Editing Mu'tazilism (section)

===Validity of hadith===
During the [[Abbasid]] dynasty, the poet, theologian, and jurist, [[Ibrahim an-Nazzam]] founded a [[madhhab]] called the Nazzamiyya that rejected the authority of Hadiths by [[Abu Hurayra]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Abdul-Raof |first=Hussein |date=2012 |title=Theological Approaches to Quranic Exegesis: A Practical Comparative-Contrastive Analysis |location=London |publisher=Routledge |pages=33–34 |isbn=978-0-41544-958-8}}</ref> His famous student, [[Al-Jahiz]], was also critical of those who followed such Hadiths, referring to his Hadithist opponents as ''al-nabita'' ("the contemptible").<ref>{{cite book |last=Zaman |first=Muhammad Qasim |date=1997 |title=Religion and Politics Under the Early 'Abbasids: The Emergence of the Proto-Sunni Elite |location=[[Leiden]] |publisher=[[E.J. Brill]] |page=55 |isbn=978-9-00410-678-9}}</ref>

According to Racha El Omari, early Mu'tazilites believed that hadith were susceptible to "abuse as a polemical ideological tool"; that the ''[[matn]]'' (content) of the hadith—not just the ''isnad''—ought to be scrutinized for doctrine and clarity; that for hadith to be valid they ought to be ''[[mutawatir]]'', i.e. supported by ''tawātur'' or many ''[[isnād]]'' (chains of oral transmitters), each beginning with a different Companion.<ref>see: Ḍirār b. ʿAmr (died 728/815) In his al-Taḥrīsh wa-l-irjāʾ</ref><ref name="Ghani-65">{{cite book|last1=Ghani|first1=Usman|editor1-last=Duderija|editor1-first=Adis|title=The Sunna and its Status in Islamic Law: The Search for a Sound Hadith|date=2015|publisher=Springer |page=65|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9lamCwAAQBAJ&q=The+second+stance+consisted+of+accepting+a+report+if+it+was+supported+by+some+form+of+taw%C4%81tur&pg=PA65|access-date=29 March 2018|chapter=3. Concept of Sunna in Mu'tazilite Thought.|isbn=9781137369925|archive-date=14 October 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211014234228/https://books.google.com/books?id=9lamCwAAQBAJ&q=The+second+stance+consisted+of+accepting+a+report+if+it+was+supported+by+some+form+of+taw%C4%81tur&pg=PA65|url-status=live}}</ref>

In writing about ''mutawatir'' (multi-isnād Hadith) and ''[[Ahaad|ahad]]'' (single-isnad hadith, i.e. almost all hadith) and their importance from the legal theoretician's point of view, [[Wael Hallaq]] notes the medieval scholar [[Al-Nawawi]] (1233–1277) argued that any non-''mutawatir'' hadith is only probable and can not reach the level of certainty that a ''mutawatir'' hadith can. However, these mutawir were extremely scarce. Scholars like [[Ibn al-Salah]] (died 1245 CE), al-Ansari (died 1707 CE), and Ibn ‘Abd al-Shakur (died 1810 CE) found "no more than eight or nine" hadiths that fell into the ''mutawatir'' category.<ref name=wael>{{cite journal |last=Hallaq |first=Wael |title=The Authenticity of Prophetic Ḥadîth: A Pseudo-Problem |journal=Studia Islamica |volume=89 |year=1999 |issue=89 |pages=75–90 |doi=10.2307/1596086 |jstor=1596086 |url-access=registration |url=http://almuslih.com/Library/Hallaq,%20W%20-%20The%20authenticity.pdf |access-date=30 March 2018 |archive-date=10 May 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160510232152/http://almuslih.com/Library/Hallaq,%20W%20-%20The%20authenticity.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref>

[[Wasil ibn Ata|Wāṣil ibn ʿAṭāʾ]] (700–748 CE, by many accounts a founder of the Mu'tazilite school of thought), held that there was evidence for the veracity of a report when it had four independent transmitters. His assumption was that there could be no agreement between all transmitters in fabricating a report. Wāṣil's acceptance of tawātur seems to have been inspired by the juridical notion of witnesses as proof that an event did indeed take place. Hence, the existence of a certain number of witnesses precluded the possibility that they were able to agree on a lie, as opposed to the single report which was witnessed by one person only, its very name meaning the "report of one individual" (khabar al-wāḥid). Abū l-Hudhayl al-ʿAllāf (died 227/841) continued this verification of reports through tawātur, but proposed that the number of witnesses required for veracity be twenty, with the additional requirement that at least one of the transmitters be a believer.<ref name="Ghani-65"/>

For Ibrahim an-Nazzam (c. 775 – c. 845), both the single and the mutawātir hadith reports as narrated by Abu Hurayra, the most prolific hadith narrater, could not be trusted to yield knowledge.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10036/4362/GhaniU.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y |title=Archived copy |access-date=2020-12-12 |archive-date=2020-11-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201109033912/https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10036/4362/GhaniU.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y |url-status=live }}</ref> He recounted contradictory ḥadīth from Abu Hurayra and examined their divergent content (matn) to show why they should be rejected: they relied on both faulty human memory and bias, neither of which could be trusted to transmit what is true. Al-Naẓẓām bolstered his strong refutation of the trustworthiness of ḥadīths narrated by Abu Hurayra within the larger claim that his ḥadīths circulated and thrived to support polemical causes of various theological sects and jurists, and that no single transmitter could by himself be held above suspicion of altering the content of a single report. Al-Naẓẓām's skepticism involved far more than excluding the possible verification of a report narrated by Abu Hurayra, be it single or mutawātir. His stance also excluded the trustworthiness of consensus, which proved pivotal to classical Mu'tazilite criteria devised for verifying the single report (see below). Indeed, his shunning of both consensus and tawātur as narrated by Abu Hurayra earned him a special mention for the depth and extent of his skepticism.<ref>Racha El-Omari, "Accommodation and Resistance: Classical Muʿtazilites on Ḥadīth" in ''[[Journal of Near Eastern Studies]]'', Vol. 71, No. 2 (October 2012), pp. 234–235</ref>