Narrative social structure : anatomy of the Hadith transmission network, CE 610-1505

This work shows how a social organization might also be treated as a discourse
network diachronically produced by a synergy between social and discursive structures. It contributes to recent efforts in bridging the gap between discursive and social structures on the one hand, and synchronic and diachronic structures on the other, by demonstrating how speech and social action can be conjoined on the diachronic axis. It asserts that there exist discursive and temporal constraints on social action. In particular, discursive actions of individual and aggregate social actors implicitly shape their social networks with observable consequences on their authority. Metalinguistic tools are employed to detect and analyze these processes. Patterns in crossectional networks, characterized by synchronic relations among peers from the same generation, are comparatively analyzed with patterns in cross-temporal networks, characterized by diachronic relations among consecutive generations. This perspective is employed to analyze who gains more authority in the longest recorded social network through time known to us (CE 610-1505), namely the transmission network of hadith o f the Prophet Muhammad (CE 571-632). Hadith is the second source o f Islam after the Koran and revered by Muslims all over the world. A hadith can be defined as a brief disjointed narrative about the Prophet o f Islam transmitted orally and in writing by successive generations. Comparative analysis of synchronic and diachronic connections in the network of over 26 generations of scholars of hadith revealed that outward or diachronic connections are responsible for authority formation among the most prominent scholars of hadith. These scholars are commonly
known as hafiz (pi. huffaz). This finding indicates that a generation of prominent scholars is thinly connected to itself while it is thickly connected to adjacent generations. Peer avoidance in a discourse network is attributed to the effect of levels of reported speech. It is commonly observable that social actors attempt to reduce levels of reported speech in their discourse by reporting it from the closest node to the original source— as much as social and temporal constraints permit— even if the content of the report is going to be deemed as
accurate otherwise. They as such inadvertently eliminate some discourse mediators from their network while simultaneously according more authority upon others.