Hadith, Maskh (Metamorphosis), and Cultural Context: A Study of a ？a？ī？ayn Report on the Transformation of Jews into Mice

This article deals with a hadith report about a Jewish community metamorphosed and turned into mice in ancient times, and aims at contributing to studies as to how to evaluate religious texts by taking into consideration the cultural context in which they came into being. Firstly, I attempt to make an assesment of the report both from the point of the classical hadith literature and the cultural/environmental codes of the early period. Then I examine the place of maskh (metamorphosis), as a universal belief and a mode of imagination, in the Islamic thought and describe the cultural atmosphere surrounding the report in question. I also touch upon the criticisms directed against and the comments on this report that has a rather odd yet fascinating content. The positive and negative discourses developed concerning the subject makes one think that there might be a dialogue problem between researchers and the hadith literature. For this reason, I suggest a reevaluation of the approaches towards hadith and its literature, and, in this regard, I offer a way of reading the narratives which were not part and parcel of the apostolic duty of the Prophet and which reflected the socio-cultural beliefs and assents of the time from a wider and more comprehensive perspective and as an original segment of the long human history