A hadith is a saying or narration of the Prophet Muhammad. For many Muslims, hadiths are an important source for understanding Islamic law, practice, and beliefs.
After Muhammad died, Muslim scholars wrote down stories about what he had said and done. They also wrote down facts about who told each story. Some of the stories were retold many times before they were written down. Not all stories agreed in every detail.
Muslim scholars collected all of these stories in books and compared them to each other. They decided which were most likely to be accurate records of the words and actions of Muhammad.
Unlike the Qur’an, hadiths are not accepted by all Muslims. Different traditions accept different hadiths and sources of hadiths. Some Muslims claim that most hadiths are fabrications.
Hadiths do not have the same authority as the Qur’an because they were not received directly from Allah.
Text adapted from Simple English Wikipedia, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0.
A Hadith in its original Arabic by Thilsebatti on Wikimedia Commons, CC0.
