Large scale fabrication 

Spiders & Diving Chains: Juynboll’s Vision of Hadith Fabrication 

Gualtherus Hendrik Albert Juynboll, or just Juynboll for short, builds heavily on Schacht’s common link theory but with small differences. He proposes that the common link is indeed the earliest verifiable narrator but with certain conditions:

• The common link must have more than one narrator.

• The more narrators or branches going through the common link, the more “historic moment” or plausibility.

• No spiders, which are networks of single-strand isnāds that bypass a common link, giving the appearance of independent transmission. These are to be dismissed as fabrications under Juynboll’s framework.

• No dives, which are chains that “dive” under the real common link to a narrator before the common link to give the appearance that the report is older than it really is.
  
  

Of course, this is not to say that Juynboll completely thinks of dives and spiders as fabrications. There is a small chance that these structural phenomena could have actually been authentic, but it is highly unlikely. The “spider” phenomenon seems similar and related to some degree with Schacht’s and Cook’s version of “spread of isnāds,” but with obvious differences. For example, spiders are a kind of isnād spread, but not all spread equates to a spider. When isnāds spread in a suspicious way, Juynboll calls that a spider. On the other hand, ordinary branching is part of a genuine isnād bundle, not necessarily a spider. Others, like Motzki, see both phenomena as being the same thing with slight differences [8].

Moving on from spiders, we also have dives, which are single strands that bypass the common link or go under the common link to give the illusion that the report goes back to an older narrator, like a companion or a famous second-generation scholar. According to Juynboll, these should be regarded as fabrications and back-projections onto early generations. To better understand this, the picture above shows two models: the first model shows a dive, while the second shows an example of a partial common link and a “spider” phenomenon [9].

Of course, to better understand these two models which show a dive and a spider we need to understand the concept of partial common links. Terms like partial common links, seeming partial common links, seeming common links, inverted common links, and other terms were first created by Juynboll in order to better explain his theory and conditions. These terms will not be discussed in this article, since they are outside its scope. In short, a partial common link is a tradent who is converged upon by at least three non-single strands and is used to confirm the reliability of the “real” common link.

In short, both spiders and dives represent weak, suspect transmitting lines in Juynboll’s analysis. Spiders are isolated single-strand chains that never join the core network, while dives are later, often intentionally created, single strand chains that attempt to circumvent the established web of transmission. Ḥadīths whose isnād bundles consist mainly of spiders or diving strands lack reliable corroboration according to Juynboll, and their authenticity remains historically uncertain and likely fabrications. 

Motzkis opposing views and the challenging the skeptical norm

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Harald Motzki, while often characterized as a major critic of the skeptical school represented by scholars like Joseph Schacht and Juynboll, engaged deeply with their theories of LSF in the Hadith corpus [10]. In his article titled "Dating Muslim Traditions: A Survey" Motzki provides a  balanced overview of the methodological approaches used to date Hadith based on the common link and the issue of LSF. He systematically analyzes and critiques the methods of academics like Goldziher, Schacht, and Juynboll focusing on their reliance on matn analysis, argumentum e silentio (dating by absence in early collections), and isnād analysis, particularly the "common link" theory which we discussed above.

Motzki argues that the premises and conclusions of the skeptical school are often overgeneralized and based on unreliable assumptions, a common view he held in his other works. While acknowledging the problem of forgery and avoiding overgeneralizations of either fabrication or reliability, Motzki proposes that a more reliable dating method lies in the combined analysis of isnād and matn, which is now known as ICMA. Motzki goes through all the major points posed by the skeptical school, then focuses on the spread of isnāds which we talked about above. He first describes the spread of isnāds as a "generalisations made on the basis of a few cases. What’s more, they are assertions not proven facts" [11]. Motzki notes, like Cook, that this phenomenon is much harder to detect and can have severe consequences for dating based on the common link. As mentioned previously, Cook divides this phenomenon into three different parts, Motzki writes a lot on this topic and arrives at the conclusions below.

The first type is described by Cook as "one where a transmitter ascribes a tradition which he has only received from a contemporary or a fellow student to the latter’s teacher thereby suppressing his real informant in the isnad" [12]. Cook then uses reports that mention Sufyān b. 'Uyayna suppressing two narrators as proof that Sufyān was a doubtful transmitter and evidence for the first type of his definition of the spread. The second type is described as a "basic value of the system" that prioritized more elegant shorter isnāds over longer ones. But Motzki notes that "several of these anecdotes only report that there had been scholars who tried to hear a tradition which they had heard from a colleague from the source himself." There is no mention in these anecdotes that these scholars tried to shorten isnāds for elegance. Instead, they mention that many of these narrators preferred to report from older sources for scholarly prestige rather than younger narrators, especially since these older scholars were often famous for their sources and not for aesthetic reasons. Motzki also notes that there is hardly any evidence that elegance or aesthetic prestige was a concern during the first half of the second century.

An example Motzki brings is the case of Yaḥyā bin Yaḥyā, the principal transmitter of the canonical version of Maliks Muwatta. Historical sources report that after studying the text with his teacher in al-Andalus, Yaḥyā undertook a significant journey to Medina for the explicit purpose of receiving the same work directly from Mālik. The considerable effort and distance involved suggest that the primary impetus was not the superficial refinement of an isnād, but rather the higher status and credibility a scholar earned by saying they learned something straight from the original master.

Cook's second type describes a complex scenario where a transmitter replaces his informant's teacher with his own to fabricate a shared, earlier source, which is a case of both backprojection and hiding a transmitter described above by Juynboll. However, while this is technically possible, Cook fails to provide any evidence not even an unreliable anecdote to show that this method was ever actually used. The third type also suffers from the same issue; it is described as "traditionist culture" and is defined as "the objection which used to be made to ‘isolated’ traditions." This supposedly compelled scholars and narrators to forge chains. However, as Motzki notes this third type is too vague and undifferentiated. Cook even concedes that whether the practice of forging new chains of transmission was a widespread, major factor in early Hadith history is uncertain and acknowledges that the existing evidence does not allow for a "definitive" conclusion on this matter. Motzki ultimately concludes the following:

"In view of the reservations which can be brought forward against Cook’s “values” – the gist of these reservations being that Cook’s ideas are, historically speaking, too vague, undifferentiated and provable only by anecdotes – the whole theory that there existed a compulsion to forgery by reason of those values is unconvincing" [13].

He then similarly says:

"However, in view of the reservations against his arguments, these are not the only positions which can be chosen. Neither Schacht nor Cook have convincingly shown that “spread of isnàds” was really practised on a significant scale. They have only shown that there were several possible ways how isnàds could be forged and that Muslim scholars could have had different motives to do so. Apart from possibilities, Schacht and Cook produced only scarce evidence that isnàd forgery really happened" [14].

And:

"Besides, it is doubtful, first, that “spread of isnàds” was really practised “on a significant scale”, second, that all isnàds, no matter the genre of the tradition, are affected equally, thirdly, that “spread of isnàds” was practised at all times to the same extent, and, finally, that the assumption of forgery on a huge scale applies also to the traditions contained in the collections of the critical Hadith scholars." 

Joshua Little and large scale fabrication 

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Joshua little is one of the new contemporary academics in which he argues mostly for the Schachtian school and also some aspects of the Motzkian school, Joshua little has several publications on different aspects of Islamic history, hes also known for his thesis titled "The Hadith of ʿĀʾišah’s Marital Age: A Study in the Evolution of Early Islamic Historical Memory" in which he argues that the report about Aishas age is a later sectarian and political fabrication, he also has a blog by the name of "Islamic Origins" where he posts several articles on different topics. In regards to large scale fabrication he has a negative view in regerads to Motzkis comments on the theory, he discusses a lot of these issues in his thesis where he says on page 84 of his thesis:

"In short, Motzki’s arguments against Cook’s skepticism are unsound, which means that we are still left with strong reasons to suspect the general occurrence of false ascription and the spread of ʾisnāds. Consequently, the status of CLs as genuine common sources for their hadiths—rather than the product of successive borrowings and retrojections—remains doubtful. " [15]

Little argues many of his reasoning is deeply flawed. First, he rejects Motzki’s "medieval diploma analogy" calling it inappropriate and misleading, since diplomas were not subject to mass polemics, memorization, or religious authority in the way Hadith were. Little proposes that a more appropriate comparison is with Late Antique religious literature (Christian, Jewish, and pagan texts), where pseudepigraphy and false attribution were common supporting the revisionist position rather than Motzki’s. Joshua also says:

"Furthermore, Motzki was straightforwardly wrong when he claimed that, if most Hadith were interpolated or fabricated (such that ʾisnāds were “mainly used to feign reliability”), and if Muslim scholars knew this, they would have dispensed with ʾisnāds altogether. On the contrary, it clearly was the view of many Muslim scholars that most Hadith were in some way false (even if they believed that their preferred set of Hadith was the exception to the rule), as can be seen in the multitude of Islamic reports— collated over the past century and a half within secular scholarship—attesting to the ubiquity of various kinds of fabrication, interpolation, and dishonesty in Hadith in the 8th and 9th Centuries CE."

He also says in regards to the reports about wide scale fabrication:

"In addition to reports about the massive proliferation of dubious Hadith in general, there are sweeping generalisations about the unreliability of the Hadith of specific regions, accusations of tadlīs and worse on the part of many leading traditionists, frank admissions about the ubiquity of tadlīs amongst traditionists in general and paranoid expositions of the mass-fabrication of Hadith by various heretics and sects, including al-Muḵtār’s followers." [16]

In conclusion he argues agaisnt Motzkis reasons against large scale fabircation, but while he does argue agaisnt Motzki he does not entirely adopt the theory, he still argues that ICMA is best for tracing Hadiths in constrast to Cook and others from his school.  

Seyfeddin Karas Critique of Large Scale Fabrication

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Seyfeddin Kara is also another contemporary scholar who has written several publications on Shii theology, traditions and general ICMA related subjects. He is also the author of the book titled " The Integrity of the Qur’an: Sunni and Shi‘i Historical Narratives" in which he argues that many of the reports we have in regards to the "changing" of the Quran are later fabrications made for theological and political reasons. He has also written several comments and texts on this theory. In his book specifically in the introduction section he commented on the theory:

"Given the lack of compelling evidence for largescale hadith forgery, such an assertion may seem far-fetched." [17]

In regards to the conclusions of the book, Kara concludes the following:

"There is strong evidence that Sunni legal schools redacted prophetic reports to align them with their legal views. For example, Mālik promoted the concept of abrogation (naskh) by editing the prophetic reports. however, this interference was not in the form of fabricating brand-new reports and projecting them back to the Prophet. There is only an isolated incident in which a Sunni transmitter interpolated to the report attributed to ʿĀʾisha, the element of a domestic animal eating the verses of the Qurʼan. Therefore, it refutes the Schachtian position of widespread systematic fabrication in the Muslim hadith corpus." [18]

In a very recent paper published this year titled "DEBATING THE ORIGINS: THE SANCTITY OF MADINA IN HADITH NARRATIVES", he talks more about the theory after discussing some of Munts arguments for the late sanctity of Madina. He says:

"I focus here on the common misunderstandings about this method that arise due to its technical complexity. I wish also to address the fundamental issue of the pervasive scepticism about Muslim sources, characteristic of Western scholarship and which Motzki called ‘special biases’. The works of (among others) Ignac Goldziher and Joseph Schacht fostered this extreme scepticism, resulting in a strong presumption that h: adı¯th in general are unreliable historical sources. This view rests on confident generalizations based on limited study of hadıth collections. Unfortunately, that confidence persists, as does the prevalent tendency in the scholarly literature of analysing a small number of  hadıths, on the assumption that sweeping conclusions about the entire corpus can be reached without examining, if not all, at least a significant proportion of it." [19]

He also says in regards to sweeping overgeneralization and the approximate statistical amount western academicia has done on the hadith corpus (this will be discussed later when looking at Hiroyuki Yanagihashi’s statistical findings):

"Currently, methodical study of hadıth encompasses (and this may be an optimistic estimate) only 1 or 2 per cent of thousands of hadıths. No other field of study would accept sweeping generalizations based on so small a sample. Motzki cautioned against such generalizations, based as they are on a small number of texts, long ago identified by Muslim scholars themselves as unreliable, which go on to assume widespread forgery in the hadıth corpus." [20]

He also says in regards to special bias and his own methodological stance on the topic:

"I am unaware of any other scholarly tradition whose practitioners are labelled en masse as professional forgers on the basis of limited and circumstantial evidence, and whose innocence (not guilt) must be proven. For such a grand plot to be effective, generations of Muslim scholars would have had to collaborate in the elaborate forgery. This unfounded scepticism against Islam and Muslim scholars is best understood as an example of the cultural superiority complex identified by Motzki as ‘special biases’. Like Motzki, I do not deny the existence of forgery in the hadıth corpus. Traditionalist Muslim scholars went to great lengths to verify hadıth and never granted blanket reliability to the entire corpus. Again, like Motzki, I believe that forgeries occurred on a small scale and that it is possible in many cases to detect them through rigorous implementation of isnad-cum-matn analysis as I have demonstrated elsewhere." [21]

Additionally Kara has also commented on some of the contemporary scholars in the field like pavlovitch which he mentioned in the introduction of his book and Joshua little in some of his online comments. [22] 

ICMA, statistics and Hiroyuki Yanagihashi’s findings

After looking at a lot of the methodlogical and history focused arguements we are now going to look at the statistical data on the idea of large scale fabrication, given the these issues need to be adressed not just from a methodological perspective but also from a statistical perspective given the large amount of Isnads, hadiths and data. Hiroyuki is a Japanese Islamic scholar who has written extensively on both ICMA and hadith combined with his knowledge of statistics he wrote a very unique and a very mathematical extensive book that in comparison with the rest of the academia is the first of its kind, where he first take a look at the data from a statistical perspective then looks at the general methodological claims like large scale fabrication and whether or not it can be verified by the data. The book is called "Studies in legal hadith" where he analyses 2,018 hadiths reports relating to seven legal issues.

His study tests the feasibility of large scale isnad fabrication by examining whether the distribution of transmitters by reputation varies according to the size of a hadith’s transmission network. The underlying question is whether a hadith with more transmitters was genuinely more widely accepted or whether its apparent popularity could be artificially inflated by later transmission involving less reputable narrators.To investigate this, he analyzes 58 hadiths, grouping them into three blocs based on the number of transmitters in their isnads:

• Bloc 1: fewer than 100 transmitters (47 hadiths),

• Bloc 2: 101–150 transmitters (8 hadiths),

• Bloc 3: more than 150 transmitters (3 hadiths).

Transmitters are further categorized according to how frequently they appear across the 58 hadiths, which serves as a proxy for reputation and prominence. The study calculates average participation rates (Q-values) for transmitters in each category and compares their distribution across the three blocs. The statistical results show that transmitter distributions are nearly uniform across hadiths of different sizes. Graphs comparing blocs and individual hadith groups reveal no significant variation in the proportions of highly reputed versus less reputed transmitters. Importantly, hadiths with many transmitters do not show a disproportionate concentration of elite narrators. After looking at the statistical data he then says:

"A possible objection here is that it is necessary to consider a potential fabrication of isnads. However, I think that the uniformity of the distribution of transmitters can be invoked to dismiss the possibility of a large-scale isnād fabrication, as far as transmitters who died after the period 81–90 are concerned. If isnāds had been fabricated in a more or less large scale, the percentage of highly reputed traditionists would be significantly high in the isnads of some of hadiths that comprise a large number of hadiths. We have seen, conversely, that the percentage of highly reputed traditionists is smaller in Bloc 3 than in Blocs 1 and 2." [23]

Conclusion 

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An examination of western academic scholarship demonstrates that there is no single or unified position on the theory of large scale fabrication. When these two main approaches are looked at side by side, it becomes clear that each is built on its own consistent line of reasoning and way of understanding the evidence. Scholars who argue for large scale fabrication tend to stress how common false attribution was, how reports were often linked to earlier authorities after the fact, and how methods for evaluating isnads developed relatively late. Those who disagree point instead to statistical patterns, transmission networks and the tradition’s own critical awareness as reasons to doubt that the material was invented on such a broad scale.

This discussion is not limited to earlier scholarship as both well known and newer researchers continue to question earlier assumptions, improve their methods and bring new evidence into the conversation. For this reason, the issue of large scale fabrication remains open and actively debated but we can see similar to Kara's conclusions that much of academic at least the new scholarly position leans more against the theory with some like Joshua little are more neutral.