Criticism and Caution in the Context of Genre: A Comparative Study of<i> al-'Ilal</i> and<i> al-Sunan</i> by al-Dāraqutnī

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ÇETİN B.

KOCATEPE ISLAMI ILIMLER DERGISI, cilt.9, sa.1, ss.93-109, 2026 (ESCI)

Özet

Although the methods employed by hadith scholars in the criticism of reports can be traced through the works they authored, contemporary scholarship has largely limited such analyses to a single work of a given scholar. However, the assessments articulated by a muhaddith across different genres of composition are shaped by both the author's scholarly aims and the intellectual needs and debates of the period, offering insight into the focal points and levels through which hadith criticism is conducted. This article examines how methods of hadith criticism vary according to genre by analyzing al-D & amacr;raqutni's evaluations of hadith texts in two works, `Ilal al-w & amacr;rida fi al-ah & amacr;dith al-nabawiyya and al-Sunan. Al-D & amacr;raqutni operated in the fourth Islamic century, a period marked by the relative stabilization of legal schools, which shaped the interaction between hadith criticism and juristic reasoning. In existing scholarship, his critical approach has generally been examined through al-`Ilal and his critiques of the Sahihayn, while al-Sunan has primarily been discussed in terms of structure and content. By contrast, the ways in which hadith criticism functions across genres,such as `ilal and sunan, in terms of focus and evaluative level have not been addressed as an independent research problem. To fill this gap, the study adopts a comparative, sample-based approach focusing on the Kit & amacr;b al-Tah & amacr;ra section of al-Sunan, identifying reports in which al-D & amacr;raqutni offers explicit textual evaluations and comparing them with parallel material in al-`Ilal. The analysis demonstrates that al-D & amacr;raqutni employs two levels of textual evaluation, explicit criticism (naqd) and cautionary remark (tanbih), whose distribution corresponds to the authorial aims of each work. It further shows that juristic disagreements and modes of legal argumentation significantly shape textual evaluation in sunan literature, while genre-based differences affect how hadith criticism is carried out.