The Development of Early Sunnite Hadith Criticism

h?adith are the documents recording the words and actions of the Prophet Muh?ammad. Originally an enormous and amorphous corpus, Muslim scholars of the third/ninth century separated the h?adith they regarded as true from those they held to be forgeries, producing collection of h?adith which still command the respect of Muslims today.
Ibn Abi h?atim al-Razi (240/854-327/938) was one of the most prominent exponents and practitioners of h?adith criticism. He left a copious written legacy, including his famous Taqdima, a biographical dictionary of the early h?adith critics.
The Taqdima reveals Ibn Abi h?atims's vision of the critic and gives insight into the mechanism of h?adith criticism. It also provides a platform for the examination of the basic intellectual orientation of the h?adith critics and their conflicts with their opponents.