Hadith sciences

Hadith sciences are the Islamic disciplines for transmitting, evaluating, interpreting, and classifying reports about Muhammad and early Islam. They examine both chains of transmission and report content.

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Hadith: A report about Muhammad’s words, actions, approvals, or attributes, transmitted through a chain of narrators. Hadith sciences take these reports as their primary objects of study.
Jarh wa-ta'dil: The critical assessment of hadith transmitters, including judgments of reliability and grounds for discrediting them. Its evaluations help determine whether a chain’s narrators can be trusted.
Hadith compilation: The collection and organization of reports attributed to Muhammad and early Muslim authorities. Compilation preserved the material that later critics assessed systematically.
Sunni hadith: Reports transmitted and evaluated within Sunni scholarly traditions. Sunni collections and criteria form one major framework within hadith sciences.
Isnad: The chain of named transmitters through whom a hadith is reported. Evaluating this chain is central to judging a report’s transmission.
Ittisal al-isnad: The condition that each transmitter in a chain could have received the report from the preceding transmitter. A continuous chain is a key condition in many soundness criteria.
Al-Zuhri: An early eighth-century Muslim scholar associated with the collection and transmission of hadith. His work is linked to early efforts to gather reports under Umayyad rule.
Shia hadith: Reports transmitted and evaluated within Shia traditions, including reports from the Imams. Its authorities and transmission networks differ from Sunni frameworks.
Matn: The wording or substantive content of a hadith, distinguished from its chain of transmitters. Critics assess report content alongside its isnad.
Shadh hadith: A report judged anomalous because a reliable transmitter contradicts more reliable transmitters. Comparison among transmissions can expose a report’s anomaly.