History of hadith

A hadith (/ˈhædɪθ/ or /hɑːˈdiːθ/;Arabic: حديث‎‎ ḥadīth, plural: ahadith, أحاديث, ʼaḥādīth) is one of various reports describing the words, actions, or habits of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. The term comes from the Arabic language and means a "report", "account" or "narrative". Unlike the Qur'an, which is the same literary work recognized by all Muslims, the ahadith is not one single same collection.

The ahadith refers to different hadith collections, and different branches of Islam (Sunni, Shia, Ibadi) consult different collections of hadith, while the relatively small sect of Quranists reject the authority of any of the hadith collections altogether.

Just as the minority Quranists are not a single community, the ahadith-believers or hadithists are also not a single community. Hadithists simply share the feature that, in addition to Quran, they incorporate belief and practice of ahadith—not necessarily the same hadith collection.

Among most hadithists, the importance of ahadith is secondary to Qur'an, since Islamic conflict of laws doctrine, in theory, holds Qur'anic supremacy above ahadith in developing Islamic jurisprudence. A minority of hadithists, however, have historically placed ahadith at a par with Qur'an, while others have even upheld ahadith that contradict the Qur'an, in practice thereby placing ahadith above Qur'an, and in some cases claiming contradicting ahadith abrogate those parts of the Qur'an with which those ahadith conflict.

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