ahly sunnat

 

Hadith, corpus of the sayings or traditions of the Prophet Muhammad, revered by Muslims as a major source of religious law and moral guidance. It comprises many reports of varying length and authenticity. The individual reports are also called hadith (plural: hadiths). The word hadith is derived from the Arabic root ḥ-d-th—signifying “to happen,” “to occur,” or “to come to pass”—and encompasses a range of literal meanings, including “conversation,” “discussion,” “speech,” and “small talk.” In English the term is translated variously as “report,” “saying,” or “tradition.” It is closely related to Sunnah (literally “established custom or habitual practice”), which in an Islamic context refers to the norms and practices affirmed or instituted by Muhammad.

For Muslims, hadiths are among the sources through which they come to understand the practice of Muhammad and his Muslim community (ummah). As such, they constitute an important source, second only to the Qurʾān, for law, ritual, and creed. Hadith also informs different fields of Islamic learning (ʿulūm; singular: ʿilm) and cultural production, including history, theology, Sufism, literature, poetry, and belles lettres. The vastness of the Hadith corpus, numbering in the hundreds of thousands of reports by some estimates, and its exponential growth in the earliest years of Islamic history presented challenges for Muslims, from the ruling elite to scholars to lay followers. While the development of a systematic science of Hadith (ʿilm al-ḥadīth) mitigated some of these challenges, the place of these reports in Islamic intellectual culture remains a much-discussed and at times contested issue.

Development and early transmission

Understandings of the origins of Hadith and its transmission vary significantly depending on a number of factors, including one’s approach to this literature from within the confessional spectrum and one’s historiographical approach. It is helpful to begin with an overview of the dominant Sunni and Shiʿi Muslim understandings, which locate the origins of many hadiths in the lifetime of Muhammad.

According to the prevalent Muslim view, during Muhammad’s lifetime he was the ultimate authority for his followers on all aspects of this faith tradition, conveying divine guidance (which was communicated piecemeal in the form of Qurʾānic verses), theology, cosmic history, and law as well as the minutiae of ritual and personal comportment. His Companions (Ṣaḥābah; those who personally interacted with him and witnessed his behaviour) observed and recorded all manner of his actions, preferences, decisions, and wisdom. Their ignorance or their uncertainty on a host of issues prompted questions. The answers were duly committed to individual or communal memory. A number of the Companions recorded some of these reports in writing. In due course, the Companions, especially those who enjoyed intimate, regular, and prolonged contact with Muhammad, became repositories of information, which they conveyed as a matter of religious duty and as a sacred trust to subsequent generations of Muslims.