Introduction to Ahadith

It goes without saying that Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) has left us with two powerful sources for the improvement of the individual, the society and for the nations, those are: the Holy Quran and ahadith. The Quran was revealed to the Last Messenger (peace be upon him) through the angel Gabriel. The ahadith show us the diversities a single person can have, and the ways these diversities may be used to produce an optimal performance, where the performance is exemplary for future generations. This was one of the main tasks of the Last Messenger (peace be upon him), to guide humanity on the right path.

Muhammad (peace be upon him) was a son, a husband, a father, an advisor, a warrior, a leader, a judge and most important of all, he was the Seal of the Prophets - the last messenger of Allah. A man with such a character and such a vast field of responsibility is indeed deserving of biographical study, and through the ages, biographical researches have been carried out. 

The collection of ahadith is the result of these researchers. The study of ahadith is a science itself. To mention some branches within the study of ahadith, there is the science of Asma'ul Rijal (the science of study of the life-history of 500,000 narrators), the science of Mustalih al-Hadith (the science of classifying a hadith as authentic or weak), the science of Gharib al-hadith (the study of the linguistic origins of the difficult words used in ahadith). 

I have mentioned only three different sciences though this list can extend to over 100. This again indicates the immense importance of ahadith and the importance of understanding them.

The main source of ahadith can be found in six sahihs (NOTE C) These six sahihs are:

Sahih al-Bukhari

(d. 256 A.H. = 870 C.E.)

Sahih Muslim

(d. 261 A.H. = 875 C.E.)

Sunan Ibn Majah

(d. 273 A.H. = 887 C.E.)

Sunan Abu Dawud

(d. 275 A.H. = 888 C.E.)

Jami al-Tirmidhi

(d. 279 A.H. = 892 C.E.)

Sunan al-Nisai

(d. 303 A.H. = 915 C.E.)

A.H. = After Hegira C.E. = Christian Era

What is Hadith? | Hadees | Details of hadiths

The Hadith is the record of the sayings of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). The sayings and conduct of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) constitute the Sunnah.

The Hadith has come to supplement the Holy Quran as a source of the Islamic religious law. The Hadith is the second pillar after the Quran upon which every Muslim rests his faith. Hadith consists of Mat'n and Isnad. Mat'n means the text of the Hadith, while Isnad means the chain of transmitters to that Hadith.

The scholars of the Hadith literature divided the Traditions into categories according to the degree of authenticity and reliability, each category had to meet certain criteria.

The categories are as follows:

1. Sahih: The genuine Traditions, the authentic ones.

2. Moothaq: Almost like the Sahih but the narration is not as strong as those of the Sahih.

3. Hasan: The fair Traditions although inferior in matter of authenticity.

4. Dha'eef: The weak Traditions which are not so reliable.

The Place of the Hadith in Islamic Law (the Sharia)

The Hadith is the second of four sources of Islamic law, and therefore the second authority of Islam. The first sources is the Qur'an itself. The third is the final analogy in questions of law - based on the Qur'an and Sunna among Sunnis and reason among Shiites. The fourth and last sources is the agreement or consensus of all Islamic scholars. Special reasons make the Hadith synonymous with the Qur'an, and, in folk Islam, sometimes more important than the Qur'an itself.

 Many Islamic scholars consider the everyday words of Muhammad to be actual revelations, for it is written in the Qur'an (Sura The Star 53:2-4): "Your comrade (Muhammad) is not astray, neither errs, nor speaks he out of caprice. This is nothing but a revelation revealed" (4). Some exegetes understand the word this to be everything that Muhammad said, while others limit this to what was said in the Qur'an only. Another Qur'anic verse (Sura The House of Imran 3:42) is also considered a pointer to the meaning of the Hadith; for the word wisdom, which in this and other verses is found next to the term The Book, is believed to mean Muhammad's sayings: "And he(Allah) will teach him (Jesus) the Book, the Wisdom, the Torah, the Gospel" (5).

However, the most important reason for the Hadith being esteemed so highly is that the Qur'an gives no detailed information about essential orders for faith and life; therefore the Qur'an demands tradition as an indispensable supplement. A clear example is found in ritual prayer. Although the Qur'an obliges believers to exercise this practice, it gives practically no rule as to how and when one should pray. Without the traditions, which describe the prayer duty of the Prophet in detail or in which the Prophet instructed his congregation, one could determine neither the number of daily prayers nor how to perform them (6).

The influence of the Hadith is particularly far-reaching in the area of Islamic law, the Sharia, as we can see in this famous rule from the Sunnis: "If a Qur'anic verse is found to contradict a tradition of the Prophet, it (the Qur'anic verse) may be abrogated, provided the tradition came from him" (7).

No one can know exactly which (and how many) traditions are really traceable to the Prophet, because these held a powerful position from the beginning, were based almost exclusively on oral traditions when collected in Muhammad's time, and were not actually written down until a decade after Muhammad's death. Abu Hanifa, the founder of the Hanafite school of law in Turkey (and among the predominantly Turkic peoples) is believed to have regarded only 17 traditions as reliable. Abu Dawud (d. AD 888), one of the main collectors of traditions whose Sunanu Abi Dawud is one of six reliable Hadith collections, re-ports in the Forward of his work, that out of 500,000 traditions, he could only accept 4,800 as reliable.

Most traditions cannot be viewed as actual, believable, historical accounts of the Sunna of the Prophet. Much more, they express what leading Muslim circles deemed authoritative in the first centuries after Muhammad's death, and were only attributed to the Prophet then.

From the approximately one thousand collections of traditions, the Sunnis consider only six to be approved. They all originated in the third century after Muhammad's death. They are collections from:

Al-Bukhari (d. AD 870)

Muslim (d. AD 875)

Abu Dawud (d. AD 888)

Al-Tirmidhi (d. AD 892)

Al-Nasa'i (d. AD 915)

Ibn Madja (d. AD 886)

These works are most commonly and conveniently called "The Six Books" (al-kutubu's-sitta) - the six accurate, reliable collections. They are regarded as Holy Books in addition to the Qur'an. The collections of al-Bukhari and Muslim hold a particularly lofty position.

The Shiites have developed their own Hadith collection. They view the traditions in the Sunni collection with suspicion if one link in the chain of commentators did not belong to Ali's group. The most important Hadith collection of the Shiites is Al-Kafi fi usuli'd-din.

*******

Islamic Hadees

Farmaya NABI_E_KAREEM (SAW)ne.qabr ka azaab barhaq hai.insaan ke paida hone se pehle uski maut muqarrer kardi jati hai.din me 4 martaba hamari qabr hame pukarti hai lakin ham maut ko kabhi yaad nahi karte.har momin ko chahia ke woh maut ko yaad kare.gunahaw se perhazz kare,maafi mange aur her din yeah dua 25 martaba padhe.Allahumma baarikli filmauti wafeema baadal maut.InshaAllah maut ki saqti aasan hogi ....

To protect yourself from the darkness of grave, read this dua as many times as possible through out the day "Inni Aamantu bi rabbikum fasmaoon".

Hadith Qudsi 25:

On the authority of Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him), who said that the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said: Allah (mighty and sublime be He) said:

Whosoever shows enmity to someone devoted to Me, I shall be at war with him. My servant draws not near to Me with anything more loved by Me than the religious duties I have enjoined upon him, and My servant continues to draw near to Me with supererogatory works so that I shall love him.

When I love him I am his hearing with which he hears, his seeing with which he sees, his hand with which he strikes and his foot with which he walks.

Were he to ask [something] of Me, I would surely give it to him, and were he to ask Me for refuge, I would surely grant him it.

I do not hesitate about anything as much as I hesitate about [seizing] the soul of My faithful servant: he hates death and I hate hurting him.