Hadīth and Oriental Studies in the Turkish language

Abstract

This study deals with the meaning of Orientalism, its history, and its emergence in the west, as well as discusses the orientalists' focus on systematically studying the second primary source of Islamic law in the nineteenth century AD. It is concluded that Ignaz Goldziher was the first to study the Prophetic hadīths with a method that none of the researchers in the west had preceded him, he put in question the proving and authenticity of Prophetic hadīths and presented a vague image of the key narrators and their narrations in the classical canonical compilations of hadīth. Besides, he concluded that the emergence of hadīths was a result of political disputes among Muslims. Joseph Schacht followed him in the study of hadīths related to the jurisprudential provisions and called their appearance as a conclusion of the sub-controversies between the jurisprudential schools of thought in the Islamic world. Later G. H. A Juynboll developed the theories of his predecessors and supported them with new pieces of evidence, and followed the methodology of both Goldziher and Schacht in the critical study of Prophetic hadīths. This study sheds light on the theories of mentioned orientalists as well as on the history of the Turkish language and its role in the study of Orientalism and hadīth, in addition, the study describes the statistical information of critical studies regarding Orientalism and Hadīth along with the details of some scientific studies in the Turkish language in Oriental and hadīth literature.