Beyond Textual Comparison: Developing an Intertextual Framework for Hadith Matn Criticism

Hadith matn criticism has long drawn upon comparison of reports, scrutiny of linguistic anomalies, and reconciliation of apparently conflicting narrations. Yet the relationships among textual variants, Qur’anic discourse, and historically situated interpretation are not always described within a single analytical procedure. This conceptual study develops a three-dimensional intertextual framework through critical engagement with classical hadith-critical concerns, historical scholarship on transmission, and contemporary theories of textual relationships. Its proposed dimensions are intra-hadith intertextuality, Qur’an–hadith intertextuality, and historical-discursive intertextuality. The analysis differentiates observable textual correspondences, interpretive inferences, and historical claims requiring independent corroboration. It further proposes an eight-stage workflow for defining a corpus, comparing variants, mapping scriptural and contextual relationships, assessing alternatives, and checking the limits of authentication claims. The resulting framework treats intertextuality as a complement to isnād and matn criticism rather than an autonomous test of prophetic attribution. Its contribution is a transparent conceptual architecture for analyzing textual relationships without conflating semantic coherence with historical authenticity. Because no systematic corpus-based validation is reported, the framework remains a methodological proposal requiring comparative application and further refinement.