Hadith is the Arabic word for a 'report' or an 'account [of an event]' and refers to the Islamic oral tradition of anecdotes containing the purported words, actions, and the silent approvals of the Islamic prophet Muhammad or his immediate circle (companions in Sunni Islam, Ahl al-Bayt in Shiite Islam).
Each hadith is associated with a chain of narrators (isnad), a lineage of people who reportedly heard and repeated the hadith from which the source of the hadith can be traced. The authentication of hadith became a significant discipline, focusing on the isnad (chain of narrators) and matn (main text of the report). This process aimed to address contradictions and questionable statements within certain narrations. Beginning one or two centuries after Muhammad's death, Islamic scholars, known as muhaddiths, compiled hadith into distinct collections that survive in the historical works of writers from the second and third centuries of the Muslim era (c. 700−1000 CE).
