50 Fun Facts About Hadith

Abu Hurayrah, a Daws tribesman who joined the Prophet in 629, had a kunya meaning father of which animal?

Kitten: he was said to have found a stray kitten and carried it in his sleeve, which earned him the name Abu Hurayrah. His given name was most likely Abd al-Rahman ibn Sakhr.

Which trade did the hadith critic Muhammad Nasiruddin al-Albani, born in Shkodër in 1914, practise in Damascus?

Watchmaker, like his father: al-Albani repaired clocks for a living while re-grading the hadith canon, and he died in Amman in 1999 holding the King Faisal International Prize.

Sahih al-Bukhari opens with a report, also first in al-Nawawi's Forty, saying the reward of deeds depends on what?

Intentions: 'the reward of deeds depends upon the intentions', so a migration made for a woman's hand counts only as that. Umar ibn al-Khattab is its narrator.

In the hadith of Gabriel, a stranger in white asks the Prophet about ihsan; the reply is to worship God how?

As if you see Him, 'for though you cannot see Him, yet He sees you'. The visitor with jet-black hair and no sign of travel was Gabriel, who had come to teach the religion.

In the hadith of Gabriel, one sign of the Hour is barefoot, destitute goat-herds competing with one another in what?

Constructing tall buildings: the herders are foretold 'vying with one another in the construction of magnificent buildings', a line much quoted in modern times. The other sign is a slave-girl giving birth to her mistress.

Which Silk Road city, birthplace in 810 of the compiler of Sunni Islam's most trusted hadith book, gave him his name?

Bukhara: Muhammad al-Bukhari was born there after the Friday prayer on 21 July 810, and his Sahih is ranked by Sunnis beside Sahih Muslim as the most authentic text after the Quran.

Bukhari's report of the dying Prophet's refused request for pen and paper is remembered as the calamity of which day?

Thursday: in the 'Calamity of Thursday' Umar objects that 'the illness has overwhelmed the prophet, we have the book of God and that is enough for us'. Ibn Abbas is the narrator.

In the Hadith of Position, said at the Tabuk expedition, Muhammad told Ali he was to him as who was to Moses?

Aaron: 'Are you not content, Ali, to stand to me as Aaron stood to Moses, except that there will be no prophet after me?' Ali had been left in charge of Medina and feared it was a slight.

Sahih Muslim 223, reported by Abu Malik al-Ash'ari, declares which quality to be 'half of faith'?

Cleanliness is half of faith, the report says, and it continues: 'all praise to Allah' fills the scale. It opens Muslim's chapter on the virtue of wudu, the ablution before prayer.

Sahih Muslim 2664, from Abu Hurayrah, calls which believer 'better and more lovable to Allah' than the weak one?

The strong: 'a strong believer is better and is more lovable to Allah than a weak believer, and there is good in everyone', the report says, urging believers to seek what benefits them and ask Allah for help.

Al-Nawawi's 'Forty Hadith', drawn mostly from the two Sahihs and the most studied of its genre, actually holds how many?

42 hadiths: the 'forty' is a genre label, and al-Nawawi chose each as 'a great fundament of the religion'. Ibn Rajab later stretched the set to fifty in his commentary Jami' al-Ulum wal-Hikam.

What does the title of al-Nawawi's Riyad as-Salihin, 1,896 hadiths on conduct arranged in 372 chapters, mean?

Gardens of the Righteous, or Meadows: al-Nawawi of Damascus opened many of its chapters with Quran verses before the hadiths, and he wrote it alongside a commentary on Sahih Muslim.

What are Muslims called who reject hadith as religious authority and treat the Quran as the only dependable text?

Quranists, also called Ahl al-Quran or al-Quraniyun: the Quran-only view re-emerged with 19th-century modernists in Egypt and India, and Rashad Khalifa was a prominent later voice.

Hadith scholars split every report into the chain of narrators and the narrative itself; what is the narrative called?

Matn is the text, the actual narrative, while the isnad is the chain that carries it; both are graded, and a sound chain does not rescue a text that contradicts stronger reports.

Which grade means a hadith's chains are too many for collusion, like the warning on lying about the Prophet?

Mutawatir: the classic case, 'whoever intentionally attributes a lie to me, let him prepare his seat in the Fire', is transmitted by more than seventy Companions. Most hadith are ahad, solitary chains.

Which grade, below sahih and hasan, do scholars give a hadith whose chain is broken or whose narrator is criticised?

Da'if means weak: the flaw is either discontinuity in the chain of narrators or some criticism of a narrator, and al-Albani's 20th-century re-grading sorted thousands of canonical reports into sound and weak.

Which term marks a forged hadith, the kind about twenty of which were later found in Sunan Ibn Majah?

Mawdu', fabricated: such a report 'cannot be attributed to its origin', and Ibn Majah's Sunan, sixth of the six books, carries about 20 traditions later declared forged.

Which term describes a hadith in which a Successor says 'the Prophet said', skipping the Companion who heard it?

Mursal: the Successor omits the Companion link, so the chain has a gap at its very top, one of the discontinuities that drop a report into the weak grade.

Anas ibn Malik narrates al-Nawawi's 13th hadith: none of you truly believes until he wants for his brother what?

What he loves for himself: the report, in both Bukhari and Muslim, comes from the Prophet's servant Anas, and one compiler named it among four hadiths that suffice for a person's whole religion.

What is a hadith called when it relays God's own words outside the Quran, like 'I have forbidden oppression for Myself'?

Hadith qudsi, a 'sacred report': the words are God's but not Quran, so they sit between scripture and ordinary hadith and are never recited in prayer. The oppression report comes through Abu Dharr in Sahih Muslim.

The compiler of Sahih Muslim, buried in 875 in the suburb of Nasrabad, came from which city of Khorasan?

Nishapur: Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj, of the Arab tribe Banu Qushayr, settled in his hometown and became a lifelong friend of al-Bukhari, who was later driven out of the same city by jealous scholars.

Expelled from one city by jealous scholars, al-Bukhari died in 870 in Khartank, a village near which city?

Samarkand: he fled to Khartank, a village near Samarkand, and died there on Friday, 1 September 870, after rival scholars had him expelled from his previous home.

In the count most used today, how many narrations, repetitions included, does Sahih al-Bukhari contain?

7,563 is the usual figure with repetitions; strip them out and it falls to about 2,602 distinct hadiths, arranged under 78 chapter headings, with some editions adding 19 more.

Al-Nawawi's seventh hadith, from Tamim al-Dari, says 'the religion is' what — owed to God, His Book and His Messenger?

Sincere advice, naseehah: asked to whom, the Prophet answered 'to Allah, His Book, His Messenger, and to the leaders of the Muslims and their common folk'. Sahih Muslim records it.

Which compiler, born in Sistan and dead in Basra in 889, chose the 4,800 hadiths of his Sunan from some 500,000?

Abu Dawud al-Sijistani, who said four hadiths suffice for a person's religion, among them 'part of a man's good observance of Islam is that he leaves alone that which does not concern him'.

Which pupil of al-Bukhari, blind for his last two years, wrote the Shama'il on the Prophet's person and character?

Al-Tirmidhi: al-Dhahabi wrote that 'his knowledge of hadith came from al-Bukhari', and his Jami', one of the six books, notes the grade of each report along with the jurists' differing views.

Termez, birthplace of a compiler of the six books who was buried nearby in 892, lies in which modern country?

Uzbekistan: Termez sits on its southern edge, and the compiler's grave lies outside Sherobod, sixty kilometres north of the town, in a land that produced several of the great hadith collectors.

Which compiler of the six died in 915 after a Damascus mob beat him over a lecture on the virtues of Ali?

Al-Nasa'i, from Nasa in Khorasan, was set upon by anti-Alid Syrians who objected to his omission of Mu'awiya; of his two Sunan, the abridged al-Sughra, or al-Mujtaba, is the one counted among the six.

Sunan Ibn Majah, ranked sixth of the Sunni six books, was compiled by a scholar born in 824 in which Iranian city?

Qazvin: Ibn Majah's Sunan has 4,341 hadiths, 1,329 of them found in none of the other five canonical works, though Sunnis rank it sixth of the six for authenticity.

Which 11th-century scholar first formally grouped the Sunni hadith canon as six books by adding Sunan Ibn Majah?

Ibn al-Qaysarani: before him the Sunan of Ibn Majah lacked the esteem of the other five, and Malikis, with Ibn al-Athir, preferred to list a different sixth book altogether.

Al-Nawawi, dead at 45 in 1277 after heading a Damascus hadith college, never did what, fearing distraction?

Marry: he never married, believing it would distract him from scholarship, and in under three decades produced the Forty, Riyad as-Salihin and a commentary on Sahih Muslim.

Which book did Malikis and Ibn al-Athir count as the sixth canonical book in place of Sunan Ibn Majah?

Al-Muwatta of Malik ibn Anas: about 1,720 hadiths composed over forty years in Medina, its most famous transmission being that of Yahya ibn Yahya al-Laythi.

What does Silsilat al-Dhahab mean, the name al-Bukhari gave the Malik–Nafi' isnad he ranked the most authentic of all?

The Golden Chain: Malik narrated from Nafi', the freedman of a companion, who narrated from that companion, who narrated from Muhammad, an isnad later scholars treated as beyond reproach.

Which companion, speared to death in Mecca in 693, ranks second among narrators with 2,630 hadiths?

Abdullah ibn Umar kept strict neutrality through the First Fitna and died after a soldier of Hajjaj's army struck him with a poisoned spear during the siege of Mecca.

Abu Hurayrah, whose pupil Hammam ibn Munabbih wrote the oldest surviving hadith page, is credited with how many?

5,374 hadiths are credited to him, far more than anyone else, even though he only joined the Prophet in 629, which is why critics from Shia scholars to the Egyptian Mahmud Abu Rayya have questioned the total.

Al-jarh wa al-ta'dil, the discipline that rates hadith narrators on integrity and precision, translates as what?

Discrediting and accrediting: also called ilm al-rijal, the science of narrators, it weighs each transmitter's adalah (uprightness) and dabt (precision), using dictionaries such as al-Bukhari's al-Tarikh al-Kabir.

Who rediscovered and published the Sahifa of Hammam ibn Munabbih, the earliest surviving hadith manuscript?

Muhammad Hamidullah dated the manuscript to 101 AH, about 719; Hammam was one of nine students to whom Abu Hurayrah dictated what he had heard, and his is the only such page quoted by surviving sources.

Which Umayyad caliph had traditionists commit their hadith to writing, with Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri compiling the books?

Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz, the pious Umar II, wanted the sunnah codified; al-Zuhri, raised in Medina and a teacher of Malik, gathered the manuscripts into books before he died in 742.

Which jurist, dead in Fustat in 820, wrote al-Risala, the first book of legal theory, to make hadith binding?

Al-Shafi'i held that even the Quran was 'to be interpreted in the light of traditions'; he had memorised Malik's law book by the age of ten and was deputised to teach in his absence.

Whose 1950 'Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence' dated hadith fabrication to about 720 and coined the 'common link'?

Joseph Schacht, building on Goldziher's scepticism, argued that from around 100 AH reports 'began to be fabricated' and traced isnads to the narrator where they converge; M. Mustafa al-Azami answered him at length.

The hadith of the twelve successors, all of them from Quraysh, is usually related in Sunni sources on whose authority?

Jabir ibn Samura, a companion who died in 686; Bukhari and Muslim both record the report, and Twelver authors readily read the twelve as their own Imams.

The Hadith of the Cloak, linked to the purification verse 33:33, gives which collective name to the five beneath it?

Ahl al-Kisa, 'people of the cloak': Muhammad, Fatima, Ali, Hasan and Husayn, gathered under one garment in a scene recorded in Sahih Muslim among other collections.

In the Hadith of the Two Weighty Things at Ghadir Khumm, the Prophet paired the Book of God with what?

His Ahl al-Bayt, 'my progeny': 'I left among you two treasures which, if you cling to them, you shall not be led into error after me'. Sunni variants replace the household with 'my sunnah'.

Which collection holds, as hadith 19774, the Farewell Sermon's line that an Arab has no merit over a non-Arab?

Musnad Ahmad ibn Hanbal, arranged by the companion who narrated rather than by topic, holds over 30,000 reports; no single source carries the whole sermon, and parts appear in Sahih Muslim too.

Al-Kafi, 'The Sufficient', chief of the Twelver Shia Four Books with 16,199 narrations, was compiled by whom?

Al-Kulayni (c. 868–941) reportedly took twenty years over it; its Usul covers theology and ethics, its Furu' the law, and the Rawda gathers lengthy letters and speeches.

Which scholar, who founded the Najaf seminary and died there in 1067, wrote two of the Twelver Shia Four Books?

Shaykh al-Tusi, 'Shaykh of the Community', wrote Tahdhib al-Ahkam and al-Istibsar; born in Tus in 995, he left Baghdad after his house and many of his books were burnt.

Which scholar raised in Qom, called al-Shaykh al-Saduq, wrote the Shia Four Book Man la yahduruhu al-Faqih?

Ibn Babawayh, 'the truthful scholar', died in Ray in 991; the title means 'he who has no jurisprudent', a manual for believers with no scholar at hand, and his birth was credited to the Hidden Imam's prayers.

Which Safavid-era scholar, dead in 1699, compiled Bihar al-Anwar, the 110-volume 'Seas of Lights' of Shia hadith?

Al-Majlisi, Mohammad-Baqer of Isfahan, gathered over 100,000 items into it, making the compendium the principal secondary source of Twelver tradition.

Which 15th-century Cairo judge wrote Fath al-Bari, the most famous commentary on Sahih al-Bukhari?

Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani (1372–1449) completed a commentary Ibn Rajab had begun in the 1390s; honoured as 'Commander of the Faithful in Hadith', he married the hadith expert Uns Khatun in 1397.

Which Kurdish-born scholar, who died in Damascus in 1245, wrote the 'Introduction' that standardised hadith science?

Ibn al-Salah, born in Sharazoor, was the first shaykh of the Ashrafiyya hadith college in Damascus, and later manuals of hadith terminology reworked his categories.