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50 free Hadith trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Hadith are the reports of what the Prophet Muhammad said, did and approved, and for fourteen centuries Muslims have argued about which ones to trust. The answer was a whole science: chains of narrators traced link by link, biographies of thousands of transmitters, and a vocabulary of grades that still decides what is quoted from the pulpit. These 50 questions cover the canon and the people behind it: the men who travelled across Central Asia and Iraq to sift hundreds of thousands of reports into a few thousand, the Shia scholars who built their own Four Books, the students who added forty-hadith primers and vast commentaries, and the modern critics who re-graded everything. Along the way they test the grading terms, the most prolific narrators and the wording of the reports themselves, from the first line of Bukhari to the hadith of the cloak. It suits a mosque study circle, a religious studies class, a family Ramadan quiz or anyone who has quoted a hadith and wondered who wrote it down. Play on your phone with instant answers and explanations, or print it for a group.
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Q 01Abu Hurayrah, a Daws tribesman who joined the Prophet in 629, had a kunya meaning father of which animal?
Kitten
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.
Q 02Which trade did the hadith critic Muhammad Nasiruddin al-Albani, born in Shkodër in 1914, practise in Damascus?
Watchmaker
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.
Q 03Sahih al-Bukhari opens with a report, also first in al-Nawawi's Forty, saying the reward of deeds depends on what?
Intentions
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.
Q 04In 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
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.
Q 05In the hadith of Gabriel, one sign of the Hour is barefoot, destitute goat-herds competing with one another in what?
Constructing tall buildings
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.
Q 06Which Silk Road city, birthplace in 810 of the compiler of Sunni Islam's most trusted hadith book, gave him his name?
Bukhara
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.
Q 07Bukhari's report of the dying Prophet's refused request for pen and paper is remembered as the calamity of which day?
Thursday
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.
Q 08In the Hadith of Position, said at the Tabuk expedition, Muhammad told Ali he was to him as who was to Moses?
Aaron
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.
Q 09Sahih Muslim 223, reported by Abu Malik al-Ash'ari, declares which quality to be 'half of faith'?
Cleanliness
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.
Q 10Sahih Muslim 2664, from Abu Hurayrah, calls which believer 'better and more lovable to Allah' than the weak one?
The strong
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.
Q 11Al-Nawawi's 'Forty Hadith', drawn mostly from the two Sahihs and the most studied of its genre, actually holds how many?
42
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.
Q 12What does the title of al-Nawawi's Riyad as-Salihin, 1,896 hadiths on conduct arranged in 372 chapters, mean?
Gardens of the Righteous
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.
Q 13What are Muslims called who reject hadith as religious authority and treat the Quran as the only dependable text?
Q 21The compiler of Sahih Muslim, buried in 875 in the suburb of Nasrabad, came from which city of Khorasan?
Nishapur
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.
Q 22Expelled from one city by jealous scholars, al-Bukhari died in 870 in Khartank, a village near which city?
Samarkand
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.
Q 23In the count most used today, how many narrations, repetitions included, does Sahih al-Bukhari contain?
7,563
Quranists
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.
Q 14Hadith scholars split every report into the chain of narrators and the narrative itself; what is the narrative called?
Matn
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.
Q 15Which grade means a hadith's chains are too many for collusion, like the warning on lying about the Prophet?
Mutawatir
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.
Q 16Which grade, below sahih and hasan, do scholars give a hadith whose chain is broken or whose narrator is criticised?
Da'if
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.
Q 17Which term marks a forged hadith, the kind about twenty of which were later found in Sunan Ibn Majah?
Mawdu'
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.
Q 18Which term describes a hadith in which a Successor says 'the Prophet said', skipping the Companion who heard it?
Mursal
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.
Q 19Anas 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
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.
Q 20What is a hadith called when it relays God's own words outside the Quran, like 'I have forbidden oppression for Myself'?
Qudsi
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.
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.
Q 24Al-Nawawi's seventh hadith, from Tamim al-Dari, says 'the religion is' what — owed to God, His Book and His Messenger?
Sincere advice
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.
Q 25Which compiler, born in Sistan and dead in Basra in 889, chose the 4,800 hadiths of his Sunan from some 500,000?
Abu Dawud
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'.
Q 26Which pupil of al-Bukhari, blind for his last two years, wrote the Shama'il on the Prophet's person and character?
Al-Tirmidhi
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.
Q 27Termez, birthplace of a compiler of the six books who was buried nearby in 892, lies in which modern country?
Uzbekistan
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.
Q 28Which compiler of the six died in 915 after a Damascus mob beat him over a lecture on the virtues of Ali?
Al-Nasa'i
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.
Q 29Sunan Ibn Majah, ranked sixth of the Sunni six books, was compiled by a scholar born in 824 in which Iranian city?
Qazvin
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.
Q 30Which 11th-century scholar first formally grouped the Sunni hadith canon as six books by adding Sunan Ibn Majah?
Ibn al-Qaysarani
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.