to the vicissitudes of a still mainly oral culture, and committed to writing in the form in which we have it at the beginning of the third century of Islam at the earliest. Motzki seems to have little time for the effects of the continuous reworking of the tradition, the introduction of glosses and improvements, the abbreviation and expansion of material, the linking together of reports which originated independently, the adaptation of traditions which originate in one context with a particular purpose so that they may be used in another, let alone simple errors of scribes and narrators. One cannot rule out real
