hadith

nashwa

Junior Member
Hadith, Hadith Collections, and Searchable Hadith Database
A hadith is a saying of Muhammad or a report about something he did. Over time, during the first few centuries of Islam, it became obvious that many so-called hadith were in fact spurious sayings that had been fabricated for various motives, at best to encourage believers to act righteously and at worse to corrupt believers' understanding of Islam and to lead them astray. Since Islamic legal scholars were utilizing hadith as an adjunct to the Qur'an in their development of the Islamic legal system, it became critically important to have reliable collections of hadith. While the early collections of hadith often contained hadith that were of questionable origin, gradually collections of authenticated hadith called sahih (lit. true, correct) were compiled. Such collections were made possible by the development of the science of hadith criticism, a science at the basis of which was a critical analysis of the chain of (oral) transmission (isnad) of the hadith going all the way back to Muhammad. The two most highly respected collections of hadith are the authenticated collections the Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. (Sahih literally means "correct, true, valid, or sound.") In addition to these, four other collections came to be well-respected, although not to the degree of Bukhari and Muslim's sahih collections. These four other collections are the Sunan of Tirmidhi, Nasa'i, Ibn Majah, and Abu Da'ud. Together these four and the two sahih collections are called the "six books" (al-kutub al-sitta). Two other important collections, in particular, are the Muwatta of Ibn Malik, the founder of the Maliki school of law, and the Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, the founder of the Hanbali school of law.

Hadith (Encyclopedia Iranica) A detailed scholarly introduction by Shahab Ahmed. Published not before 2002, it contains useful recent bibliographic citations.

English Translation of the Sahih of Bukhari This online version, translated by M. Muhsin Khan, has a useful table of contents. Bukhari included 7275 hadith in his Sahih, many of which were variants of others with different chains of transmission. Of these, 2712 were not duplicates. It was reported that he had originally collected 600,000 hadith before subjecting them to his critical method.
English Translation of the Sahih of Muslim by Abdul Hamid Siddiqui. This, like the Sahih of Bukhari, has a useful table of contents. Muslim included 9200 hadith, of which 4000 were not duplicated. Originally, he had collected 300,000 hadith; so out of these 300,000, 9200 met his criteria of authenticity.
Searchable Hadith Database Translations of the entirety of the hadith collections of Bukhari (Sahih) and Malik (Muwatta) and part of the collections of Muslim (Sahih) and Abu Dawud (Sunan) are on-line and searchable at the MSA-USC Hadith Database.

Imam Nawawi's Forty Hadith (link fixed 17 August 2005) This selection of the sayings of the Prophet compiled by Nawawi, a very important medieval Islamic scholar, has been a favorite of Muslims since its compilation in the 13th century CE. (Back on line 1/18/98.)

Imam al-Nawawi's Forty Hadith recited and explained in both Arabic and English. This is especially useful for intermediate and advanced level students of Arabic Islamic texts.

A selection of hadith by Sir Abdullah Suhrawardy entitled Sayings of the Prophet. This has a useful topic index.

Forty Hadith Qudsi Hadith in which the Prophet reports non-Qur'anic words of God are called hadith qudsi.

Mishkat al-masabih, an online book by a Muslim scholar Moulana Yunus Osman, deals with hadith in general but focuses on a popular collection of hadith that has been translated into English by James Robson.

The Sunna Project of the International Hadith Study Association Network (IHSAN)contains online their Hadith Encyclopedia database containing a searchable version of the Arabic text and indices of the Seven Canonical Hadith Collections: Sahih al-Bukhari, Sahih Muslim, Sunan Abi Daud, Sunan al-Tirmidhi,Sunan al-Nasa’i, Sunan IbnMajah and the Muwatta’ lik, as well as comments and footnotes. Until February 2003, this service will be in beta testing and be free of charge
 
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