ABSTRACT
One of the major sources of Islamic jurisprudence is the Sunnah. The world literally means “tradition,” and is used to describe the actual way in which the prophet Muhammad lived his life. The Sunnah is secondary only to the Qur’an in terms of importance. Hadith, in contrast, is a narration, a tale reported by reliable witnesses of the life of the prophet as opposed to his life. Still, there is great similarity between the two, and they differ mostly in regard to their methods of transmission. The University of Southern California’s (USC) online compendium of
Muslim texts, an important electronic database, provides the following definition of hadith:
According to [scholars of hadith] it stands for ‘what was transmitted on the authority of the Prophet, his deeds, sayings, tacit approval or description of his [features] meaning his physical appearance … thus, hadith literature means the literature which consists of the narrations of the life of the prophet and the things approved by him. However, the term was used sometimes in much broader sense to cover the narrations about the Companions [of the prophet] and Successors as well.1
