Islamic Science of Hadith

The Islamic Science of Hadith (in Arabic 'ilm al-hadith علم الحديث) is the Islamic study of hadith, their sources, their narrations, and how much they can be relied upon as a source of religious truth. The traditional Sunni study of hadith attempts to establish the relative trustworthiness of various different hadith by studying the chains of narration (called an isnaad إسناد plural asaanid أسانيد) that are attached to the text of the hadith (the actual text of the saying of the prophet being called a matn متن). By evaluating the plausibility of a given chain of narrators, and the known facts of the narrator's religiousity, trustworthiness, and orthodoxy, Sunni hadith science claims that the veracity of a given saying of the prophet can be determined with absolute certainty. Hadiths recieve grades from the tradents (known in Arabic as muhadiththun محدثون) based off of these criteria, the grades being Sahih (صحيح), Hasan(حسن), Mawdu'(موضوع), and Da'if(ضعيف), with sahih being the highest grade and da'if the weakest. The Sunni tradition generally agrees that all of the hadith of Sahih Al-Bukhar and Sahih Muslim are hadith but beyond this almost all other books of hadith contain hadith which are disagreed upon in the nature of their hadith. The various traditional schools of jurisprudence as well as the salafis have different scholars who have given different ratings to various hadith. Some prominent muhadiththun such as the salafi Shaykh Al-Albani enjoy widespread esteem in the Muslim community, and their judgements on which hadith are sahih and otherwise fit for usage in religious ruling enjoy wide acceptance.