(Arabic), the recorded traditions based on incidents from the life of, or pronouncements by, Muhammad and his companions. Studies by I. Goldziher and C. Snouck Hurgronje have shown that the greater part of the Hadith date from the late seventh and early eighth centuries, when it became apparent that the precepts of the Koran could not resolve all the legal and ethical problems of Muslim society. In the ninth to tenth centuries, tens of thousands of Hadith were grouped according to subject and given permanent form in six manuscript collections. This body of work came to be known as the sunna and became one of the sources of Muslim law.
Each Hadith consists of the basic text, or matn, conveying its factual content, and the list of supporting authorities, or isnad —that is, the chain of individuals through whom the text was transmitted to the compiler. Of the six canonical collections of Hadith, two were regarded as the most authoritative and were called “the authentic ones” (as-Sahihani, literally Health)— namely, those compiled by al-Bukhari (810–70) and by Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj (or al-Nishapuri, 817–74). The Hadith were a significant influence in the development of Arabic literature.
V. M. BORISOV