ḤADĪTH

ḤADĪTH . The Arabic word ḥadīth literally means speech and also new: because speech is created as it is uttered, it is always new. Following Prophet Muḥammad's death (632 ce), people engaged in speech about him so much that the word ḥadīth was eventually reserved for speech related to the Prophet, including his own speech; it then came to refer to the sayings of the Prophet and his companions, and finally only to the sayings of the Prophet himself.

Sunnah (lit., a beaten track) is a parallel word to ḥadīth, as both refer to the speech and conduct of the Prophet, yet the two usages initially signified different shades of meaning. Ḥadīth denoted speech or word whereas sunnah signified actual conduct, or the way of doing something. It was, however, difficult to draw a clear line between words and deeds, especially in light of the fact that the narrations of companions referred to both the sayings and the deeds of the Prophet. Hence the difference between sunnah and ḥadīth gradually faded and they became synonymous. This was further confirmed by Imām Muḥammad ibn Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī (d. 820), who maintained that no sunnah could be proven without a valid ḥadīth, and the view thus prevailed that ḥadīth signifies not only the speech but also the acts and conduct of the Prophet. A technical difference that still remains, however, is that sunnah refers to the law or value that is contained in a ḥadīth; hence, a ḥadīth does not necessarily contain a sunnah. Sunnah (or ḥadīth ) is the most authoritative source of Islam next to the Qurʾān; it is both explanatory in relation to the Qurʾān and a source in its own right. The Qurʾān provides the affirmation that "he (the Prophet) speaks not of his desire and what he says is based on revelation And whatever the Messenger brings to you, take it, and whatever he forbids you, abstain from it" (53:3). Elsewhere the Qurʾān also makes it a religious obligation of every Muslim to obey the Prophet (4:59; 59:7). To this al-Shāfiʿī (d.820) added the argument, which seems to have been current before this time, that when the Qurʾān spoke of "the Book and the Wisdom (al-kitab waʾl -hikah )," which it does on seven occasions in this order, it meant Qurʾān and Sunnah. The ḥadīth thus represented divine guidance, and the conclusion was drawn that all authentic ḥadīths must be unquestioningly accepted and obeyed.

Khabar (lit., "news"; pl. akhbār ) is also synonymous with ḥadīth, especially among the Shīʿī writers, as they include not only ḥadīths but also the sayings of their recognized imāms within the meaning of khabar. The Shīʿī imām, being a member of the Prophet's family (i.e., the ahl al-bayt ) is deemed to have inherent knowledge (al-ʿilm al-ladunni ) of the Sunnah of the Prophet, transmitted from father to son down the line of descent. There is, however, a tendency among Shīʿī writers, too, to reserve Sunnah for the Sunnah of the Prophet alone, whereas khabar, and ḥadīth can include both the ḥadīth proper as well as the sayings of the imām.

Lastly, āthār (lit., "vestige") refers to the sayings, opinion (fatwa), and precedent of the companions. The phrase ʿilm al-ḥadīth ("science of ḥadīth ") refers to ḥadīth literature as well as to the methodology and critical standards used to authenticate the ḥadīth.

Ḥadīth qudsī ("sacred ḥadīth ") is the name given to a unique variety of ḥadīth wherein the Prophet attributes what he says directly to God. In the eleventh century ce, the question arose whether the ḥadīth qudsī was to be regarded as part of the Qurʾān, which by definition consisted of the revealed speech of God, or was to be attributed to the Prophet. Ḥadīth scholars concluded that while the message of the ḥadīth qudsī comes from God, it is in the words of the Prophet—and thus cannot be considered part of the Qurʾān. For this reason only the Qurʾān, and not the ḥadīth qudsī, may be recited during ritual prayer (ṣalāḥ). Even so, ḥadīth scholars generally treat the ḥadīth qudsī as a superior class of ḥadīth. A total of about one hundred ḥadīth qudsī have been recorded, and their authenticity is measured by the same criteria and standard as are applied to ḥadīths generally. Muhyī al-Dīn ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 1240) compiled a collection of 101 qudsi ḥadīths bearing the title Mishkat al-Anwar. Later Mulla ʿAli al-Qari (d.1605) selected forty such ḥadīths, and this collection has become widely adopted by many subsequent authors.

Reception and Documentation

As a general rule, every ḥadīth must be supported by a reliable isnād (chain of transmission) consisting of the names and identity of its transmitters. The number of transmitters in the isnād tends to increase with every successive generation. Sometimes a ḥadīth that is transmitted by one companion is then transmitted by a number of persons in the next generation who may happen to be residing in different localities. This raises the question of how the particular transmitter obtained the information from his immediate source. Was it through direct hearing (samāʿ) and personal contact, or through other means of communication? Various methods of reception (tahammul) have thus been identified, which include, in addition to samāʿ, such methods as submission (ʿard) and recitation (qirāʾat) of a ḥadīth to the master for his approval, permission (ijaza) to transmit ḥadīth, handing over (munawala) of the master's materials to the student, correspondence (mukataba), declaration (iʿlam) by the master of his own source, bequest (wasiyya), and finding (wijada) by the student of ḥadīth in the master's handwriting. Following the large-scale documentation of ḥadīths in the ninth century, most ḥadīth scholars began to employ special terms in the isnād literature that indicate the method by which the ḥadīth had been transmitted; this has remained the most common method to this day. Most people nowadays find ḥadīths in one of the standard collections and when quoting them make reference to the latter.

Isnāds can consist of one or two links, or of as many as half a dozen or more; the smaller the number of links, the shorter the time lag between the demise of the Prophet and the transmission of the ḥadīth. Thus isnāds are divided into two types, namely elevated (al-isnād al-ʿalī), which consist of fewer links and transmitters, and descended (al-isnād al-nāzil), which may involve a large number of transmitters. Most ḥadīths were compiled long after the time of the Prophet, but some were compiled relatively early. Ḥammām ibn al-Manabbih (d. 722), for instance, recorded his collection (sahīfa) around 672. His ḥadīths consisted mainly of one link, namely a companion. Imām Mālik (d. 796) related ḥadīths in his Muwatta (Straightened path) that had been told to him by Nāfiʿ, who had heard them from ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar, who had heard them from the Prophet, thus making for two intervening links. Elevated isnāds of this kind are also frequent in the collection of ḥadīths compiled by the renowned Muḥammad ibn Muslim ibn Shihāb al-Zuhrī (d. 742). Shorter isnāds are naturally preferable, which is why some of them have been variously labeled silsilat al-dhahab ("golden chain"), or asahh al-asānid ("soundest of isnāds ") and so forth. Ḥadīth scholars are of the view that because isnād is the conveyor of the teachings of the Prophet, it is a part of the religion. Hence a diligent and conscientious rendering of isnād is believed to be an act of merit that gains the pleasure of God.

The Prophet is reported to have discouraged documentation of his own sayings in order to prevent confusion between the Qurʾān and ḥadīth. Many of his leading companions were consequently against documentation of ḥadīth; at the same time, however, many others among them considered it permissible and actually wrote ḥadīths for their own collections. There are also reports that during the latter part of his ministry, that is, when much of the Qurʾān had already been documented, the Prophet permitted some of his companions to write ḥadīths, and even instructed them "to preserve knowledge through writing." It seems, then, that after an initial period of hesitation, the basic permissibility of writing and documenting ḥadīths was accepted and this activity became, in due course, a major preoccupation of the ʿulamāʾ during the second and third centuries of Islam. But even in the early stages, renowned companions such as ʿAlī ibn Abī-Ṭālib (d. 661), ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar (d. 690), Saʾd ibn ʿUbada (d. 671), and Samura ibn Jundub (d. 681) are known to have documented ḥadīths in small booklets, or sahīfas. Jābir ibn ʿAbd Allāh (d. 699) compiled a larger sahīfa, and ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ (d. 681) compiled one that became known as al-sahīfa al-sādiqa ("the true collection"). One of the earliest documented ḥadīths of that period to have survived in its original form is the renowned Constitution of Madina (Dustūr al-Madina, c. 622).

Recent research by Muslim scholars concerning the early documentation of ḥadīths has suggested the need for a revision of some of the negative conclusions Western Islamologists have drawn regarding the time frame and authenticity of the early collections. Twentieth-century scholars including Muḥammad Hamīdullāh, Subhī al-Sālih, Abul Ḥasan al-Nadwī, and Muḥammad Muṣṭafā Aʿzamī have questioned the conclusions of Ignác Goldziher, Joseph Schacht, G. H. A. Juynboll, and others who cast doubt on the authenticity of the bulk of ḥadīths. The most extreme position on the authenticity of the ḥadīths is that of Joseph Schacht, who took Goldziher's observations a step further to conclude that "every legal tradition from the Prophet, until the contrary is proved, must be taken, not as an authentic … statement … but as a fictitious expression of a legal doctrine formulated at a later stage" (The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence, 1950, p. 149). For their part, Muslim commentators have maintained that documentation of ḥadīths took place much earlier than suggested by Schacht and others. Two decades after the publication of The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence, Nabia Abbott tried to balance Schacht's somewhat sweeping conclusions. Based on a group of papyri dealing with ḥadīths, she concluded that several thousand authentic ḥadīths had been documented during the first century of Islam. Her study also emphasized the attentiveness and care of important ḥadīth scholars, such as al-Zuhrīand others after him. A more direct rebuttal of Schacht's position can be found in Muḥammad Muṣṭafā Aʿzamī's On Schacht's Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence (1985), which argues that many of Schacht's conclusions on the authenticity and documentation of ḥadīths are exaggerated and unreliable.

Types of ḤadĪth

The pious Umayyad Caliph ʿUmar II (d. 711) asked the leading scholars of Mādina, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Ḥazm (d. 715), al-Qasim Muḥammad ibn Abū Bakr (d. 728), and al-Zuhrī to collect and document ḥadīths, while taking care to "accept nothing other than the ḥadīth of the Prophet." But the caliph died soon afterwards and it was al-Zuhrī, the teacher of Imām Mālik, who persisted and attempted what proved to be the first major documented collection of ḥadīths. Al-Zuhrī's work marked the beginning of a movement that was to be continued by many others in the eighth and ninth centuries. Yet al-Zuhrī's own collection was subject-oriented and consisted of separate booklets for individual subjects that were neither well consolidated nor classified. He documented all the information that he had received from the companions and followers (tābiʿūn) concerning ḥadīths, and often integrated the companion's own statement into the prophetic ḥadīths. This manner of treatment can also be seen in Imām Mālik's Muwatta, one of the earliest collections of ḥadīths after al-Zuhrī's, which would probably have been the most authoritative, even among the standard collections, had it not been for its tendency to confound the ḥadīth with the āthār of companions. To distinguish these two and separate them from one another became one of the principal preoccupations of collections from later periods. The major ninth-century collections, discussed below, employed new methodology and critical standards. They attempted to more carefully verify the reliability of the isnāds and began to classify and distinguish the sahīh ("sound," "reliable") ḥadīth from the daʿif ("weak") ḥadīth.

Ḥadīth literature has developed in several stages, each marking some new development in the writing methods and classification of ḥadīths. The sahīfa collections, to which reference has already been made, contained the earliest documented ḥadīths on record, but were not classified; they consisted simply of written records of ḥadīths on a variety of subjects, and were mainly written for the personal use of their authors. Many companions recorded ḥadīths in this form, which naturally come first in order of reliability and closeness to the source. Next came the musannaf ("classified") collections, which collated ḥadīths on separate themes, organizing them under headings and into chapters. Famous in the musannaf category were the Muwatta of Imām Mālik, the Musannaf of Maʿmar ibn Rāshid (d. 770), and the Musannaf of ʿAbd al-Razzāq ibn Humam al-Sanʿani (d. 827).

Then followed the musnad (lit., "supported") collections, which favored isnāds that linked a ḥadīth to the Prophet through the reports of companions. All ḥadīths that were narrated by one companion, regardless of subject matter, were put under his or her name, the main purpose being to preserve the largest possible number of ḥadīths. Famous in this category was the Musnad of Imām Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (d. 855), which contains about 40,000 ḥadīths, including 10,000 repetitions, reported by about seven hundred companions. Other works in this category include the Musnad of Abū Dāwūd Sulaymān al Ṭayālisī (d. 819), and the Musnad of ibn Najjār (d. 876), among many others. Some of the musnad works are arranged alphabetically and some according to region and tribe. Although considered to be richest of all in scope and content, the musnad collections are not easy to use because they are not classified by subject.

The sahīh ("sound," "reliable") collections marked the fourth and basically the last stage in the development of ḥadīth literature. The six standard Sunnī collections of ḥadīths, known as al-sihāh al-sitta, were all compiled around the mid-ninth century and have remained the most authoritative to this day. Sahīh al-Bukhārī and Sahīh Muslim are often referred to collectively as sahīhayn ("the two sound collections"), but even so, they do not include all the sahīh ḥadīths on record, as some have appeared in other collections. Because their compilers, Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī (d. 870) and Muslim ibn al-Hajjāj (d. 875), did not set out to include every sahīh ḥadīth in their collections, it follows that a ḥadīth may not be labeled unsound or unreliable simply because it did not appear in either of these two collections.

Before discussing the six standard ḥadīth collections in some detail, it is necessary to introduce the three-fold classification of ḥadīths into the sahīh, ḥasan, and daʿif categories.

The sahīh ḥadīth is defined as one with an unbroken chain of transmission, consisting of upright persons who also possessed retentive memory, going all the way back to the Prophet or a companion; its content is not outlandish (shādh) —in the sense that it does not contradict another reliable ḥadīth— and it is free of both obvious and subtle defects. It is, in other words, a ḥadīth that is free of defects in respect both to its isnād and its content (matn). Sahīh ḥadīth are also subdivided into those on which there is general agreement, and those on which the ʿulamāʾ have disagreed. Furthermore a ḥadīth may be sahīh in its own right (sahīh li-dhātih), in that it fulfills all the requirements of sahīh, or it may be sahīh due to an extraneous factor (sahīh li-ghayrih), as in cases where doubts about the memory of a ḥadīth' s narrator have been removed due to confirmation from another source.

Ḥadīth transmitters have been classified into a number of categories, with respect to their uprightness, reliability, and retentiveness. Without entering into technical details, it can be said that a sahīh ḥadīth is one for which the transmitters belong to the first three most reliable classes of narrators: the companions, the renowned imāms, and scholars of ḥadīths. As opposed to this, a ḥasan ("fair") ḥadīth is one for which the transmitters belong to the next three categories, consisting of those who are not among the most prominent and about whom some doubt persists concerning the retentiveness of their memory and the accuracy (dabt) of their reports. A daʿif (weak) ḥadīth is defined as one that fails to meet the requirements of the sahīh and ḥasan classifications, and its transmitters include one or more persons of questionable reliability. The weakness in a daʿif ḥadīth may be in the isnād or in the text. There are many subvarieties of the daʿif category. The term mursal (lit., "sent free"), for example, refers to a ḥadīth with an isnād that is missing a link at the level of a companion—in other words, a follower (tābiʿī) has directly relayed it from the Prophet. But even the mursal is sometimes accepted if it is reported by a highly reliable person, such as the imāms al-Shāfiʿī or Mālik.

Ḥadīths have also been classified into three types based on the number of their narrators. The first of these is the mutawatir ("continuously recurrent") type, those that have been reported by a large enough number of people to preclude the possibility of collusion or fabrication. A ḥadīth that is reported by only a small group of individuals is known as an aḥad, or solitary ḥadīth, and, finally, a ḥadīth that is called mashhūr ("well-known") is one that became widespread during the first three generations following the demise of the Prophet.

The Six Standard Collections

The compiler of the Sahīh al-Bukhārī, al-Bukhārī, came from Bukhara in Asia Minor. He traveled widely and devoted some sixteen years to the compilation of his Sahīh. He interviewed over a thousand ḥadīth transmitters in the Ḥijāz, Egypt, Iraq, and Persia and collected as vast number of about 600,000 ḥadīths, from which he selected 9,082 ḥadīths. Discounting all the repetitions, Sahīh al-Bukhārī contains 2,602 ḥadīths, divided into 106 chapters and under numerous subheadings. The repetitions here, as in other collections of ḥadīths, occur on account of the presence of more than one chain of isnād for one and the same ḥadīth. They are all listed on the assumption that multiple isnāds add to the reliability of a ḥadīth. It was al-Bukhārī's declared purpose to include in his collection only sahīh ḥadīths narrated by upright and retentive individuals who had met with one another within the same generation or within two adjoining generations. Al-Bukhārī followed al-Zuhrī's methodology and criteria in the selection of ḥadīths. The first link in al-Bukhārī's isnād is usually a verified companion. This is followed, in turn, by two upright followers, or by one follower who is verified by at least two other narrators. The third link in al-Bukhārī's chain of isnād usually consists of an upright and retentive successor (tābi' tābi'i) from whom other narrators have also reported. The fifth link in al-Bukhārī's isnād is likely to be his own teacher, or shaykh. It was important for al-Bukhārī to ensure that at any stage of the isnād a ḥadīth had been narrated by at least two people, be it a companion, follower, or successor. This is only a general characterization of al-Bukhārī's isnād, as exceptions are found—for example, in the case of a companion, Midras al-Aslamī, whose ḥadīths al-Bukhārī included, even though only one person, Qays ibn Hazim, has reported ḥadīths from him.

Al-Bukhārī himself entitled his work al-Jamīʿal-Sahīh al-Musnad al-Mukhtasr min Ḥadīth Rasūl Allāh wa Sunanih wa Ayyamih. This name is indicative of al-Bukhārī's methodology and approach: the word al-Jamīʿ (lit., "comprehensive") signifies that the work's coverage extends to eight areas. These are dogmatics (ʿaqāʾid), legal rules (ahkām), moral teachings (al-riqaq), the etiquette of eating and drinking (adab al-taʿam waʾl -sharāb), Qurʾanic commentary, the history and biography of the Prophet (al-tafsīr, waʾl -tārīkh waʾl -siyar), travel and movement (al-ṣafar waʾl -qiyām waʾl -quʿud), turmoil and tumults (al-fitan), and the virtues of the Prophet and his companions (al-manāqib). The word al-Sahīh in al-Bukhārī's title signifies that he did not knowingly include a weak (daʿif) ḥadīth in his collection, whereas the word al-Musnad implies that all the ḥadīths he compiled were supported by verified isnāds going all the way back to the Prophet. Al-Bukhārī was the first to compile a comprehensive collection of this kind, and his methodology was generally followed by Muslim ibn al-Hajjāj.

Muslim ibn al-Hajjāj's Sahīh Muslim is the next most authoritative of the six collections of ḥadīths that are currently in use, except in North Africa and the Maghreb, where Sahīh Muslim is ranked first. This reverse order of ranking is basically due to Sahīh Muslim' s superior classification system, which makes it easier to use than al-Bukhārī. Sahīh Muslim consists of 10,000 ḥadīths that can be reduced to just over 3,000 without the repetitions. Muslim ibn al-Hajjāj also traveled extensively in search of ḥadīths and interviewed a large number of transmitters over a period of fifteen years. Muslim ibn al-Hajjāj went on record to say, in the introduction to his Sahīh Muslim, that he showed his work to Abū Zaurʿa al-Rāzī, the renowned scholar and teacher of ḥadīth of his time and that Al-Rāzī had criticized some ḥadīth transmitters that Muslim had included in his chains of isnad as being unreliable and that al-Rāzī had found a hidden defect (ʿillah) in others. Muslim then added that he removed what al-Rāzī had criticized and doubted and included everything he had approved as sahīh (sound) ḥadīths. He also wrote that he intended to purify the ḥadīths of the accretions of storytellers, the input of those who were moved by ignorance and prejudice, and the influence of heretics.

A point of difference between al-Bukhārī and Muslim ibn al-Hajjāj can be noted with regard to their respective treatment of the isnād. Al-Bukhārī not only verified that contiguous links in the isnād were contemporaries, he also made sure that they had actually met. For Muslim ibn al-Hajjāj it was sufficient if the two were contemporaries, even if he could not prove they had not actually met. Muslim ibn al-Hajjāj was content, in other words, with the possibility of an actual encounter between teacher and disciple.

Commentators have noted that more of al-Bukhārī's narrators meet the requirements of just character (ʿadala) and retentiveness (dabt) than do those of Muslim ibn al-Hajjāj. Of the total of 430 or so of al-Bukhārī's narrators, the critics have identified 80 as being of questionable standing or weak, whereas 160 of the total of 620 of Muslim ibn al-Hajjāj's narrators are said to be weak. About 89 of al-Bukhārī's ḥadīths have been identified as having some defect, whereas for Muslim ibn al-Hajjāj the figure stands at one hundred.

The Sunan (pl. of sunnah, lit., "beaten track") collections specialize in legal ḥadīths, known as aḥadīth al-ahkām. The various chapters of sunan works are thus devoted to topics such as rules pertaining to cleanliness, prayers, fasting, and the ḥajj pilgrimage, as well as marriage, divorce, child custody, inheritance, and so forth. The Sunan Abū Dāwūd of Sulaymān ibn Ashʿath al-Sijistānī (d. 888), which consists of 4,800 ḥadīths, stands out for its comprehensive treat-ment of legal ḥadīths. Abū Dāwūd did not confine his Sunan to the compilation of sahīh ḥadīths, but also included ḥadīths in the ḥasan ("fair") category. Abū Dāwūd claimed, however, that whenever a ḥadīth seemed weak to him, he identified it as such and specified its point of weakness. This would imply that when he did not specify any weakness in a ḥadīth, it was deemed to be sahīh. Sunan Abū Dāwūd has been ranked third in order of reliability after al-Bukhārī and Muslim. Abū Dāwūd also traveled widely in his quest to collect and verify ḥadīths and acquired such a reputation as a teacher of ḥadīths that students came to him from wide and far.

The Sunan al-Nasāʾī of Ḥāfiz Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Aḥmad ibn Shyʾ ayb al-Nasāʾī (d. 915) stands next in order of ranking to after the Sunan Abū Dāwūd, and consists of 5,000 legal ḥadīths, of which a great deal had already appeared in previous collections. Nasāʾī wrote his Sunan in two stages. His initial collection, entitled Al-Sunan al-Kubrā (the greater sunan ), contained ḥadīths in the three categories of Sound, Fair, and Weak, and was presented to the Abbasid ruler of Ramla in Palestine. Nasāʾī was then asked to compile a work that only contained sahīh ḥadīths, and so he winnowed the Al-Sunan al-Kubrā down to a smaller collection named Al-Mujtaba min al-Sunan (The select from the sunan ). This version is the one currently in use and is said to contain very few defective or weak ḥadīths. Al-Nasāʾī is ranked equally with the Sunan Abū Dāwūd, yet the latter is preferred as it provides additional insights of interest to jurists.

Next in the sunan category is Sunan al-Tirmidhī by Abū ʿIsā Muḥammad al-Tirmidhī (d. 915), which is also included among the six standard collections. Ḥadīth scholars have placed this work in the sunan category due to its arrangement and the style of its chapters, which are both in line with works of jurisprudence (fiqh). Some have also placed al-Tirmidhī in the jamīʿ ("comprehensive") category, as it is not strictly confined to legal ḥadīths. One of the distinctive features of this work is that it first gives the principle isnād of a ḥadīth, and then gives other alternative isnāds. It focuses on ḥadīths that were practiced and generally accepted by Muslim jurists, and is thus thought to be free of spurious ḥadīths, even though it is not totally devoid of ones that are weak or defective.

The last of the sunan among the six standard collections is Sunan Ibn Mājah, by Muḥammad ibn Yazīd al-Qazwīnī, better known as ibn Mājah (d. 886). The book contains 4,341 ḥadīths, of which 3,002 had been recorded by previous authors, leaving 1,339 ḥadīths recorded by ibn Mājah alone. Sunan Ibn Mājah contains ḥadīths in all three categories of Sound, Fair, and Weak, which is why it was not included among the six standard collections until the early twelfth century, when Muḥammad ibn Ṭāhir al-Maqisi (d. 1227) included it among a list of reliable works—after which other writers followed suit. Until that time, the Muwatta of Imām Mālik had been ranked as the sixth of the leading ḥadīth collections, but the Muwatta contained very little that was not already known, and thus came to be considered less important than the Ibn Mājah.