Abstract:

The Muslim hadith tradition and the Western academic study of Islamic origins show diametrically opposed approaches to evaluating the authenticity of reports about the past. Both are critical, in that they concern themselves with questions of the reliability of historical sources. However, this paper focuses on approaches of the Western hadith scholars in assessment of the reliability of the hadiths. In this paper, differences between in historical methodology between G.H.A. Juynboll and Harald Motzki in relation to hadith are analysed. In the first part of this study, the works of Schacht is analysed in order to understand Juynboll’s methodology because the approaches of Schacht has been elaborated by Juynboll. In the second section, the methodology of Juynboll is analyzed. In the third part of this paper, the historical methodology of Motzki is examined. The final part of this study is conclusion. The aim of this paper is to illustrate that there are significant differences between in historical methodology between Juynboll and Motzki in relation to hadith. Moreover, it can be fairly argued that Harald Motzki is the first Western hadith scholars to examine hadiths with the same ‘respect’ like Muslim hadith scholars

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