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[Arabic ḥadīt, report, news, tradition, from ḥaddata, to report, from ḥadata, to be new.]
For more information on Hadith, visit Britannica.com.
Bibliography
See W. A. Graham, Divine Word and Prophetic Word in Early Islam (1977); G. H. A. Juynboll, Muslim Tradition (1981).
Reports (also known as khabar, pl. akhbar) transmitting the sayings and actions of the prophet Muhammad.
Hadith (sing. and pl.) consists of a body (the report) and the isnad (chain of reporters). It can be qawli (re-porting the sayings of the Prophet), fiʿli (reporting his deeds), or qudsi (reporting divinely inspired sayings). Because the Qurʾan explicitly mandates Muslim obedience to the Prophet in legal and ritual matters, the hadith became in Islamic law (shariʿa) a source of legislation second only to the Qurʾan.
The classification and authentication of the hadith is then of crucial importance to the shariʿa. As most reports were collected about 150 years after the death of the Prophet, a number of disciplines collectively known as the sciences of the hadith were developed, specializing in external criticism (investigation of the isnad, biographical studies of the reporters and of their characters, historical context of each report and each subsequent transmission) and internal criticism (consistency with the Qurʾan, consistency with other hadith, historical consistency). Depending on the findings of these various studies, a hadith would be classified as sahih (authentic), hasan (good), daʿif (weak), and mawdu or batil (forged). Six main collections of the hadith gained wide acceptance, and of these the Sahih of Muhammad ibn Ismaʿil al-Bukhari (d. 869) and the Sahih of Abu alHusayn Muslim (d. 875) are the most authoritative.
If the hadith is authentic or good, it is admissible as legal proof in the shariʿa. It will constitute a definite legal basis if it is mutawatir (one following after another). However, if ahad (solitary hadith, with only one transmission chain), it will not constitute, according to most jurists, legal proof without further qualification from other legal indicators. Most controversial issues and conflicts with the Qurʾanic text arise from hadith ahad.
Though much effort went into the collection of the hadith, the sheer volume of circulating reports (al-Bukhari is said to have accepted 7,275 out of more than 600,000 reports) and the fact that the Shiʿite and the Sufi schools have their own distinct collections indicate that the field could greatly benefit from the use of newly refined methods in textual and historical criticism as used for instance in biblical studies. But while the shariʿa admits of analytical methods to evaluate the hadith, the traditionally accepted collections are seen in popular religion and by some jurists and theologians almost as "sacred" sources that may not suffer any scrutiny. This defensive position is in part due to the controversial rejection by some Muslim reformers and modernists, such as Sayyid Ahmad Khan (d. 1898), of hadith as a source of law and has so far precluded new studies and evaluations of the historicity of the hadith.
Bibliography
Kamali, Mohammad Hashim. Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence, revised edition. Cambridge, U.K.: Islamic Texts Society, 1991.
— WAEL B. HALLAQ
UPDATED BY MAYSAM J. AL FARUQI
"Report, account." A tradition about Mohammad, what he said or did. The hadiths were collected and came to be a record of the Prophet's
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Hadith (الحديث transliteration: al-ḥadīth) are oral traditions relating to the words and deeds of Prophet Muhammad. Hadith collections are regarded as important tools for determining the Sunnah, or Muslim way of life, by all traditional schools of jurisprudence. The Arabic plural is aḥādīth (أحاديث). In English academic usage, hadith is often both singular and plural.
Linguistically the word ‘hadith’ (حَدِيْث) means: that which is new from amongst things or a piece of information conveyed either in a small quantity or large. The plural form is ahaadeeth (أَحادِيْث)… And hadith is what is spoken by the speaker (الحديث ما يحدِّثُ به المُحَدِّثُ تَحْدِيْثًا). Tahdith(تَحْدِيْث) is the infinitive, or verbal noun, of the original verb form (حَدَّثَ). Therefore, hadith is not the infinitive,[1] rather it is a noun.[2]
In religious terminology, hadith is the term given to a statement, action, or affirmation attributed to the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad.[3] The relationship between the linguistic meaning and the terminology is perhaps apparent in the statement of the prominent hadith specialist Ahmad ibn Ali ibn Hajr Al-Asqalani (773 AH/1372 CE -- 852 AH/1448 CE) that the intended meaning of hadith in religious tradition is something attributed to the Prophet, as though in contrast to the Quran, which has preceded it.[4] Hadith can be divided into three categories based upon their content:
The sanad and matn are the primary elements of a hadith. The sanad is the information provided regarding the route by which the matn has been reached. It is so named due to the reliance of the hadith specialists upon it in determining the authenticity or weakness of a hadith. The term sanad is synonymous with the similar term isnad. The matn is the actual wording of the hadith by which its meaning is established, or stated differently, the objective at which the sanad arrives at consisting of speech. [5] The sanad consists of a ‘chain’ of the narrators each mentioning the one from whom they heard the hadith until mentioning the originator of the matn along with the matn itself. The first people who received hadith were the Companions; so they preserved and understood it, knowing both its generality and particulars, and then conveyed it to those after them as they were commanded. Then the generation following them, the Followers received it thus conveying it to those after them and so on. So the Companion would say, “I heard the Prophet say such and such.” The Follower would then say, “I heard a Companion say, ‘I heard the Prophet .’” The one after him (after the Follower) would then say, “I heard someone say, ‘I heard a Companion say, ‘I heard the Prophet …’’” and so on.[6]
Ahadith were originally an oral tradition relevant to the actions and customs of Muhammad. Starting with the first Fitna of the 7th century those receiving ahadith started to question their sources.[7] This resulted in a list of transmitters, for example "A told me that B told him that Muhammad said." This list of the chain of testimony by which a hadith was transmitted is called an Isnad. The text itself came to be known as Matn.
The hadith were eventually recorded in written form, had their Isnad evaluated and were gathered into large collections mostly during the reign of Umar II (bin Abdul Aziz, grandson of Umar bin Khattab(RAA)2nd Caliph) during 8th century, something that solidified in the 9th century. These works are still today referred to in matters of Islamic law and History.
Traditions regarding the life of Prophet Muhammad and the early history of Islam were passed down orally for more than a hundred years after the death of Muhammad in 632.
Muslim historians say that it was the caliph Uthman (the third caliph, or successor of Muhammad, who had formerly been Muhammad's secretary), who first urged Muslims both to write down the Qur'an in a fixed form, and to write down the hadith. Uthman's labors were cut short by his assassination, at the hands of aggrieved soldiers, in 656.
The Muslim community (ummah) then fell into a prolonged civil war, termed the Fitna by Muslim historians. After the fourth caliph, Ali ibn Abi Talib, was assassinated, control of the Islamic empire was seized by the Umayyad dynasty in 661. Ummayad rule was interrupted by a second civil war (the Second Fitna), re-established, then ended in 758, when the Abbasid dynasty seized the caliphate, to hold it, at least in name, until 1258.
Muslim historians say that hadith collection and evaluation continued during the first Fitna and the Umayyad period. However, much of this activity was presumably oral transmission from early Muslims to later collectors, or from teachers to students. If any of these early scholars committed any of these collections to writing, they have not survived. The histories and hadith collections we possess today were written down at the start of the Abbasid period, more than one hundred years after the death of Muhammad.
The scholars of the Abbasid period were faced with a huge corpus of miscellaneous traditions, some of them flatly contradicting each other. Many of these traditions supported differing views on a variety of controversial matters. Scholars had to decide which hadith were to be trusted as authentic narrations and which had been invented for various political or theological purposes. For this purpose, they used a number of techniques which Muslims now call the science of hadith.
The overwhelming majority of Muslims consider hadith to be essential supplements to and clarifications of the Qur'an, Islam's holy book. In Islamic jurisprudence, the Qur'an contains many rules for the behavior expected of Muslims. However, there are many matters of concern, both religious and practical, on which there are no specific Qur'anic rules. Muslims believe that they can look at the way of life, or sunnah, of Muhammad and his companions to discover what to imitate and what to avoid. Muslim scholars also find it useful to know how Muhammad or his companions explained the revelations, or upon what occasion Muhammad received them. Sometimes this will clarify a passage that otherwise seems obscure. Hadith are a source for Islamic history and biography. For the vast majority of devout Muslims, authentic hadith are also a source of religious inspiration.
However, some contemporary Muslims argue that the Qur'an alone is sufficient. Examples of such Muslims groups are Tolu-e-Islam (Resurgence of Islam), Free Minds, and United Submitters International. Muslims who take the "Qur'an alone" viewpoint are regarded as deviant by mainstream Muslim scholars, and by the vast majority of Muslims. Hadith-trusting Muslims argue that many Qur'anic instructions are impossible to fulfill without guidance from the ahadith. (The Qur'an does not, for example, specify how many prayer cycles constitute fulfillment of each of the daily prayers. See salat.) It is also important to note that most Muslims claim that the Qur'an cannot be fully explained by itself alone or read with complete understanding -- which is why the Hadith is referred to as the "second source" of Islam. While the Qur'an states "We have made it (the Qur'an) easy to understand and in your own tongue (language) may you take heed." (Qur'an 44:58), there are great debates between Muslims regarding the views stated in the Qur'an, and also those stated in the Hadith.
The origins of some verses and statements in the Hadith cannot be verified as regards their source of origin.
Muslim scholars classify hadith relating to Muhammad as follows:
There are also hadith relating to the words and deeds of the companions, but they may not have the same weight as those about Muhammad. Many actually believe that the Hadith was written hundreds of years after Muhammed died.
Non-Muslim scholars note that there is a great overlap between the records of early Islamic traditions. Accounts of early Islam are also to be found in:
Some of these accounts are also found as hadith; some aren't. For a Non-Muslim historian, these are all simply historical sources; for the Muslim scholar, hadith have a special status. They cite sura [Qur'an 7:157] (Yusuf Ali translation):
| “ | Those who follow the messenger, the unlettered Prophet, whom they find mentioned in their own (scriptures),- in the Law and the Gospel;- for he commands them what is just and forbids them what is evil; he allows them as lawful what is good (and pure) and prohibits them from what is bad (and impure); He releases them from their heavy burdens and from the yokes that are upon them. So it is those who believe in him, honour him, help him, and follow the light which is sent down with him,- it is they who will prosper. | ” |
They take this and other Qur'anic verses to require Muslims to follow authentic hadith. However, a growing number of "Quran-only" Muslims disagree with this view and interpret these verses differently; they argue that the hadith are of human creation and have no authority.
Their argument is strengthened by verses of the Quran which criticise the following of "hadith other than quran", the Arabic word "hadith" means "sayings".
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The most common technique consists of a careful examination of the isnad, or chain of transmission. Each hadith is accompanied by an isnad: A heard it from B who heard it from C who heard it from a companion of Muhammad. Isnads are carefully scrutinized to see if the chain is possible (for example, making sure that all transmitters and transmittees were known to be alive and living in the same area at the time of transmission to make sure they met ) and if the transmitters are reliable.
Currently there is little communication between the world of Muslim hadith scholarship and Western academia. Muslim scholars reject the Westerners as Orientalists who are hostile to religion in general and Islam in particular. Western academics tend to dismiss Muslim scholars as irrelevant, bound as they are to a millennia-old technique of hadith evaluations which modern scholarship regards as out-dated.
However, some Muslim scholars have undergone Western academic training and attempted to mediate between the traditional Muslim and the secular Western view. Notable among these was Fazlur Rahman (1919-1988) who argued that while the chain of transmission of the hadith may often be spurious, the content, the matn, can still be used to understand how Islam can be lived in the modern world. Liberal movements within Islam tend to agree with Rahman's views to varying degrees.
Muslims who accept hadith believe that trusted hadith are in most cases the words of Muhammad and not the word of God, like the Qur'an. Hadith Qudsi forms a partial exception; these (few) hadith are said to recount divine revelations given to Muhammad but not included in the Qur'an. However, the words (as opposed to the substance) are believed to Muhammad's own, and not divinely inspired.
While both hadith and Qur'an have been translated, most Muslims believe that translations of the Qur'an are inherently deficient, amounting to little more than a commentary upon the text. There is no such belief regarding hadith. Practicing Muslims cleanse themselves (wudu) before reading or reciting the Qur'an; there is no such requirement for reading or reciting the hadith. Even for Muslims who accept the hadith, they are lower in rank when compared to the Qur'an.
The Sunni canon of hadith took its final form close to three centuries after the death of Muhammad. Later scholars may have debated the authenticity of particular hadith but the authority of the canon as a whole was not questioned. This canon, called the Six major Hadith collections, includes:
| name | Collector | Size |
| Sahih Bukhari | Imam Bukhari (d. 870) | 7275 hadiths |
| Sahih Muslim | Muslim b. al-Hajjaj (d. 875) | included 9200 |
| Sunan Abi Da'ud | Abu Da'ud (d. 888) | |
| Sunan al-Tirmidhi | al-Tirmidhi (d. 892) | |
| Sunan al-Sughra | al-Nasa'i (d. 915) | |
| Sunan Ibn Maja | Ibn Maja (d. 886) |
Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim are usually considered the most reliable of these collections. There is some debate over whether the sixth member of this canon should be Ibn Maja or the Muwatta of Imam Malik, which is the earliest hadith canon but predates much of the methodology developed by the classic hadith scholars.
While there are still many traditional Muslims who rely on the ulema and its long tradition of hadith collection and criticism, other contemporary Sunni Muslims are willing to reconsider tradition. Liberal Muslims are most apt to trust the individual conscience, but there are also Salafis who demand the same freedom. The Salafis claim that the ordinary believer can trust his or her own judgment (even if he or she is not trained in Islamic scholarship) if he or she relies on Bukhari and Muslim, the commentators deemed to be most correct (sahih), and ignores the weak hadith.
Shi'a Muslims trust traditions transmitted by Muhammad's descendants through Fatima Zahra. There are various sects within Shi'a Islam and within each sect, various traditions of scholarship. Each sect, and each scholar, may differ as to the hadith to be accepted as reliable and those to be rejected.
Four prominent Shi'a hadith collections are:
It should be noted that Shi'a scholars do not believe that everything in the four major books are sahih. Every hadith must be individually examined through the process of ilm-ul-hadith. Any hadith that conflicts with the Quran is immediately thrown out. The purpose for the existence of such hadith in Shi'a books is to be used as examples of unusable zaif (weak) hadith.[8]
Ibadi Islam (found mainly in the Arabian kingdom of Oman) accepts many Sunni hadith, while rejecting others, and accepts some hadith not accepted by Sunnis. Ibadi jurisprudence is based only on the hadith accepted by Ibadis, which are far less numerous than those accepted by Sunnis. Several of Ibadism's founding figures - in particular Jabir ibn Zayd - were noted for their hadith research, and Jabir ibn Zayd is accepted as a reliable narrator by Sunni scholars as well as Ibadi ones.
The principal hadith collection accepted by Ibadis is al-Jami'i al-Sahih, also called Musnad al-Rabi ibn Habib, as rearranged by Abu Ya'qub Yusuf b. Ibrahim al-Warijlani. A large proportion of its narrations are via Jabir ibn Zaid or Abu Yaqub; most are reported by Sunnis, while several are not. The total number of hadith it contains is 1005, and an Ibadi tradition recounted by al-Rabi has it that there are only 4000 authentic prophetic hadith. The rules used for determining the reliability of a hadith are given by Abu Ya'qub al-Warijlani, and are largely similar to those used by Sunnis; they criticise some of the companions (sahaba), believing that some were corrupted after the reign of the first two caliphs. The Ibadi jurists accept hadith narrating the words of Muhammad's companions as a third basis for legal rulings, alongside the Qur'an and hadith relating Muhammad's words.
Early Western exploration of Islam consisted primarily of translation of the Qur'an and a few histories, often supplemented with disparaging commentary. In the nineteenth century, scholars made greater attempts at impartiality, and translated and commented upon a greater variety of texts. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Western scholars of Islam started to critically engage with the Islamic texts, subjecting them to the same agnostic, searching scrutiny that had previously been applied to Christian texts (see higher criticism). Ignaz Goldziher is the best known of these turn-of-the-century iconoclasts, who also included D. S. Margoliuth, Henri Lammens, and Leone Caetani. Goldziher writes, in his Muslim Studies:
| “ | ... it is not surprising that, among the hotly debated controversial issues of Islam, whether political or doctrinal, there is not one in which the champions of the various views are unable to cite a number of traditions, all equipped with imposing isnads | ” |
The next generations of Western scholars were also sceptics, on the whole: Joseph Schacht, in his Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence (1959), argued that isnads going back to Muhammad were in fact more likely to be spurious than isnads going back to the companions. John Wansbrough, in the 1970s, and his students Patricia Crone and Michael Cook were even more sweeping in their dismissal of Muslim tradition, arguing that even the Qur'an was likely to have been collected later than claimed.
Contemporary Western scholars of hadith include:
Madelung has immersed himself in the hadith literature and has made his own selection and evaluation of tradition. Having done this, he is much more willing to trust hadith than many of his contemporaries.
Some quotes:
| “ | work with the narrative sources, both those that have been available to historians for a long time and others which have been published recently, made it plain that their wholesale rejection as late fiction is unjustified and that with [not without] a judicious use of them, a much more reliable and accurate portrait of the period can be drawn than has been realized so far. | ” |
| “ | the mere fact that ahadith and asanid were forged must not lead us to conclude that all of them are fictitious or that the genuine and the spurious cannot be distinguished with some degree of certainty. | ” |
| “ | The current research on the life of Muhammad is characterized by the fact that two groups of researchers stand directly opposed to one another: The one group advocates, somewhat aggressively, the conviction that all transmitted traditions, in part because of great inner contradictions, legendary forms, and so forth, are to be rejected. The other group is opposed to that view. According to these researchers, the Islamic transmission, despite all these defects, has at least a genuine core, which can be recognized using the appropriate source-critical methods. The difficulty certainly consists of finding criteria by which the genuine is to be differentiated from the spurious. | ” |
The hadith Ahmed, Vol. 1, page 171 says: "Do not write down anything of me except the Qur'an. Whoever writes other than that should delete it." Some have interpreted this as the Hadith should never have been written. Companions used memory in the early time to transfer Hadith.
However, according to most scholars and researchers, this hadith was specific to the time when the Qur'an was still being written. The reason behind this command was to prevent any risk of confusing the Qur'an with Hadith. However, once the revelation was completed and it was certain that no more verses were going to be descended, it was permissible; and even an obligation to write down the Hadith to preserve it throughout time, because, had the memorisers of the Hadith passed away before writing it down, the Hadiths could have disappeared.
Muslims have been ordered to follow the Sunna of Muhammad because it is an order clearly stated in the Qur'an in several places such as in Surah al-Imran (3) verses 32 and 132, Surah an-Nisa' (4) verse 59, Surah al-Maidah (5) verse 92, Surah al-Anfal (8) verses 1, 20, 46, Surah an-Noor (24) verses 54, 56, Surah Muhammad (47) verse 33, etc. (IslamiCity.com)
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