What are Hadith?

Hadith are sayings of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ as witnessed by his companions and passed down through various narrations. They form part of the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ, an example of how he lived his life and constitute an important source of guidance for Muslims.

Hadith Qudsi are a special category of hadith meaning pure or holy hadith. Their content comes directly from Allah SWT and is narrated through the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.

Hadith are categorized and graded according to a number of factors which the classical scholars have mastered over time. The key factor is reliability and a series of conditions must be met in order to authenticate the hadith. They are graded as follows:

• Sahih, meaning it is an absolutely sound and reliable hadith, the highest level of authenticity.
• Hasan, meaning it is a good and reliable hadith.
• Dhaeef, meaning it is a weak hadith.
• Mawdu, meaning it is a fabricated hadith.

Science of Hadith

Continuity of chain (Isnaad)

Isnaad refers to the chain of persons narrating the hadith. It is essential that every narrator should have received the hadith from the previous person in the chain directly, and not just heard about it from someone else. The people in the chain of narrators are the most important part in the process of determining an authentic hadith.

There is no room for human error. The general chain of narrators usually starts with the Prophet ﷺ, who narrated a hadith to the Companions (sahabah), who passed it on to those who came after them (the tabi’een), who in turn passed it on to their students (the taba’ tabi’een), until it reached the narrator.

Character of Narrator

The character of the narrator lets us know if he is superior to others or not, in terms of his honesty and integrity. Narrators should be righteous, of good character. Iman was the hallmark of a Muslim in the days of the Prophet ﷺ. A man should be known to be righteous, trustworthy, truthful, and not sinful. He should be sound of mind, understanding the wording and knowing that the expression and emphasis will alter the hadith.

Imam Al-Bukhari, may Allah SWT have mercy on him, would travel far and wide to locate the narrators in the chains of hadith, to see for himself their character and trustworthiness. He once travelled a long way to get a hadith from a man, whom he happened to observe before he actually met him. The man was calling his horse forth with the promise of fodder only to give him none once the horse approached. Imam Al- Bukhari left without meeting the man – if he couldn’t even keep his promise to his horse, how could he be trusted to pass on the words of the Prophet ﷺ?

Text/Narration (Matn)

Narrators should be preservers. What this means is that they should have perfected the art of memorisation, and if their memory was failing them, they should have written down the hadith when it was perfect.

No irregularities or hidden defects should be evident. It should be proven that the narrator was a student of the Shaykh or previous narrator in the time period that the hadith was narrated and that they were physically present at the time of narration rather than hearing it from a third party.

Grades

Sahih hadith are fully authentic meeting all the requirements, for example Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim.

Hassan hadith also meet the requirements however require further enquiry. For example, one of the narrators may not necessarily be known by the other known narrators or is truthful but his memory is not as sustained as that of a Sahih narrator. These hadith are therefore corroborated via other chains of narration to avoid irregularities.

Dhaeef hadith have not met the requirements, thus the narration is weak due to either of the following issues:

• Character, whereby the narrator is of unsound mind, untruthful or untrustworthy.
• Isnaad, whereby the characters in the chain fall in being of unsound mind, untruthful or did not exist at that point in history.
• Matn, whereby the text of the narration it is found to be irregular in totality, against/opposing established narrations.

Books of Hadith

There may be as many as 25,000 non repeated hadith. The six most well know and authentic compilers of hadith are:

• Sahih Bukhari. Muhammad ibn Ismail al-Bukhari who lived 810-870 collected over 600,000 narrations and wrote the most authentic of hadith compilations. It contains around 7400 hadiths, 2602 of which are not repeated. It is mentioned that he saw the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ in a dream and was protecting him with a fan. Dream interpreters told him this meant he would protect the Prophet ﷺ from lies. This prompted Bukhari to write his book of hadith containing only authentic, sahih, narrations.
• Sahih Muslim. Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj who lived 817-874 collected over 300,000 narrations, compiling the second most authoritative book of hadith containing over 9200 hadiths. 2200 of these are not repeated and 1400 of these are authentic.
• Sunan an-Nasa’i. An Nasa’i who lived 829-915 wrote his Sunan containing around 5270 hadiths, considered by some to have the fewest weak hadiths and no fabricated ones.
• Sunan Abu Dawud. Abu Dawud who lived 818-901, collected over 500,000 hadith, only including 4800 in his collection.
• Sunan at Tirmidhi. Imam Tirmidhi who lived 824-892 collected around 4400 hadith. His compilation is considered by some to be the most beneficial and well organised with least repetition.
• Sunan Ibn Majah. Imam Ibn Majah who lived 824-887 collected around 4340 hadith, of which 1329 are only found in this book and not in the other 5 major collections.