Hadith Sources and Methodology
This page explains how narrations get onto this site, how their gradings are handled, and what to do when you find one graded differently elsewhere.
How a narration is selected
A narration is included only when three things are true. Its collection and hadith number can be identified. Its text is a rendering of the narration rather than a paraphrase circulating as a quotation. And its grading is either well established or can be described honestly as disputed. If any of the three fails, the item is left out rather than published with a plausible-looking citation attached to it.
Popularity is not a criterion. A narration does not earn a place here because it appears on other Ramadan websites, on social media images, or in a widely shared list. Several of the most-shared Ramadan “hadith” have no sound chain at all.
How references are displayed
- The collection is named in full — Sahih al-Bukhari, Sahih Muslim, Sunan Abu Dawud, Jami‘ at-Tirmidhi, Sunan an-Nasa’i, Sunan Ibn Majah, and so on.
- The hadith number follows the numbering most readers will be able to check in a common online index. Printed editions number differently, so a number that does not match your copy is not necessarily an error — but tell us anyway and we will note both.
- Where the same narration appears in a second collection, that parallel is shown too. Two independent references are more useful than one.
- The narrating companion is named where the narration identifies one.
- The Arabic is shown only where we hold it with confidence. An approximated Arabic text presented as the wording of a narration would be a fabrication even when the meaning is right, so the field is left empty instead.
How grading is handled
Every card shows a grading, and the grading is never omitted to make a narration look stronger than it is.
- Sahih — authentic. Narrations from Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim carry this by the standing of those two collections; elsewhere it reflects an established grading.
- Hasan — sound, a grade below sahih, and acceptable as evidence in the ordinary run of things.
- Da‘if — weak. A weak narration is labelled weak on its own card. It is not deleted where it is widely circulated, because a reader who meets it elsewhere is better served by finding it here with the problem named than by finding nothing.
- Graded differently by scholars — where there is a real difference of assessment, the card says so and names the issue rather than picking a side.
Fabricated narrations are not published at all, except where the misattribution itself is the point being made.
When a narration is disputed
Hadith criticism is a discipline with its own methods, and specialists have reached different conclusions about particular chains for a very long time. A difference between two qualified gradings is not a mistake by one of them.
If you find a narration on this site graded differently by a scholar you follow, the practical answer is the ordinary one: follow the scholarship you trust, and treat what is written here as a pointer to the source rather than as a verdict. This site does not grade hadith itself. It reports established gradings and says when they conflict.
What is kept out
- Qur’an verses. They are cited by surah and verse across the site and are never mixed into the hadith bank.
- Statements of scholars and general Islamic sayings, which are not narrations from the Prophet.
- Anything whose source cannot be traced to a collection.
Reporting a problem
A wrong number, a text that is not in the cited source, or a grading stated too confidently is worth reporting. The Corrections page explains what to send. A correction that names the collection and number you checked gets acted on quickly.
Published Reviewed against the standards in our editorial policy.