The Solomon legend in Muslim tradition

Abstract

The principal two components of Muslim Law are the Qur'an and Tradition. Originally both these sources were transmitted down from father to son orally. It is believed that it was only a century after Muhammad's death that Tradition was set to writing. Nowadays we have free access to Muslim Tradition through Hadith narrations. The actual account of a Prophet's example in deed or word is narrated in small and rather very short stories in which the morale of the "fable" comes up in the end. Every single account of these is called "Hadith" (= new, modern, recent; but also: news, tidings). Each account is preceded by a chain of authorities (isnad) going back to Muhammad himself or to some companion of his as the original narrator who set the ball rolling. Western scholars do not attach much attention to isnad, which for the Muslims it might turn out to be more important than the matn (= the body of the narration), since from it, through a most complicated process, they try to judge whether a given hadith narration is to be accepted as authentic or not.