  The term '''Hadīth''' ( or ;) (plural: hadith, hadiths, or '''ahadith''') is used to denote a saying, act or tacit approval, validly or invalidly, ascribed to the Prophet Muhammad.     Hadith are regarded by traditional Islamic schools of jurisprudence as important tools for understanding the Qur'an and in matters of jurisprudence.Ibn Hajar, Ahmad. ''al-Nukat ala Kitab ibn al-Salah'', vol. 1, pg. 90. Maktabah al-Furqan. Hadith were evaluated and gathered into large collections during the 8th and 9th centuries. These works are referred to in matters of Islamic law and history to this day. The two main denominations of Islam, Shiʻism and Sunnism, have different sets of Hadith collections.  ==Etymology== In Arabic the word ''hadith'' means 'that which is new from amongst things' or 'a piece of information conveyed either in a small quantity or large'. The Arabic plural is ''''. ''Hadith'' also refers to the speech of a person. As ''tahdith''  is the infinitive, or verbal noun, of the original verb form; ''hadith'' is, therefore,  not the infinitive,''Lisan al-Arab'', by Ibn Manthour, vol. 2, pg. 350; Dar al-Hadith edition. rather it is a noun.''al-Kuliyat'' by Abu al-Baqa’ al-Kafawi, pg. 370; Mu'assasah l-Risalah. This last phrase is quoted by al-Qasimi in ''Qawaid al-Tahdith'', pg. 61; Dar al-Nafais.  ==Definition== In Islamic terminology, the term ''hadith'' refers to reports of statements or actions of Muhammad, or of his tacit approval of something said or done in his presence.&quot;Hadith,&quot; ''Encyclopedia of Islam.'' Classical hadith specialist Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani says that the intended meaning of ''hadith'' in religious tradition is something attributed to Muhammad, as opposed to the Qur'an. Other associated words possess similar meanings including: ''khabar'' (news, information) often refers to reports about Muhammad, but sometimes refers to traditions about his companions and their successors from the following generation; conversely, ''athar'' (trace, vestige) usually refers to traditions about the companions and successors, though sometimes connotes traditions about Muhammad. The word ''sunnah'' (custom) is also used in reference to a normative custom of Muhammad or the early Muslim community.   ===''Hadith Qudsi''=== '''Hadith Qudsi''' (or '''Sacred Hadith''') is a sub-category of hadith, which are sayings of Muhammad. Muslims regard the ''Hadith Qudsi'' as the words of God (Arabic: Allah), repeated by Muhammad and recorded on the condition of an ''isnad''. According to as-Sayyid ash-Sharif al-Jurjani, the Hadith Qudsi differ from the Qur'an in that the former were revealed in a dream or through revelation and are &quot;''expressed in Muhammad's words''&quot;, whereas the latter are the &quot;''direct words of God''&quot;.  An example of a Hadith Qudsi is the hadith of Abu Hurairah who said that Muhammad said: :&quot;When God decreed the Creation He pledged Himself by writing in His book which is laid down with Him: My mercy prevails over My wrath.&quot;Related byal-Bukhari, Muslim, an-Nasa'i and Ibn Majah.  ==Components== The two major aspects of a hadith are the text of the report (the ''matn''), which contains the actual narrative, and the chain of narrators (the ''isnad''), which documents the route by which the report has been transmitted. The ''sanad'', literally 'support', is so named due to the reliance of the hadith specialists upon it in determining the authenticity or weakness of a hadith.''Tadrib al-Rawi'', vol. 1, pgs. 39–41 with abridgement. The ''isnad'' consists of a chronological list 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 to hear hadith were the companions who preserved it and then conveyed it to those after them. Then the generation following them received it, thus conveying it to those after them and so on. So a companion would say, &quot;I heard the Prophet say such and such.&quot; The Follower would then say, &quot;I heard a companion say, 'I heard the Prophet.'&quot; The one after him would then say, &quot;I heard someone say, 'I heard a Companion say, 'I heard the Prophet...''&quot; and so on.''Ilm al-Rijal wa Ahimiyatih'', by Mualami, pg. 16, Dar al-Rayah. I substituted the word 'sunnah' with the word 'hadith' as they are synonymous in this context.  ==Usage== The overwhelming majority of Muslims consider hadith to be essential supplements to and clarifications of the Qur'an, Islam's holy book, as well as in clarifying issues pertaining to Islamic jurisprudence. Ibn al-Salah, a hadith specialist, described the relationship between hadith and other aspect of the religion by saying: &quot;It is the science most pervasive in respect to the other sciences in their various branches, in particular to jurisprudence being the most important of them.&quot;''Ulum al-Hadith'' by Ibn al-Salah, pg. 5, Dar al-Fikr, with the verification of Nur al-Din al-‘Itr.&quot;The intended meaning of 'other sciences' here are those pertaining to religion,&quot; explains Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, &quot;Quranic exegesis, hadith, and jurisprudence. The science of hadith became the most pervasive due to the need displayed by each of these three sciences. The need hadith has of its science is apparent. As for Qur'anic exegesis, then the preferred manner of explaining the speech of God is by means of what has been accepted as a statement of Muhammad. The one looking to this is in need of distinguishing the acceptable from the unacceptable. Regarding jurisprudence, then the jurist is in need of citing as an evidence the acceptable to the exception of the later, something only possible utilizing the science of hadith.&quot;  ==History==    Traditions of the life of Muhammad and the early history of Islam were passed down mostly orally for more than a hundred years after Muhammad's death in AD 632. Muslim historians say that Caliph Uthman ibn Affan (the third khalifa (caliph) of the Rashidun Empire, or successor of Muhammad, who had formerly been Muhammad's secretary), was the first to urge Muslims to record the hadith. Uthman's labours were cut short by his assassination, at the hands of aggrieved soldiers, in 656. No sources survive directly from this period so we are dependent on what later writers tell us about this period.Roman, provincial and Islamic law, Patricia Crone, p2  By the 9th century the number of hadiths had grown exponentially. Islamic 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 and which had been invented for political or theological purposes. To do this, they used a number of techniques which Muslims now call the science of hadith.Islam – the Straight Path, John Eposito, p81  ==Shia and Sunni differences== Sunni and Shia hadith collections differ because scholars from the two traditions differ as to the reliability of the narrators and transmitters. Narrators who took the side of Abu Bakr and Umar rather than Ali, in the disputes over leadership that followed the death of Muhammad, are seen as unreliable by the Shia; narrations sourced to Ali and the family of Muhammad, and to their supporters, are preferred. Sunni scholars put trust in narrators, such as Aisha, whom Shia reject. Differences in hadith collections have contributed to differences in worship practices and shari'a law and have hardened the dividing line between the two traditions.  ===Extent and nature of the textual corpus in the Sunni tradition=== In the Sunni tradition, the number of such texts is ten thousand plus or minus a few thousand.See the references and discussion by Abdul Fattah Abu Ghuddah ''Thalathatu rasa'il fi ulum al-hadith; risalat abi dawud ila ahl makkata fi wasf sunanihi'', pg 36, footnote. Beirut: ''Maktaba al-Matbu'at al-Islamiyah'': 2nd ed 1426/2005. But if, say, ten Companions record a text reporting a single incident in the life of Prophet, hadith scholars can count this as ten hadiths. So Musnad Ahmad, for example, has over 30,000 hadiths—but this count includes texts that are repeated in order to record slight variations within the text or within the chains of narrations. Identifying the narrators of the various texts, comparing their narrations of the same texts to identify both the soundest reporting of a text and the reporters who are most sound in their reporting occupied experts of hadith throughout the second century. In the third century of Islam (from 225/840 to about 275/889),The earliest book, Bukhari's Sahih was composed by 225 since he states that he spent sixteen years composing it (''Hady al-Sari'', introduction to ''Fath al-Bari'', p. 489, Lahore: ''Dar Nashr al-Kutub al-Islamiya'', 1981/1401) and also that he showed it to Yahya ibn Ma'in (pg. 8, ibid.) who died in 233. Nasa'i, the last to die of the authors of the six books, died in 303/915. He probably completed this work a few decades before his death: by 275 or so. six hadith experts composed brief works recording a selection of about two- to five-thousand such texts which they felt to have been most soundly documented or most widely referred to in the Muslim scholarly community.Counting multiple narrations of the same texts as a single text, the number of hadiths each author has recorded roughly as follows: Bukhari (as in Zabidi's ''Mukhtasar'' of Bukhari's book) 2134, Muslim (as in Mundhiri's ''Mukhtasar'' of Muslim's book) 2200, Tirmidhi 4000, Abu Dawud 4000, Nasa'i 4800, Ibn Majah 4300. There is considerable overlap amongst the six books so that Ibn al-Athir's ''Jami' al-Usul'', which gathers together the hadiths texts of all six books deleting repeated texts, has about 9500 hadiths. The fourth and fifth century saw these six works being commented on quite widely. This auxiliary literature has contributed to making their study the place of departure for any serious study of hadith. In addition, Bukhari and Muslim in particular, claimed that they were collecting only the soundest of sound hadiths. These later scholars tested their claims and agreed to them, so that today, they are considered the most reliable collections of hadith.''Muqaddimah Ibn al-Salah'', pg. 160 Dar al-Ma’aarif edition  ===Extent and nature of the textual corpus in the Shia tradition=== In Shia hadith one often finds sermons attributed to Ali in The Four Books or in the Nahj al-Balagha. Shi'a Muslims do not use the six major Hadith collections followed by the Sunni. Instead, their primary hadith collections are written by three authors who are known as the 'Three Muhammads'.Momen, Moojan, ''Introduction to Shi'i Islam'', Yale University Press, 1985, p.174. They are: ''Kitab al-Kafi'' by Muhammad ibn Ya'qub al-Kulayni al-Razi (329 AH), ''Man la yahduruhu al-Faqih'' by Muhammad ibn Babuya and ''Al-Tahdhib'' and ''Al-Istibsar'' both by Shaykh Muhammad Tusi. Unlike Akhbari Twelver Shi'a, Usuli Twelver Shi'a scholars do not believe that everything in the four major books is authentic.  ==Studies==  Hadith studies are a number of methods of evaluation developed by early Muslim scholars in determining the veracity of reports attributed to Muhammad. This is achieved by analyzing the text of the report, the scale of the report's transmission, the routes through which the report was transmitted, and the individual narrators involved in its transmission. On the basis of these criteria, various classifications were devised for hadith. The earliest comprehensive work in hadith studies was Abu Muhammad al-Ramahurmuzi's ''al-Muhaddith al-Fasil'', while another significant work was al-Hakim al-Naysaburi's ''Ma‘rifat ‘ulum al-hadith''. Ibn al-Salah's ''ʻUlum al-hadith'' is considered the standard classical reference on hadith studies.  ===Terminology===  By means of Hadith terminology, hadith are categorized as ''ṣaḥīḥ'' (sound, authentic), ''ḍaˤīf'' (weak), or ''mawḍūˤ'' (fabricated). Other classifications used also include: ''ḥasan'' (good), which refers to an otherwise ''ṣaḥīḥ'' report suffering from minor deficiency, or a weak report strengthened due to numerous other corroborating reports; and ''munkar'' (denounced) which is a report that is rejected due to the presence of an unreliable transmitter contradicting another more reliable narrator.See: *&quot;Hadith,&quot; ''Encyclopedia of Islam Online''; *&quot;Hadith,&quot; ''Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim world''. Both ''sahīh'' and ''hasan'' reports are considered acceptable for usage in Islamic legal discourse. Classifications of hadith may also be based upon the scale of transmission. Reports that pass through many reliable transmitters at each point in the ''isnad'' up until their collection and transcription are known as ''mutawātir''. These reports are considered the most authoritative as they pass through so many different routes that collusion between all of the transmitters becomes an impossibility. Reports not meeting this standard are known  as ''aahad'', and are of several different types.  ===Biographical evaluation===  Another area of focus in the study of hadith is biographical analysis (''‘ilm al-rijāl'', lit. &quot;science of people&quot;), in which details about the transmitter are scrutinized. This includes analyzing their date and place of birth; familial connections; teachers and students; religiosity; moral behaviour; literary output; their travels; as well as their date of death. Based upon these criteria, the reliability (''thiqāt'') of the transmitter is assessed. Also determined is whether the individual was actually able to transmit the report, which is deduced from their contemporaneity and geographical proximity with the other transmitters in the chain.Berg (2000) p. 8 Examples of biographical dictionaries include: Abd al-Ghani al-Maqdisi's ''Al-Kamal fi Asma' al-Rijal'', Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani's ''Tahdhīb al-Tahdhīb'' and al-Dhahabi's ''Tadhkirat al-huffaz''.See: *Robinson (2003) pp. 69–70; *Lucas (2004) p. 15  == Quranists or Qur'an alone Muslims view of hadith==  Qur'an alone Muslims, also known as Quranists, are Muslims who follow the Qur'an and consider it to be the only sacred text in Islam. They reject the religious authority of Hadith and Sunnah.  ==Western academic scholarship== Early Western exploration of Islam consisted primarily of translation of the Qur'an and a few histories, often supplemented with disparaging commentary . In the 19th century, scholars made greater attempts at impartiality, and translated and commented upon a greater variety of texts. By the beginning of the 20th 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 critics, who also included D. S. Margoliuth, Henri Lammens, and Leone Caetani. Goldziher writes, in his ''Muslim Studies'': &quot;... 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''&quot;. John Esposito notes that &quot;Modern Western scholarship has seriously questioned the historicity and authenticity of the ''hadith''&quot;, maintaining that &quot;the bulk of traditions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad were actually written much later.&quot; He mentions Joseph Schacht as one scholar who argues this, claiming that Schacht &quot;found no evidence of legal traditions before 722,&quot; from which Schacht concluded that &quot;the Sunna of the Prophet is not the words and deeds of the Prophet, but apocryphal material&quot; dating from later.  Contemporary Western scholars of hadith include: Herbert Berg, Fred M. Donner and Wilferd Madelung. 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. Madelung said of hadith: &quot;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.&quot;The Succession to Muhammad, page xi.  Harald Motzki said: &quot;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.&quot;  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 Malik (1919–1988) who argued that while the chain of transmission of the hadith may often be spurious, 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.  