About This Book

The hadith literature left by the early scholars is vast, and the methods they used to judge a report can be hard to approach without guidance. In this introduction, Suhaib Hasan explains those methods for English readers: how hadiths are classified, how chains of narration (isnad) are examined, and how the narrators themselves were assessed.

The book covers both Mustalah al-Hadith, the terminology and classification of hadith, and Rijal al-Hadith, the study of the people who transmitted it.

What's Inside

• A brief history of Mustalah al-Hadith
• Rijal al-Hadith: the study of the reporters of hadith
• Classification of hadith by the authority it is traced to, by the links in the isnad, and by the number of reporters at each stage
• Classification by the manner of reporting and by the nature of the text and isnad
• Hidden defects in the isnad or text
• Classification by the reliability and memory of the reporters
• Further branches of Mustalah and Rijal
• Appendix: verdicts on the hadiths mentioned in the foreword

Who It's For

• Beginners who want to understand how hadith scholars graded narrations
• Students preparing to read the major hadith collections
• Teachers looking for a short English primer on the subject

Book Details

• Author: Suhaib Hasan