Editing Isnad (section)

== Pre-Islamic background ==
Chains of transmission are found in many religious texts as an oral guarantor for the preservation of tradition (by contrast, written transmission was perceived to be unreliable). These include sources from [[rabbinic literature|rabbinic]], [[Ancient Christian Writers|Christian]] (including [[Papias of Hierapolis|Papias]], [[Ephrem the Syrian|Ephrem]], and the [[Clementine literature|Pseudo-Clementine Homilies]]), and [[Manichaeism|Manichaean]] backgrounds.{{Sfn|Siegal|2024}} The practice of attributing the transmission of a tradition to a line of known tradents has been compared to the practice of [[apostolic succession]] in [[Christianity]], a claim made on the part of Christian churches that their legitimacy in carrying on the traditions of [[Jesus]] and [[Disciple (Christianity)|the disciples]] is based on a continuous succession of authorities, especially [[bishop]]s, from the earliest moments of the Church.{{Sfn|Tropper|2004}} These methods of transmission likely arose independently.{{Sfn|Hezser|2024|p=141–142}}

[[Joseph Horowitz]] proposed that the Islamic version of the practice of combining a tradition or saying with a chain of transmitters going back to an original authority stems from the instance of this tradition in rabbinic literature from whence it got adopted into the nascent [[hadith sciences]],{{Sfn|Horowitz|2016a}} before it underwent a much more elaborate native systematization in the Islamic tradition.{{Sfn|Horowitz|2016b}} According to [[Michael Cook (historian)|Michael Cook]]:{{Sfn|Cook|2024|p=189}}<blockquote>We can then go on to find elements in the Islamic edifice that look like specific borrowings from Judaism ... the chain of transmitters that accompanies an oral account, known on the Muslim side as the isnād, as in "Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf informed us from Sufyān from Abū ʾl-Zinād from Mūsā ibn Abī ʿUthmān from his father from Abū Hurayra from the Prophet who said..." The only other religious culture in which we find such a style of attribution is Judaism, as in “Rabbi Zeriqa said: Rabbi Ammi said: Rabbi Simeon ben Laqish said:...” What was different was that once adopted in Islam the practice was developed much more systematically and applied to a much wider range of material.</blockquote>One Jewish chain of transmission is reiterated in the [[Quran]] (5:44).{{Sfn|Zellentin|2023|p=284–285}}