Hadith

A hadith (Arabic 'report', 'account') is a recorded saying, action, or tacit approval of the Prophet Muhammad, preserved and transmitted through a chain of named narrators. Hadith are, alongside the Qur'an, one of the two foundational sources of Islamic law, ethics, and practice; the discipline that studies them — 'ilm al-hadith — is among the most developed source-critical traditions of the pre-modern world.

Each hadith has two parts: the isnad, the chain of transmitters ('A told me on the authority of B, who heard from C, who reported from the Prophet…'), and the matn, the text of the report itself. Classical hadith scholars — al-Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Dawud, al-Tirmidhi, al-Nasa'i, Ibn Majah, whose six collections are canonical in Sunni Islam — did not merely gather reports; they graded them by the reliability of their chains. A hadith is classified as sahih (sound), hasan (good), da'if (weak), or mawdu' (fabricated), and each classification has precise criteria.

For a modern editorial team working with quotations, hadith are instructive. The Islamic tradition made the source-chain visible as part of the quotation itself, which is why fabrications could be identified and named as such centuries after the fact. Any citation practice that treats the source as an ornament rather than as evidence has something to learn from the isnad.

Common mistake: quoting a hadith without its grade. A saying attributed to the Prophet is not automatically authoritative; the classical scholars themselves acknowledged that vast numbers of reports in circulation were weak or forged, and responsible writers name the collection and — where relevant — the grade.