Oxford
Query
Recently a colleague sent me a written request for comments on, and response to, the discussion of a particular ḥadīth narrated through Imām al-Awzāʿī (d. 774). In that discussion, a respected preacher-scholar who enjoys a large influence through social media, expressed his disbelief or scepticism about the reliability of the hadith. (It is not necessary or helpful to identify this preacher-scholar by name. I shall refer to him as ‘Shaykh SC’. The letters ‘S, C’ are not a clue, they do not occur anywhere in his name; ‘SC’ can be pronounced ‘Essie’.)
The particular ḥadīth is marfūʿ, that is, it goes back to the Prophet himself, peace be upon him, with a secure isnād recorded in the Ṣaḥīḥ of Muslim. Its meaning is: The Dajjāl will be followed by 70,000 Jews from Isfahan wearing cloaks [or shawls] around themselves.
Shaykh SC has stated that, despite its provenance, he cannot accept the authenticity of this ḥadīth; he cannot believe it. He thinks that al-Awzāʿī (mistakenly) presented as a Prophetic ḥadīth information or comment he had heard about the ʿĪsāwiyyah, a Jewish sect based in Isfahan which initiated an armed rebellion against the Caliphate during the lifetime of al-Awzāʿī.
The ʿĪsāwiyyah rebellion did happen, though the numbers who took part and its date are uncertain. The principal Muslim source for information about it is the entry in the heresiography composed centuries later by al-Sharastānī (d. 1153), Kitāb al-Millal wa-l-niḥal. In this report, the leader of the sect is identified as Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣbahānī, who presented himself to his followers as the forerunner of the Messiah, whose coming was imminent. To prepare his followers for this, he instituted changes to some rites and laws (notably, increasing the number of obligatory daily prayers, and prohibiting the consumption of all animal meat). His authority was bolstered by miracles and by his personal participation in warfare. According to al-Sharastānī, the rebels numbered 10,000 (not 70,000), started their rebellion during the rule of the Umayyad caliph Marwān II (744–50), and were crushed at Rayy by the forces of the ʿAbbasid caliph, Manṣūr (r. 754–75).
The dating of the ʿĪsāwiyyah rebellion to the years of violent, bloody transition from Umayyad to ʿAbbasid rule is relevant. The last years of the Umayyad era coincide with the last years of the life of Yaḥyā ibn Abī Kathīr. The Umayyad century had known a rapid expansion of Islamic rule, unequalled in the centuries that followed –– from the Arab heartlands westward across the southern Mediterranean into the Iberia peninsula, and eastward through most of the former Sassanid (Persian) empire, across the Oxus River, and into northern India. Anyone paying attention to events at the time would have been aware that their political ‘world’ was ending; ‘end-times’ prophecies would, naturally, have been on their minds and lips.
Shaykh SC thinks that the comment that al-Awzāʿī heard about the ʿĪsāwiyyah probably came from one of his teachers, Yaḥyā ibn Abī Kathīr (d. ca. 750). No doubt, assuming news about it could have reached Yaḥyā ibn Abī Kathīr, he would have been troubled by the scale of the rebellion and its being led by someone pretending to a prophetic calling, and fearful that the rebellion might spread. It seems natural that the ḥadīths Yaḥyā knew about the end-times should come to his mind, and that he might well have commented on the gravity of the threat represented by the ʿĪsāwiyyah by comparing some features of it to information in the end-times ḥadīths.
What Shaykh SC is proposing is that (1) al-Awzāʿī most likely heard the comment of his teacher, Yaḥyā ibn Abī Kathīr, about Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣbahānī; (2) over time al-Awzāʿī managed to forget that this was a comment by Yaḥyā ibn Abī Kathīr on then-current events relating to the ʿĪsāwiyyah; (3) in later years thereafter al-Awzāʿī ‘imagine-remembered’ the comment as a Prophetic ḥadīth and passed it on to others as such.
Shaykh SC explains the progression from (1) to (3) as ‘imagined memory’ on the part of al-Awzāʿī. ‘Imagined memory’ in this instance entails a forgetting of something that really happened (a contemporary comment on the ʿĪsāwiyyah sect) and its replacement by a ‘memory’ of something that did not happen (the transmission to al-Awzāʿī, of a Prophetic ḥadīth forewarning the ummah of signs and conditions of the end-times. (More generally, by ‘imagined memory’ is meant a person’s sincere belief that something really happened, even though, in historical reality nothing like that happened to that person. The person suffering this condition thinks the remembered event could or should have happened to them because it satisfies a need to have had that experience, to remember it, and to narrate it to others –– for example, the psychological need to identify with people who really did have that experience or an experience similar to it.)
Response
Introduction
I have divided my response into three parts. Shaykh SC’s discussion of the ḥadīth is based on two wrong assumptions, namely (1) the assumption that the reliability or otherwise of a ḥadīth text can be determined by considering that text on its own, without going through the standard procedure of takhrīj; and (2) the assumption that ongoing military/political events in the latter half of the eighth century in far-away Isfahan could have been known to the scholarly class resident in the Umayyad capital, Damascus. In the first part of the response, I take no account of these wrong assumptions. I try to explain the incoherence and impropriety of Shaykh SC’s discussion from within the framework of his approach, namely considering the particular ḥadīth in isolation. By contrast, in the second part of my response, I question that framework and explain how ḥadīth texts should be approached –– what Islamic scholars in the disciplines of ḥadīth and fiqh have always done, within the boundaries of the techniques and information available to them. Overall, the first part is negative in that I could find nothing worthwhile in Shaykh SC’s discussion of the ḥadīth. The second part is an effort to make this response useful by explaining the standard procedures in traditionally-trained Islamic scholarship when a ḥadīth-text looks suspect, and what the benefits are for īmān and dīn, faith and the Islamic way of life, of preserving the trust the ummah has placed in those procedures.
Response Part 1
Shaykh SC’s scepticism about the ḥadīth narrated by al-Awzāʿī rests on three elements: (1) Most likely Yaḥyā ibn Abī Kathīr (but possibly someone else) made a statement about Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī and his rebellion, which al-Awzāʿī heard directly from Yaḥyā himself or indirectly through some other. (2) Al-Awzāʿī somehow managed to forget this real experience, namely directly or indirectly hearing a statement about the ʿĪsāwiyyah rebellion. He then unconsciously constructed an ‘imagined memory’ (that is, he remembered something having happened to him that in fact never happened to him), whereby he ‘imagined’ he had heard a Prophetic ḥadīth about the end-times. (3) He went on to produce an isnād for this ḥadīth, presumably to make the ‘imagined memory’ historically real to himself and to others, that is, in order to deceive them alongside deluding himself. These three elements justifying Shaykh SC’s scepticism find some plausibility in the historical background (sketched above), where al-Awzāʿī and his contemporaries are living through the transition from the Umayyad to the ʿAbbasid eras, which may indeed have felt like their ‘world’ coming to an end and evoked the Prophetic warnings about the signs and conditions of the end-times.
None of the three elements in Shaykh SC’s argument is of a kind that we could begin to affirm its plausibility. All three are speculations to make rejection of the ḥadīth seem a rational, hard-headed sort of understanding of how human beings behave and how they make stuff up, almost involuntarily, in order to make sense, to make a story, out of what is happening to them and around them.
Shaykh SC invokes the notion of ‘imagined memory’ in order to avoid openly accusing al-Awzāʿī of falsehood. He does not explain why al-Awzāʿī would imagine this memory, what psychological or emotional need it served, for there was plainly no worldly advantage to be gained by it. Let us, just for the sake of argument, suppose that the saying really was an ‘imagined memory’, that he sincerely believed he had heard this saying as a Prophetic ḥadīth. Okay. But then, he could not also have ‘imagine-remembered’ the isnād for this ḥadīth. (Someone may in some deranged state unconsciously kill someone, but they cannot unconsciously hide the body and cover up their time-and-place connections with the killing.) It follows that Shaykh SC is accusing al-Awzāʿī of fabricating at least the isnād in order to pass it on as a Prophetic ḥadīth. This requires us to believe that al-Awzāʿī somehow overcame his inhibitions about ‘inventing’ the religion. Falsely attributing a judgement or narrative or information or admonition to the Prophet is, precisely, to invent Prophetic authority for that judgement or narrative or information or admonition, in full knowledge of the clear Qur’anic doctrine that prophethood ended with Muḥammad, upon him be peace. Can so grave a sin as attaching a falsehood to the Prophet be credibly laid against someone like al-Awzāʿī?
In his time and place, al-Awzāʿī was revered for his knowledge and understanding of the religion and its source-texts, as well as for his integrity and strict piety. The school of fiqh named after him survived for several generations in Syria, North Africa and the Maghreb before it was superseded by the school named after Imām Mālik, which shared its emphasis on the ‘living tradition’ of the Prophet and his Companions. As for al-Awzāʿī’s moral courage, Shaykh SC must be acquainted with the well-known story (found, among other places, in Ibn Kathīr’s al-Bidāyah wa-l-nihāyah) of his conduct when summoned by the emir of Syria (installed in that position by his nephew, the first ʿAbbasid caliph). Surrounded by soldiers with drawn swords, al-Awzāʿī was asked to legitimise the slaughter of the Umayyads by pronouncing it a lawful jihād or a lawful ḥadd (execution). Al-Awzāʿī refused to do this. Then, when the emir offered al-Awzāʿī an official position, he again refused, explaining that he did so just as he had also refused to serve the Umayyad rulers. Finally, the emir dismissed him, but sent a servant after him to present al-Awzāʿī with a bag of money. Al-Awzāʿī immediately got rid of this bribe by distributing it as ṣadaqah.
To accuse a scholar with al-Awzāʿī’s reputation for conscientiously representing Islamic teachings of any deception is bad enough; to accuse him of fabricating an isnād is inexcusable. Even if the accusation is implicit, rather than explicit, Muslims have a right to strong evidence to support it. Shaykh SC does not provide any persuasive evidence, only a ‘gut feeling’ that this must be an example of how humans in stressful conditions make stuff up in order to cope with stress.
Yahyā ibn Abī Kathīr is named among the narrators of several Prophetic ḥadīths reported through al-Awzāʿī. But he is not named among the narrators of the particular ḥadīth that Shaykh SC considers unworthy of reliance. This is, to put it mildly, rather unexpected for an allegedly fabricated isnād, since naming Yahyā as the informant of al-Awzāʿī would make the fabricated isnād appear more solid.
ʿAbd al-Razzāq in his Muṣannaf narrates from Maʿmar, from Yaḥyā ibn Abī Kathīr, who narrates (yarwih), saying: The majority of those who will follow the Dajjāl will be Jews of Isfahan. Note that the tense is future and that the statement is made about the Dajjāl. The explicit ‘narrates’ means that Yaḥyā ibn Abī Kathīr is reporting from someone whose name is lacking, probably a Companion and/or a Successor (tābiʿ). So this ḥadīth is mursal. If its meaning were not sufficiently corroborated by ḥadīths with a complete isnād, it could be dismissed altogether. However, just before this ḥadīth ʿAbd al-Razzāq narrates one from Maʿmar, from Abū Hārūn, from Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī, saying that the Prophet, peace be upon him, said: The Dajjāl will be followed by 70,000 people of my ummah. (‘My ummah’ here can be understood to mean ‘the ummah of my daʿwah’; in his lifetime the Prophet invited Jews and Christians as well as the mushrik Arabs to embrace Islam.)
In what Yaḥyā ibn Abī Kathīr is reported to have said, he is clearly ‘narrating’ not commenting. Nevertheless, we can just about imagine a scenario where ‘commenting’ might be a plausible interpretation. Imagine (for the sake of argument) Maʿmar and Yaḥyā ibn Abī Kathīr are conversing, and a third person interrupts with some news of the Jewish rebellion that had started in Isfahan. Yaḥyā then comments, as if to explain that event in the context of the ‘world’ of the Umayyad caliphate coming to an end, with words to the effect: ‘Indeed, we have heard that the majority of those who will follow the Dajjāl will be Jews of Isfahan.’ Although admittedly far-fetched, it is not impossible that Maʿmar reported this comment and that, over time, his report was subsequently misconstrued as an independent narration by Yaḥyā. But even this will not support Shaykh SC’s scepticism. At most, Yaḥyā ibn Abī Kathīr may be imagined voicing a feeling, given the terrors of the time, that the rebellion of the Jews of Isfahan might be a harbinger of the global tribulation yet to come of the Dajjāl, whose campaign (albeit supported by Jews and hypocrite Muslims) will aim to subvert the Muslims and their religion.
What Yaḥyā ibn Abī Kathīr said about the Dajjāl in the mursal ḥadīth conforms in its general meaning with the marfuʿ ḥadīth recorded by ʿAbd al-Razzāq in his Muṣannaf (as we will see in Part 2, it conforms also with many other ḥadīths on this topic.) Nothing in its wording suggests that either Yaḥyā or al-Awzāʿī considered that the leader of the ʿIsāwiyyah rebellion was himself the foretold Dajjāl. There are over a hundred ḥadīths mentioning the Dajjāl. A detailed presentation and analysis of them may be consulted in the book al-Kāmil fi tawātur ḥadīth al-masīḥ al-dajjāl min miʾat ṭarīq mukhtalif by ʿAmir al-Ḥusaynī. In summary form, the attributes and characteristics of the Dajjāl as recorded in reliable ḥadīth collections include the following:
• The Dajjāl will have one functional, protruding eye. The other will be blind or damaged.
• The word kāfir (disbeliever) will be imprinted between his eyes or on his forehead, in such a way as to be intelligible to every believer (muʾmin), literate or illiterate.
• His complexion will be reddish-white or ruddy.
• As a trial for the believers, the Dajjāl will be able, by God’s leave, to do miracles in order to impress people, such as bringing down rain, causing vegetation to grow, resuscitating the dead, moving overland with the speed and ease of wind, and so on.
• He will falsely claim to be a prophet and eventually claim to be God.
• He will, followed by massive crowds, roam the earth, entering every city and town, except Makkah and Madinah, which will be protected by angels.
• He will be followed primarily by Jews and by hypocrites and weak believers among the Muslims.
• He will appear during a time of great fitnah (tribulation), when people are in dire straits on account of famine and war.
• The Dajjāl will be killed by Prophet ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) near the Gate of Ludd (modern-day Lod in Occupied Palestine).
There are many more characteristics of the Dajjāl noted in the reliable collections of ḥadīths. The element common to all of them is that the fitnah brought by the Dajjāl is a fitnah for this ummah and for mankind as a whole. It is to me inconceivable that any Muslim scholars, whether contemporary with the upheavals that marked the transition from Umayyad to ʿAbbasid rule, or any thereafter, could possibly confuse an uprising that represented a challenge to the religion of the Jews of Isfahan with the fitnah of the Dajjāl. Nor is there anything recorded (much later) about the personal features of Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣbahānī or what is known about his daʿwah that matches the personal features of the Dajjāl or what is known about his mission.
Summary
There is no merit in Shaykh SC’s scepticism about the ḥadīth reported through Imām al-Awzāʿī. From the viewpoint of historical plausibility, it is extremely unlikely that, in the conditions prevalent in the mid to late eighth century, information about an uprising in faraway Isfahan, or about Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣbahānī’s claims to a divine mandate to alter the religion of the Jews, could have reached the scholarly circles in Damascus (the Umayyad capital) during the lifetimes of Yaḥyā ibn Abī Kathīr and al-Awzāʿī. Rather, such information could only have been put together, interpreted, and circulated, among the class of scholars, many years later. By contrast, again from the viewpoint of historical plausibility, it is extremely likely that a number of ḥadīths about the end-times were well-known to the scholars in Damascus, just as some of those same ḥadīths and/or other, different ḥadīths were known in other centres of Islamic scholarship. (The comprehensive compilations of ḥadīths, which aimed to gather together the ḥadīths circulated in the different centres of learning, were done in the generation of scholars after the lifetime of al-Awzāʿī.)
Shaykh SC contends that the particular ḥadīth-text was the result of ‘imagined memory’ on the part of al-Awzāʿī, meaning that he (involuntarily, unconsciously) embellished a ‘real memory’ of an end-time ḥadīth with information or comment that he had heard about Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣbahānī’s rebellion. This is just not possible, even if al-Awzāʿī was not the man that we know he was. An argument like that could be made that some narrators after al-Awzāʿī, to whom information (or propaganda) about the Isfahan rebellion was available, were responsible for interpolating bits of that information into a text circulating as a Prophetic ḥadīth. That Shaykh SC chose to attribute the invention to Imām al-Awzāʿī is reprehensible. He evidently thinks that the gravity of his accusation against al-Awzāʿī, of forging an isnād to the Prophet, upon him be peace, can be lessened by calling it a case of ‘imagined memory’. I am reminded of the tendency of early twentieth-century Orientalists who replaced the desperate Christian polemic that the Prophet pretended to receive divine revelation with the claim that he sincerely believed that he received divine revelation though in reality he did not. Instead of calling him a dreadful liar, they called him dreadfully self-deluded.
Shaykh SC says he is unable to ‘believe’ this particular ḥadīth of al-Awzāʿī and is especially sceptical of the reference in it to the Jews of Isfahan. But does it make sense to say one does or does not ‘believe’ in a statement about some event to take place at or near the end of time? Believing in a statement entails holding it to be true enough to act upon. But whether or not one believes that the Dajjāl will come at the head of a large number of Jews from Isfahan cannot be a prompt to any particular action now. Conceivably, believing the ḥadīth as worded might prompt some Muslims take steps to prevent any substantial community of Jews taking root in Isfahan. But this sort of acting upon belief in the ḥadīth presumes that it is in our power to prevent the events of the end-times from happening or delay them. That is obviously a foolish presumption –– for, if preventable, end-times would not then be end-times.
Nothing in particular follows from either considering the ḥadīth of al-Awzāʿī a deliberate or involuntary fabrication or considering it a faithfully remembered account of what the Prophet actually said to one or more of his Companions. No Muslim’s understanding of how we should anticipate and prepare for the end-times is materially altered by the ḥadīth being accepted or rejected. Why then make a public declaration of scepticism about it? In the absence of any good reason for doing that, I am concerned that the likely effect of Shaykh SC’s particular scepticism about this ḥadīth will be to recommend a general scepticism about ḥadīth-texts on this topic, and perhaps also about ḥadīth-texts in general, to those who ‘follow’ him on social media. I am sure that this was not his conscious intention. However, whether intended or not, Shaykh SC is answerable for the effects of what he publicly declares since he is certainly aware that his declaration will influence others less informed than himself.
Response Part 2
In this part I want to illustrate the procedure adopted by traditionally-trained Islamic scholars when they discuss ḥadīth-texts. This procedure, always valuable, is indispensable for ḥadīth-texts that convey information or narrative about the unseen (the world hereafter, or the past or future of this world). It is this kind of report (especially, when conveyed by word of mouth over a generation or more before being stabilised in written form) that is vulnerable to the seeping in of information-detail or narrative-detail that has been added, mistakenly or deliberately, to embellish what had originally been plain or to make definite what had originally been undefined.
Takhrīj
The traditional Islamic reason for studying a ḥadīth-text is to draw guidance from it to deepen the student’s faith and understanding of the religion and practice of it. The traditional Islamic procedure for such study is called takhrīj. It entails ‘bringing out’ and presenting side by side as many as possible of the ḥadīth-texts related to the issue in hand. In Part 1, by putting side by side just a couple of texts that mention, in relation to the coming of the Dajjāl, ‘Jews’ or ‘Isfahan’, it is straightaway obvious that Shaykh SC must extend his ‘imagined memory’ explanation for the particular al-Awzāʿī ḥadīth to narrations in which al-Awzāʿī is not mentioned. There are several other ḥadīths that indicate the general direction, or region or city from which the Dajjāl will appear, namely ‘the east’, ‘Khurasan’, ‘Isfahan’ and other named cities. These ḥadīths are among a significant number that associate the great fitnah (trial, civil war, strife, ordeal) with the appearance of the Dajjāl, that is, with the end-times. And these in turn are a significant number among the ḥadīths recorded in the Ṣaḥīḥs of Imāms al-Bukhārī and Muslim that mention the great fitnah but without explicit mention of the Dajjāl or the end-times. For the present purpose –– explaining the necessity (and utility) of takhrīj – it will suffice to focus on the narrowest grouping, namely the ḥadīths that link the Dajjāl with a direction or place.
Imām Muslim records from Yaḥyā b. Ayyūb, Qutaybah and Ibn Ḥujr, each of them from Ismāʿīl ibn Jaʿfar, from al-ʿAlāʾ, from his father, from Abū Hurayrah, from the Messenger of God, peace be upon him, that he said: The Dajjāl will come out from the direction of the east intending to enter Madinah. He will arrive behind Uhud mountain, then the angels will turn his face toward Shām [Greater Syria], where he will perish.
Some ḥadīths mention the Dajjāl appearing from between Syria and Iraq, which is again ‘to the east’ of Madinah. The same is found also in the long ḥadīth of Fāṭimah bint Qays.
Some ḥadīths specify within ‘the east’ the region of Khurasan. Imām al-Tirmidhī records from Muḥammad ibn Bashshār and Aḥmad ibn Manīʿ, that both of them said: Rawh ibn ʿUbādah narrated to us, saying: Saʿīd ibn Abī ʿArūbah narrated to us from Abī al-Ṭayyāh, from al-Mughīrah ibn Subayʿ, from ʿAmr ibn Ḥurayth, from Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq who said: The Dajjāl will come out from a land in the east called Khurasan.
Abū Bakr Ibn Abī Shaybah narrates from Yazīd ibn Hārūn, from Saʿīd ibn Abī ʿArūbah, from Qatādah, from Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab, who asked his students: Is there a land in ʿirāq [=to the east of the Arabian Peninsula] called Khurasan? They replied, Yes. Upon this Saʿīd b. al-Musayyab said: The Dajjāl will come out from it.
The ḥadīths mentioning a specific city are narrated from three Companions: Anas ibn Mālik, Abū Hurayrah, and Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī. Two ḥadīths that name Isfahan we have already looked at, but it is worthwhile repeating them, because there is a third:
From Anas ibn Malik. Muslim records that Manṣūr ibn Abī Muzāhim narrated to us, saying: Yaḥyā ibn Ḥamzah narrated to us from al-Awzāʿī, from Isḥāq ibn ʿAbdillāh, from his uncle Anas that the Messenger of God said: The Dajjāl will be followed by 70,000 Jews from Isfahan, wearing cloaks [or shawls] around themselves. Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal records: Muḥammad ibn Musʿab narrated to us, saying: al-Awzāʿī narrated to us from Rabīʿah ibn Abī ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, from Anas ibn Mālik, saying that the Messenger of God said: The Dajjāl will come out from Judia [?=Jewish quarter] of Isfahan, with whom will be 70,000 Jews, wearing hoods.
From Abū Hurayrah: Bakr Ibn Abī Shaybah records in his Muṣannaf: Yazīd b. Hārūn narrated to us, saying: Muḥammad b. Isḥāq informed us, from Muḥammad b. Ibrāhim, from Abū Hurayrah, saying: The Dajjāl will come out from a suburb of Kirman, with whom will be 80,000 people, wearing cloaks. (Although Abū Hurayrah does not explicitly attribute the words in this ḥadīth to the Prophet, most experts in the discipline have said that it can be considered a Prophetic ḥadīth, because the omission was almost certainly an inadvertent one.)
From Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī. ʿAbd al-Razzāq narrates from Maʿmar, from Abū Hārūn, from Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī, saying the Prophet, peace be upon him, said: The Dajjāl will be followed by 70,000 people of my ummah. ʿAbd al-Razzāq records a similar ḥadīth as mursal from Maʿmar, from Yaḥyā ibn Abī Kathīr, who narrates (yarwih), saying: Most of those who will follow the Dajjāl will be Jews of Isfahan. (ʿAbd al-Razzāq records this ḥadīth after the above-mentioned ḥadīth of Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī, which is a Prophetic ḥadīth. In both ḥadīths, the teacher of ʿAbd al-Razzāq is Maʿmar, with the difference that the ḥadīth of Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī is narrated by Maʿmar from Abū Hārūn al-ʿAbdī from Abū Saʿīd, from the Prophet, whereas the other ḥadīth is narrated by Maʿmar, from Yaḥyā ibn Abī Kathīr as mursal, i.e. lacking at least the name of the Companion.)
In a ḥadīth also recorded in the Muṣannaf of ʿAbd al-Razzāq, the place mentioned is Kutha (modern day Tell Ibrahim, Babil governorate) in Iraq. ʿAbd al-Razzāq also records there another ḥadīth from Maʿmar, from Ibn Ṭāwūs, from his father, from Kaʿb, who said: The Dajjāl will come out from ʿirāq.
The ḥadīth-texts mentioned above have come down to us in writings compiled by scholars with a secure reputation for professionalism in recording what they heard without leaving out anything they happened not to like or not to understand fully. When we view these texts side-by-side we can identify the stable core of information, and the variants around that core. In this case, we can be sure that the fitnah associated with the coming of the Dajjāl will originate in lands to the east of the Hijaz. That no-one reported (or no-one recorded) the direction as ‘west’ is significant. Islamic rule spread both east and west (into Persian-dominated lands, with roots in the Mesopotamian civilisations, and Constantinople-dominated lands with roots in the Greek and Roman civilisations), and Muslims experienced political rebellions in both directions. We cannot reasonably argue that in later generations people tried to make a grand story out of the upheaval they suffered by claiming it as a sign of the end-times, reporting this as something the Prophet or his Companions had foretold with fabricated isnāds to give their report credibility. Accordingly, we should incline to accept the core element linking the Dajjāl with the east as a true account of what the Companions reported to their students of what the Prophet had said to them. As for the variants in specifying the place: these are not incompatible in that the Dajjāl will lead a movement heading out from somewhere east of the Hijaz towards the Hijaz, and the regions and cities mentioned are all on that route. It is not unlikely that at initial hearing or in subsequent telling, different people remembered different place-names or, forgetting what they had heard, supposed that they ‘must have heard’ what they reported. The mention of Jews is not incompatible with the mention of a large number from the Prophet’s ummah, since ‘ummah’ can mean all the peoples that the Prophet in his lifetime invited to accept Islam. The variation in the numbers of the followers of the Dajjal is not significant; generally, those who report numbers tend to exaggerate them. What then of the wearing of ‘cloaks/shawls’ or ‘hoods’ (possibly, ‘crowns’). This is another instance of the sort of detail that, where information is transmitted orally and over a long period of time, cannot remain stable. The Jews who will flock to the Dajjāl must be identifiable as such, and somewhere along the chain of transmission a marker was named. If that detail is suspect (it could be), it certainly does not suffice to discredit the report(s) altogether.
In short, if Shaykh SC had done even this minimum of takhrīj, he would know that the particular ḥadīth narrated through al-Awzāʿī is narrated through at least two different isnāds, that similar or strongly compatible information is reported in ḥadīths with isnāds in which al-Awzāʿī does not appear. This means that the accusation of some sort of fabrication or ‘imagined memory’ must be extended to a great many people. If that is envisaged, Shaykh SC should ask himself why, if there was fabrication, there was not also collusion: how and why fabricate the different variants, which diligent scholars in the generation after al-Awzāʿī went through the hardships of travelling to widely separated cities and settlements to hear, record and collate, and compile into the books that have come down to us. The strongest argument for the general reliability and utility of the ḥadīth corpus is, precisely, the variations in the order and detail of diverse bits of information around a consistent, or nearly-consistent, core of information. Without doubt that reliability of the ḥadīth corpus as a whole applies in the case of the particular ḥadīth Shaykh SC could not ‘believe’.
What I have argued suffices to demonstrate that Shaykh SC’s scepticism about the particular reported through al-Awzāʿī is unjustified. That is, though hopefully worthwhile, still a negative achievement. I hope in-shāʾa Allāh in the near future to write something more positive on related but separate matters: (1) An explanation of the roots of SC-style scepticism in the vulnerability of even very sincere, active, practicing, preaching Muslims to the temperament and perspectives embedded in them by Western upbringing and education. (2) An explanation of why traditionally-trained Muslim scholars do takhrīj: it is not something Muslims do to make themselves believe something unbelievable, rather it is the same sifting technique that any scholar, Muslim or otherwise, applies to reports (oral or written) about a real past event to find out what that event was. (3) An explanation of why oral and written records of past statements are necessarily variable in their consistency and reliability, depending on the kind of content in the statements being remembered. (4) An explanation of why Muslims benefit from knowing that there will be end-times, and having some (even disconnected) concrete detail about the signs of those end-times.
