Hadith — Meaning and Use

Hadith (Arabic: الحديث) is pronounced ha-DEETH, with a soft, breathy “h” and a “th” as in “think”. The plural is ahadith, though in English people usually just say “hadiths” or “hadith”.

Meaning

Hadith means “speech”, “report” or “news”. In Islam it means a report of what the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ said, did or approved. Every hadith has two parts: the chain of people who passed it on (the isnad) and the text itself (the matn). Early Muslim scholars developed a detailed science to test these chains — checking each narrator’s honesty, memory and whether they really met — and graded reports as sahih (authentic), hasan (good) or da’if (weak). On this website we only quote authentic and good hadith.

The most respected collections are Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. Here is one of the most famous hadith of all, which opens al-Bukhari’s collection:

…The reward of deeds depends upon the intentions and every person will get the reward according to what he has intended.…

How Muslims use it

Muslims read hadith to understand the Qur’an, learn the Prophet’s example (the Sunnah) and find practical guidance for daily life.

Example

“The teacher shared a hadith about kindness to neighbours.”

To learn how hadith relate to the Prophet’s example, see Sunnah.