When al-Bukhārī disagrees with Muslim: The variables of matn criticism in ḥadīth turbah

Abstract

Mukhtalif and Mushkil al-Ḥadīth, commonly translated as contradictory and contrasting Prophetic reports, are among the most complex and challenging anatomies of sciences of ḥadīth. It deals primarily with prophetic injunctions that seemingly contradict other epistemological sources such as Qur’anic verses, historical facts, and sound rationality.2 In recent years, the ḥadīth corpus in general has been under extreme scrutiny with claims that it is self-conflicting in nature and its contents are incoherent with modern sciences and secular rationality…