Abstract

Herat city stands as one of the most prominent scholarly centers in ancient Khorasan and present-day Afghanistan. Research and study about its history are of paramount importance as it produced eminent scholars, experts in hadith, brilliant interpreters, and notable Quranic exegeses. Scholars in Herat devoted extensive efforts to seeking, narrating, documenting, and classifying various types of hadith literature, including chains of transmission, volumes, and outputs. Additionally, they contributed to the compilation of hadith-related sciences such as the peculiarities of hadith, biographies of narrators, hadith explanations, and more. This research delves into the following topics: introducing Herat city, the flourishing and dissemination of hadith within it, the methodologies of hadith scholars in this school, distinctive features of the Herati Hadith School, and the efforts of Herat's hadith scholars in serving and advancing the field of hadith. The findings of this study reveal that Herat city housed a diverse group of scholars, hadith experts, jurists, and linguists. These scholars, while specializing in one field, had a multidisciplinary approach, engaging in hadith, interpretation, jurisprudence, language, literature, poetry, and more. Most of Herat's hadith scholars were meticulous preservers and reliable authorities, often undertaking journeys to different regions in pursuit of hadith, strengthening their chains of transmission. The reputation of hadith rose in Herat, attracting students and hadith scholars from far and wide to benefit from the city's renowned hadith masters. As a result of these collective efforts, books were written, publications were produced, teaching circles and sessions for hadith narration and transmission flourished in Herat and its neighboring regions. Notably, prominent hadith scholars emerged as authors of narrations and compositions.