Hadith

Hadith are reports about Muhammad’s words, actions, and tacit approvals, transmitted through chains of narrators and used in Islamic learning and practice.

Isnad: The chain of transmitters who report a hadith from one person to another. It identifies the people through whom each report was transmitted.
Sahih: A hadith classification indicating that a report meets specified standards of authenticity. It names a major grade assigned after evaluating a report’s transmission.
Sunnah: The normative example associated with Muhammad, preserved and interpreted through reports and other sources. Hadith are a major means of transmitting accounts of the Sunnah.
Oral transmission: The transmission of information through spoken recitation and memory rather than written text alone. Reports circulated through remembered and recited chains before and alongside compilation.
Matn: The wording or substantive content of a transmitted report. It is the report’s content, assessed alongside its chain.
Hasan: A hadith classification for a report considered acceptable, though its transmitters may be less precise than those of a sahih report. It distinguishes acceptable reports from those meeting the stricter sahih standard.
Islamic jurisprudence: The scholarly interpretation of Islamic sources to derive norms and legal judgments. Jurists use hadith among the sources for legal reasoning.
Hadith compilation: The collection and organization of reports attributed to Muhammad and early Muslim authorities. Compilation turned circulating reports into organized written collections.
Hadith terminology: The technical vocabulary scholars use to classify transmitters, chains, and reports. Its classifications describe the reliability and form of hadith.
Da'if: A hadith classification for a report that fails to meet the criteria for sahih or hasan. It marks reports whose transmission has a recognized weakness.

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