Misconception # 1: Allah has not taken responsibility of protecting the Sunnah of the Prophet (sas)
Allah (swt) has taken responsibility of protecting the Sunnah of the Rasoolallah (sas). There is actually a verse from the Quran that proves that Allah preserved the Sunnah.
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We have revealed the Zikr, and we shall preserve it** (15:9)
Now one would say that by Zikr, Allah meant the Quran.
This gives rise to another question, i.e. Is Allah talking about preserving just the wording of the Quran or the wording and the meaning of the Quran? It’s definetly the wording and the meaning of the Quran that has been preserved, and if we look else where in the Quran we find another Ayaah..**
…and we have sent down unto you the Zikr that you may explain clearly to men what is sent for them, and that they may give thought. (16:44)**
This ayaah proves, that the meaning of the Quran is in the Hadith of the Prophet (sas), since Allah appointed the Prophet to explain the text to the people. This proves that the meaning and the explaination of the Quran can only be found by looking at the Hadith of the Prophet (sas) and his explanations. So when Allah (swt) promises to preserve the Zikr it cannot just mean the wordings of the Quran but it must mean the wording of the Quran, and also its meanings and explanations as found in the Hadith of the Rasoolallah (sws).
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Misconception #2: The recording of the hadith did not start centuries after the death of the Prophet (sas)
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For something to be preserved or for something to be authentic it is NOT neccessary for it to be recorded. There are many examples of texts in history that were passed down, and preserved simply by listening to it from others and committing it to memory, and just because it was recorded does not mean it was preserved correctly.
The recording of the Hadith began in the time of Prophet Muhammad (sas). Some of the Companions had their own collections of Hadith. Abdullah ibn Amr ibn Aas used to record each and everything he’d hear from the Prophet (sas) and the Prophet used to encourage this act of his. Some of the Companions had their own collections of hadeeth. Mustapha Azmi an expert in the field, in his book Writers of the Prophet, he’s found over 60 people whose job was to write for the Prophet (sas). Some of them were specialized in writing the Quran, for eg. Muawiyaah (rah) was one of them. And then he had other people who’s job was to write letters, his sayings etc. He had one set of people who specialized in writing down what was revealed on to him, i.e. the Quran. And he had a different set of people, who would write letters from him and his Hadeeth. This was done so that the two texts would not get mixed up. So both the recording of the Hadeeth and the recording of the Quran started in the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad (sas).
From the early years we have a collection of Hadeeth from Abu Hurayrah, and it continued to exist as a seperate work till this day and is known as the Sahifa Hamam. This sahifa was passed on from Abu Hurayrah to his student Hamaam, who passed it on to Na’mar, who then passed it on to Abdul Razzaq. This collection has 136 hadith from Abu Hurayrah that he dictated to his student Hamam. There were many early collections as such, such as Sahifa Sadaqa, which contained about 1000 hadith, compiled by Amr ibn Al Aas..who used to say that there are only two things in his life he used to treasure, one was the peice of land that was given to him by the Prophet(sas) and the other was his Sahifa.
The reason why we dont see these many of these collections or Sahifas around these days, is because they were consumed into larger later works. So most of these earlier smaller works dont exist any more many of them lost but we do have references of who compiled what and passed what to whom. Now, since many of these earlier works dont exist anymore, many people now believe that there were no earlier works, which is wrong. There were earlier works but because of the nature of work the muhaditheen worked, they never really referred to the title of the book, they would use the chain of narrators as a reference and people wouldn’t realize its from so and so Sahifa until they studied it in detail.
References:
Jamal Zarabozo’s Hadith workshop
M. M. Azmi’s Studies in Early Hadith Literature.