Sunni Islam

Sunni view of hadith

The Qur'an as we have it today was written down in approximately 650 C.E., and is accepted by all Muslim denominations. However, there were many matters of belief and daily life that were not directly prescribed in the Qur'an, but simply the practice of the community. Later generations sought out oral traditions regarding the early history of Islam, and the practice of Muhammad and his first followers, and wrote them down so that they might be preserved. These recorded oral traditions are called hadith. Muslim scholars sifted through the hadith and evaluated the chain of narration of each tradition, scrutinizing the trustworthiness of the narrators and judging the strength of each hadith accordingly. Most Sunni accept the hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim as the most authentic (sahih, or correct), and grant a lesser status to the collections of other recorders. There are however, six collections of hadith that are held in particular reverence by Sunni Muslims:

Related Topics:
Bukhari - Muslim - Hadith

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• The Sahih al-Bukhari
• The Sahih Muslim
• Sunan Abu Dawud
• Sunan ibn Majah
• Sunan at-Tirmidhi
• Sunan an-Nisai

There are also other collections of hadith which, although less well-known, still contain authentic hadith and are frequently used by specialists:

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• Sahih ibn Khuzama
• Muwatta of Imam Malik
• Musnad of Ahmed ibn Hanbal
• Musnad of Umar ibn Abdul Aziz