This work carefully examines the sensitive issue of the development of the oral and written traditions, the problems scholars faced despite painstaking work verifying the authenticity of reports as well as the character of narrators etc., and the ever growing complexity of a body of narratives, with a labyrinthine shroud of scholastic views, that were making the simplicity and clarity of the Prophet’s life, words, and actions, a burgeoning maze of information. Taking the without doubt praiseworthy intention and effort to emulate the Prophet into account, the author nevertheless makes the case that once the Sunnah had been collected, the Muslim community began to neglect the Qur’an in favor of narrations of what the Prophet had done and said on the pretext that such narratives “contained” the Qur’an, and it is with the aim of restoring the relationship between the two that this work has been written. The author stresses that the Qur’an should be given precedence with the Prophetic Sunnah tied inextricably to the Qur’an in a way that allows for no contradiction between the two.
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