Hadith

Hadith (Arabic: حديث) is the Arabic word for a 'report' or an 'account [of an event]' and refers to the Islamic oral tradition of anecdotes containing the purported words, actions, and the silent approvals of the Islamic prophet Muhammad or his immediate circle (companions in Sunni Islam, Ahl al-Bayt in Shia). These traditions, attributed to Muhammad or other figures of authority and initially circulated in early post-prophetic discussions—often without formal chains of attribution—began to be systematically compiled between the 7th and 10th centuries by Islamic scholars known as muhaddiths, who organized them first according to the primary authority to whom they were attributed and subsequently by subject matter. In later traditions, each hadith is associated with a chain of narrators (isnad), a lineage of people who reportedly heard and repeated the hadith from which the source of the hadith can be traced. Hadith compilations developed along divergent lines—influenced by distinct cultural spheres where each sect established over time its own accredited corpus, and shaped by the presuppositions of religio-political divisions such as Sunni, Shia, and Kharijite; this situation, which compromised reliability, subsequently paved the way for scholars of hadith to establish specific criteria for verifying the authenticity of these narrations.

In the following centuries scholars have categorized hadith based on their reliability, sorting them into classifications such as sahih ('authentic'), hasan ('good'), and da'if ('weak'). This process aimed to address and analyze contradictory or questionable statements within certain narrations and possessed a subjective nature, as the classification in question could vary depending on the individual conducting the work. Differences in classification and interpretation paved the way for various Islamic schools of thought to adopt divergent approaches regarding their understanding and application of Sharia. In Islamic society, the process by which hadiths gained importance—akin to their formal evolution—and came to take the place of the Sunnah occurred over several distinct stages. Sunnah originally meant a tradition that did not contain the definition of good and bad. Later, "good traditions" began to be referred to as sunnah and the concept of "Muhammad's sunnah" was established, and Muhammad's sunnah gave way to the "hadiths of Muhammad".

Due to the gaining widespread respect in mainstream Islamic thought and its status as the second authority after the Quran, a significant portion of Sharia rules is derived from hadiths rather than the Quran. Throughout the history of early Islamic thought, there have been also approaches that question the authenticity, epistemological value, or capacity of hadiths to generate law or doctrine, and that limit or—either partially or entirely—reject them. These include the Kharijites, the Mu'tazila, certain early jurists (known as Ahl al-Ra'y, and theologians. Western critical scholarship participating in hadith studies categorically rejects the authenticity of hadith as an accurate record of the historical Muhammad. Scholars argue that the relevant corpus does not reflect 7th-century reality; rather, it represents a retrospective projection—manifesting through fabrications based on traditional systems of attribution—of perspectives shaped by the legal, theological, and political conflicts of the 8th to 10th centuries. Quranist Islam rejects the epistemic value of hadiths and does not attribute any sanctity to them.