الإمام النووي وأربعونه

A hadith is a saying, an action or an approval of the Prophet ﷺ, passed on down to us. With the Qur'an, hadiths are the second source of Islam: they explain the Qur'an and show how to live it.

How a hadith reaches us. Every hadith has two parts: • The chain of transmission (isnaad): "So-and-so told me, from so-and-so, from so-and-so, that the Prophet ﷺ said…". • The text (matn): what the Prophet ﷺ said or did. Hadith scholars studied each transmitter (was he honest? did he have a good memory? did he really meet the person he reports from?) in order to grade hadiths. The two main accepted grades are "ṣaḥiiḥ" (authentic) and "ḥasan" (good). A "ḍa'iif" (weak) hadith is not a sure basis.

The great collections. The best known are those of Al-Bukhaarii and Muslim (the two "Ṣaḥiiḥ"), then those of Abu Daawud, At-Tirmidhii, An-Nasaa'ii and Ibn Maajah. In this course, each hadith is given with its collection and number, for example "Bukhari 1".

Imam An-Nawawi. Yaḥyaa ibn Sharaf An-Nawawii was a great scholar of Damascus, born in Nawaa, in Syria, who died young, around the year 676 AH (1277) [À VÉRIFIER : dates]. He is known for his piety, his simple life and his books, such as "Riyaaḍ aṣ-Ṣaaliḥiin" and his commentary on Ṣaḥiiḥ Muslim.

The "Forty". He gathered short hadiths that each contain a great principle of the religion. The collection is called "the Forty", but it actually has forty-two. For centuries, students have learned it by heart, often right after the Qur'an. In this course, we study ten of them, chosen among the best known.

How to work: read the hadith, learn the key sentence (in Arabic if you can), understand its meaning, then answer the "And you?" question honestly. A hadith learned but never lived is only half learned.

And you? Do you already know a hadith by heart? Where did you learn it, and has it ever changed anything in the way you act?

Understanding the lesson

Explanation Why so much effort over chains of transmission? Because attributing a saying to the Prophet ﷺ is a serious matter: we say "the Prophet ﷺ said", and people will act on that saying. The scholar 'Abdullah ibn al-Mubarak said: "The chain of transmission is part of the religion; without it, anyone would say whatever they wanted." (quoted by Muslim in the introduction to his Sahih)

This concerns us directly today. On social media, many "hadiths" circulate without a source, some of them made up. Allah says: "O you who believe, if an unreliable person brings you news, verify it" (meaning of part of 49:6). Before sharing a hadith, we check its source, or ask someone who knows.

Why short hadiths? The Prophet ﷺ was given the gift of "concise words" (jawami' al-kalim): few words, much meaning (Bukhari 7013, Muslim 523 [À VÉRIFIER : numéros]). That is what makes the Forty easy to learn and deep to reflect on.

Lessons to draw from it • We don't share a hadith without knowing its source: we check, or we ask. • We respect the work of the scholars who preserved the hadiths over centuries. • Memorising a short text is a good start; living by it is the real aim.

Key points to remember • A hadith = a chain (isnad) + a text (matn); accepted grades: sahih and hasan. • An-Nawawi, a scholar of Damascus (7th century AH), gathered 42 hadiths that each contain a major principle.

The main message The hadiths reached us through an immense work of verification: we learn them seriously, check them before passing them on, and put them into practice.