Joshua Little @islamicorigins.bsky.social

*MASTER THREAD* A catalogue of all of my threads on Hadith, early Islamic history, and related matters.

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Comments by @OborneTweets (on @DoubleDownNews) on the latest wave of pro-imperialist whitewashing, propaganda, and bias in the UK media. I expect it; yet somehow, I'm still amazed by the brazenness when I see the side-by-side comparison of headlines. youtube.com/watch?v=4BlXzB…

It’s either going to be very good or terribly bad. I can’t tell yet. I do know one thing: it will be offensive—that’s why I preface with the Book of James. Anyhow, 6200 words. Maybe another 4000 words before I decide to call it a day and submit.

Problematising the notion of 'origin', in this article Ahmad Al-Jallad takes issue with Suleyman Dost's over-emphasis on South Arabia as a source of the Quran's religious vocabulary, argues for borrowings of indigenous Arabian concepts & terms by the Quran academia.edu/165002002

They bombed “freedom tower” to free us.

Registration is now open! Please apply! Graduate School of Islamic Humanities: Approaches to the Study of Islam To be held in Leiden, Netherlands. 13-17 July 2026 Open to all PhD candidates in Islamic studies and early career scholars.

This paper presents an edition and study of five early Abbasid monumental inscriptions from Mecca. Comparing the contents of three of these inscriptions which are from the Masǧid al‐Ḥarām to juridical discussions of pilgrimage rites, it argues that, academia.edu/55099627

Real Talk interview with Dr. Sulayman Dost on his recent publication, scheduled for March 30 on Sképsislamica 🎙️📚✨

New Open Access article: Finding Dūrī: Communal Transmission of Abū ʿAmr among the People of ʿIrāq === The proofs still had the title's pun working in Spanish, but between final proofs and publication someone who didn't get it, changed it. :-( al-qantara.revistas.csic.es/index.php/al-q…

Reminder to everybody that we have a megapost up on r/AcademicQuran collecting ~40 contemporary references showing that the consensus in academia is that Muhammad was a historical figure. reddit.com/r/AcademicQura…

📣 Call for Papers! Two-day conference The Sage of Medina: The Thought, Life, and Teachings of Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq. 📍Leiden University, Netherlands 📆: 2-3 December 2026 Abstract deadline: 15 April 2026 universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2026/0…

So my translations of al-Dani's Taysir is out! So what is this text about? It is a description of seven canonical reading traditions of the Quran authored by the Andalusi polymath ʾAbū ʿAmr ʿUṯmān b. Saʿīd al-Dānī (371/981–444/1053).

Ghazali (d. 1111) records an "Isra'iliyyat" report about a pious believer learning that his companion in heaven will be a seemingly "simple" person. The believer sets out to find this person & figure out why the person is so special Jewish variants of this report are well known

Today my translation of al-Dani's Taysir has come out! I hope to write a little bit more about this later, but for now here is a link. And it's Open Access! openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647…

Major transmitters of Ibn Shihāb al-Zuhrī in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī. It is clear that generally Zubayrid individuals played an important role in transmitting his content.

@Quranic_Islam This might be an example of what you have in mind: leidenarabichumanitiesblog.nl/articles/when-… I can say from personal experience that ICMA broadly works on all kinds of hadiths, regardless of grading.

@IslamicOrigins Hi, a question & perhaps something of a suggestion; has anyone done an ICMA on traditions that have “unanimously” deemed rejected by the traditional Hadith sciences (or even by academics)?I’m thinking in terms of trying to prove a “null hypothesis”

Using some of my digital humanities skills and the basic textual form of al-Kāfī, I was able to create this nodal (star network) graph of Mufaḍḍal b. ʿUmar's transmission pattern. In total, he features in about 98 chains. Many of them feature Ibn Sinān.

Doing a spot of source criticism and tradition criticism on some hadiths for a forthcoming article. ICMA is only the first step when it comes to analyzing the development, origins, and historicity of Hadith!

🚨 OUT NOW! In this episode of the Real Talk Podcast 🎙️, we @IraniRoxanna sit down with Dr. Andreas Görke 🏛️ (University of Edinburgh) for a look into one of the most fundamental questions in Qur’anic Studies 📜: how early tafsīr began, what survives of it, and how we can date it.

Caliphal Incursion into Fāṭima's House and a Methodological Note about ICMA: ​In some recent discussions, a report transmitted by ʿAbd Allāh b. Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (d. 290/903), son of the famous traditionist, Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (d. 241/855), has been a subject of discussion.