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Joseph Franz Schacht (, 15 March 1902 – 1 August 1969) was a British-German professor of Arabic language and Islam at Columbia University in New York. He was the leading Western scholar in the areas of Sharia and hadith studies, whose Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence (1950) is still considered a centrally important work on the subject. The author of many articles in the first and second editions of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, Schacht also co-edited the second edition of The Legacy of Islam and authored a textbook titled An Introduction to Islamic Law (1964).
In 1924 he published his Habilitations-Schrift, Das kitab al-hiial fil-fiqh (Buch d. Rechtskniffe) des abū Hātim Mahmūd ibn al-Hasan al-Qazuīnī, with translation and commentary.
In 1925 he obtained his first academic position at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg in Breisgau. In 1927 he became there a professor extraordinarius, making him the youngest professor in all of Germany, and in 1929 a professor ordinarius of . In 1932 he was appointed a professor at the University of Königsberg. But in 1934, without being directly threatened or persecuted, Schacht, as a strong opponent of the Nazi regime, went to Cairo, where he taught until 1939 as a professor. At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, he happened to be in England, where he offered his services to the British government and worked for the BBC. In 1947 he became a British citizen.
Schacht taught at Oxford University from 1946. In 1954 he moved to the Netherlands and taught at the University of Leiden. In the academic year 1957–1958, he taught at Columbia University, where, in 1959 he became a full professor of Arabic and Islamic studies. He remained at Columbia until his retirement in 1969 as professor emeritus.
One of Schacht's major contributions to the history of early Islam is the recognition that Hadith probably stems from those in whom the different traditions of the past converge, and this convergence Schacht describes as "common link". This concept was later used productively by many other Oriental studies.Wakin, Jeanette: Remembering Joseph Schacht (1902–1969). Islamic Legal Studies Program. Harvard Law School. Occasional Publications 4, January 2003.
Beginning around 100 A.H. (720 CE), ahadith of Muhammad "began to be fabricated", forming the Islamic Sunnah as it is known today. While scholars recognized that many ahadith were false and attempted to weed these out with Hadith studies, this was in vain as most if not all are inauthentic. According to Schacht, with the exception of "a few modifications dictated by the Qur'an", the Islamic "Sunna" is the same as the "sunna" of "pre-Mohammed Arabia". One example of the power of traditional law was that under the caliphate, theft was punished by flogging, even though the Qur'an had prescribed maiming/amputation.J. Schacht, An Introduction to Islamic Law (1964), supra note 5, at 15.
Schacht argues that in part the fabrication of ahadith came from "a literary convention, which found particular favor in Iraq", whereby authors/scholars would put their "own doctrine or work under the aegis of an ancient authority.""Pre-Islamic Background and the Early Development of Jurisprudence", in 1 Law in the Middle East 28 (M. Khadduri & H. Liebesny eds. 1955), supra note 5, at 43. The ultimate prestigious "ancient authority" in this context was Muhammad and "around 120 A.H." scholars in Kufa, "followed in a few years by the Medinese" began falsely ascribing "their new doctrines back to earlier jurists", and over time extended them back to Muhammad."Pre-Islamic Background and the Early Development of Jurisprudence", in 1 Law in the Middle East 28 (M. Khadduri & H. Liebesny eds. 1955), supra note 5, at 33. Schacht also blames the religious fervor of those who "detested" use of Qiyas and Ijma. Providing suspicious justification for the "Traditionist" fabricators were ahadith such as, "sayings attributed to me which agree with the Qur'an go back to me, whether I actually said them or not."Joseph Schacht, "Pre-Islamic Background and the Early Development of Jurisprudence", in 1 Law in the Middle East 28 (M. Khadduri & H. Liebesny eds. 1955), supra note 5, at 46. Though false, the forgeries could also be justified as recognizing the "final legitimacy of what the prophet Muhammad did and said.J. SCHACHT, An Introduction to Islamic Law (1964), supra note 5, at 35-36.
Schacht credits Imām al-Shāfiʻī, the founder of an eponymous school of Islamic jurisprudence, with "creating" "the essentials" of the theory of fiqh (the system of Islamic jurisprudence), made up of four principles/sources/components mentioned above: the Qurʾān, the ḥadīth of the Muhammad and his Sahabah, scholarly consensus (Ijma), analogical reasoning (Qiyas).Snouck Hurgronje, C. Verspreide Geschriften. v.ii. 1923-7, page 286-315Étude sur la théorie du droit musulman (Paris : Marchal et Billard, 1892-1898.)Margoliouth, D.S., The Early Development of Mohammedanism , 1914, page 65ffSchacht, Joseph in Encyclopedia of Islam , 1913 v.IV, sv Usul''
Because the Quran has relatively few verses pertaining to fiqh, Al-Shafi‘i's system meant that "the great bulk" of the rules of the Islamic law were derived from ahadith. Schacht states that Shafi'i repeatedly insisted that "nothing" could override the authority of the Prophet, even if it was "attested only by an isolated tradition", and that if a hadith was "well-authenticated" ( Ṣaḥīḥ) going back to the Islamic Prophet Muhammad, it had "precedence over the opinions of his Sahabah, their successors, and later authorities".
Following the work of Goldziher before him, Schacht argues that it was al-Shāfiʻī who first elevated the sunna and its constituent traditions to great legal prominence. The material importance of the Qurʾān and ḥadīth thereafter enjoyed a status comparable to that of juristic consensus, though for al-Shāfiʻī traditions credibly attributed to the Prophet were to be considered more authoritative than those of his Companions, and indeed could supersede all other sources of legal authority. Moreover, an already-existing legal standard based on such a tradition could be overturned only upon the emergence of a ḥadīth that could be more credibly attributable to the Prophet. Al-Shāfiʻī goes as far as to claim that such well-established traditions invite no debate as to their validity; their truth simply imposes itself upon the human mind, leaving no room for doubt or speculation. Schacht points out, however, that al-Shāfiʻī inconsistently applies this rule in his own work, alleging that in some cases the jurist favored 'aḥādīth transmitted from Companions that openly contradicted those attributable to the Prophet. These traditions usually included those which validated ritual practices that were either universally agreed upon or else independently verifiable (such as salat), and those which disputed the legal positions of al-Shāfiʻī's opponents.
Building on this lattermost point, Schacht contends that far from constructing the standards of a legitimate epistemic enterprise al-Shāfiʻī's science of ḥadīth amounts to little more than an uncritical acceptance of Prophetic traditions which justified his own legal preferences. These same traditions, claims Schacht, could not survive a stronger program of investigation. Although the technical evaluation of traditions would continue to evolve across many generations of Muslim scholars, it seems to have largely proceeded along the lines of the deficient form of ’isnād criticism first articulated here by al-Shāfiʻī. Later in Origins Schacht presents evidence which in his estimation suggests that there was in fact a large scale fabrication of Prophetic ’isnāds in the generation preceding the life of al-Shāfiʻī's own teacher, Mālik ibn ’Anas (d. 795 CE). Even in Mālik's esteemed golden narrative chain there are suspicious gaps and obvious substitutions, sowing significant doubts as to credibility of the relationships he was said to have had with certain key transmitters. For these reasons modern scholars cannot be nearly as optimistic about the historical-analytic value of ḥadīth literature as were their medieval Muslim counterparts.Schacht 163-4. compares the unique matn of al-Muw. i.371 with the same in al-Bukhārī, who has Abū Hurayra relate the tradition and not ‘Urwa. At 165-6 Schacht compares al-Shāf‘ī Tr. II with Muw. Al-Shay. 166 and Muw. ii.II.
According to David Forte, "nearly all Western Islamic scholars agree that Schacht's evidence against the authenticity of the traditions is virtually unassailable." Supporters of his include: Maurice Gaudefroy-Demombynes, who writes that many ahadith "are apocryphal and were invented in the 8th century in order to justify innovations and tendencies which were very foreign to the intentions of the Prophet";M. Gaudefroy-Demombynes, Muslim Institutions 62 (1950), supra note 40, at 65. J. N. D. Anderson, who states most ahadith were "beyond question, fabricated"; J. N. D. Anderson, Islamic Law in the Modern World (1959), supra note 2, at 12. Herbert Liebesny; The Law of the NEAR AND MIDDLE EAST 24 (1970), "The Actual Historical Development." and Seymour Vesey-Fitzgerald, who states "there was deliberate forgery of traditions by responsible lawyers on such a scale that no purely legal tradition of the Prophet himself can be regarded as above suspicion."Vesey-Fitzgerald, "Nature and Sources of the Shari'a", in 1 Law In The Middle East 85-94 (M. Khadduri and H. Liebesny eds. 1955).
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