See Things in Totality

WAKI IBN AL-JARRAH (745-812) was one of the greatest scholars of Hadith (a record of the sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad) literature of his time. He was an extremely pious person. Caliph Haroon al-Rasheed offered him the position of Qazi, i.e., a judge, but he refused. He dedicated all his life to collecting and compiling of Hadith. He set out for Makkah from his native city Kufa to perform Hajj. He died during the journey.

One of his contemporaries, while talking highly of Waki ibn al-Jarrah, said, “I saw Waki. He didn’t have any book with him. He was a Hafiz of Hadith.” (Al-Tahdhib by ibn Hajar, vol. 11 p. 119) A Hafiz of Hadith is a person who has memorized a great number of Hadith reports.

Ignac Goldziher (d. 1921) was a Hungarian scholar of Islam. Mentioning this statement, he writes that Imam Waki did not use books and paper, he only listened to the Hadith reports and then narrated them. Goldziher meant to say that Hadith reports were unreliable as they were based on oral tradition, not on written record. By this argument, Goldziher casts doubt over the veracity of Hadith reports. It is because in comparison to written record, memory is indeed an unreliable source.

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To form an honest and true opinion about someone, we need to be unbiased and we should take into account things in totality

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However, this way of reporting by Goldziher appears to be incorrect when we see in the same book that Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal (780-855) used to advise his disciples: You must read books of Imam Waki. (alTahdhib, Vol. 11 p. 126) If Waki had not written books, why would Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal have given such advice?

Some of the books of Imam Waki are:
Kitab-ul-Zuhd
Tafsir al-Quran

The events from the life of Waki ibn al-Jarrah show that his memory was exceptionally good. Though he would write down and record the Hadith reports, he would often narrate them from his memory. Looking at the events of Imam Waki in totality, the fact that he would narrate Hadith reports from memory does not cast any suspicion over the veracity of his narrations. Goldziher overlooked other relevant facts from the life of Imam Waki and emphasized on just one aspect of it. This aspect was enough to convince him that the present collection of Hadith literature is doubtful, and this collection cannot be entirely relied. To form an honest and true opinion about someone, we need to be unbiased and we should take into account things in totality.