Hadith Commentary as Discourse and Genre offers a systematic and interdisciplinary framework for analysing ḥadīth commentary, presenting two comprehensive models that approach the commentary tradition through discourse and genre analysis.
Drawing on twenty-five ḥadīth commentaries spanning the tenth century to the present and representing the major Sunni theological and legal schools, the book develops and empirically applies a wide range of methodological strategies for examining these scholarly-religious texts. It explores their discursive and generic features through methods including intertextuality, interdiscursivity, contextual analysis, rhetorical "move analysis", and lexico-grammatical analysis, among others. The two models are presented individually before being integrated into a practical framework for studying the Islamic commentary tradition. While centred on ḥadīth, the approach can also be applied to commentary literature in other areas of Islamic studies, including tafsīr, jurisprudence, theology, and Sufism, and offers new perspectives on contemporary debates surrounding the interpretation of the Prophet's sunna.
This book will appeal to students and scholars of Hadith and Islamic studies, Islamic intellectual history, religious studies, discourse analysis, and genre studies, as well as researchers interested in Islamic hermeneutics and traditions of commentary.