How a hadith reaches you
Hadith scholars reviewed this page before it was published (29 October 2026).
Every hadith in the books comes with a chain of narrators, the isnad: the people through whom it reached the compiler, each naming the one he received it from. The chain is how a hadith reaches you. This page follows one hadith along its chains.
The hadith
It is the first hadith in al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ. Its Arabic there reads:
إِنَّمَا الْأَعْمَالُ بِالنِّيَّاتِ، وَإِنَّمَا لِكُلِّ امْرِئٍ مَا نَوَى، فَمَنْ كَانَتْ هِجْرَتُهُ إِلَى دُنْيَا يُصِيبُهَا أَوْ إِلَى امْرَأَةٍ يَنْكِحُهَا، فَهِجْرَتُهُ إِلَى مَا هَاجَرَ إِلَيْهِ
In the translation of HadeethEnc (which also gives the fuller wording found in other places):
‘Umar ibn al-Khattāb (may Allah be pleased with him) reported: The Messenger of Allah (may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him) said: "Verily, the reward of deeds depends on the intention, and a person will be rewarded according to what he intended. So, he whose migration is for the sake of Allah and His Messenger, then his migration is for the sake of Allah and His Messenger, and he whose migration is to achieve some worldly gain or take some woman in marriage, then his migration is for what he migrated for." In a version by Al-Bukhāri: "Verily, the reward of deeds depends on the intentions, and each person will be rewarded according to what he intended."
HadeethEnc: صحيح
— [Authentic] [Agreed upon]
Translation: HadeethEnc.com — Encyclopedia of Translated Prophetic Hadiths, by Rowad Translation Center; published by the Islamic Propagation Office in Rabwah. English, version v1.25.0. Full entry with explanation: https://hadeethenc.com/en/browse/hadith/4560
One chain, link by link
al-Bukhārī wrote down who told him, and who told that person, back to the Prophet ﷺ:
حَدَّثَنَا الْحُمَيْدِيُّ عَبْدُ اللَّهِ بْنُ الزُّبَيْرِ، قَالَ: حَدَّثَنَا سُفْيَانُ، قَالَ: حَدَّثَنَا يَحْيَى بْنُ سَعِيدٍ الْأَنْصَارِيُّ، قَالَ: أَخْبَرَنِي مُحَمَّدُ بْنُ إِبْرَاهِيمَ التَّيْمِيُّ، أَنَّهُ سَمِعَ عَلْقَمَةَ بْنَ وَقَّاصٍ اللَّيْثِيَّ، يَقُولُ: سَمِعْتُ عُمَرَ بْنَ الْخَطَّابِ رَضِيَ اللَّهُ عَنْهُ عَلَى الْمِنْبَرِ، قَالَ: سَمِعْتُ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ، يَقُولُ
Read from the top down, the chain is:
- the Prophet ﷺ said it;
- ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb heard it, and later said it from the pulpit;
- ʿAlqama ibn Waqqāṣ al-Laythī heard it from ʿUmar;
- Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Taymī heard it from ʿAlqama;
- Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-Anṣārī heard it from Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm;
- Sufyān (Ibn ʿUyayna; see below) heard it from Yaḥyā;
- al-Ḥumaydī ʿAbdullāh ibn al-Zubayr heard it from Sufyān and told al-Bukhārī.
The words between the names matter too. «حدثنا» and «أخبرني» say «he told us», «he informed me»; «سمعت» says «I heard». They record how each person received the words.
A single line for four links
Now put the hadith's other chains beside this one. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ (d. 643 AH) describes what they show:
فإنه حديث فرد تفرد به عمر ﵁ عن رسول الله ﷺ، ثم تفرد به عن عمر علقمة بن وقاص، ثم عن علقمة محمد بن إبراهيم، ثم عنه يحيى بن سعيد على ما هو الصحيح عند أهل الحديث.
It is a solitary hadith: ʿUmar alone narrates it from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, then ʿAlqama ibn Waqqāṣ alone from ʿUmar, then Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm alone from ʿAlqama, then Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd alone from him, according to what is correct among the hadith scholars. (Muqaddima, p. 77; translation ours)
Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ: «الحديث الذي يتفرد به بعض الرواة يوصف بالغريب», «a hadith that one of the narrators narrates alone is called gharīb», solitary (Muqaddima, p. 270; translation ours).
Then it becomes a tree
From Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd onwards the picture changes. In just the six books listed below, at least ten of his students pass it on: Mālik, Sufyān ibn ʿUyayna, Sufyān al-Thawrī, Ḥammād ibn Zayd, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Thaqafī, al-Layth ibn Saʿd, Yazīd ibn Hārūn, ʿAbdullāh ibn al-Mubārak, Abū Khālid al-Aḥmar Sulaymān ibn Ḥayyān and Ḥafṣ ibn Ghiyāth. Their students in turn pass it to the compilers.
Two of them are called simply «Sufyān» in the chains. Ibn Ḥajar names them in his commentary on al-Bukhārī. On no. 1: «قوله: (حدثنا سفيان) هو ابن عيينة», «"Sufyān narrated to us": he is Ibn ʿUyayna» (Fatḥ al-Bārī, vol. 1, p. 10). On no. 2529: «قوله: (عن سفيان) هو الثوري», «"from Sufyān": he is al-Thawrī»; and Abū Dāwūd took the hadith from the same teacher, «وقد أخرجه أبو داود، عن محمد بن كثير شيخ البخاري فيه», «Abū Dāwūd narrated it from Muḥammad ibn Kathīr, al-Bukhārī's teacher in it» (vol. 5, p. 161). The Sufyān in Muslim's route through Ibn Abī ʿUmar is left as written: we have not found a commentator who names him.
al-Tirmidhī noticed the same shape. After the hadith he writes:
هذا حديث حسن صحيح وقد روى مالك بن أنس، وسفيان الثوري وغير واحد من الأئمة هذا عن يحيى بن سعيد. ولا نعرفه إلا من حديث يحيى بن سعيد الأنصاري
This is a ḥasan ṣaḥīḥ hadith. Mālik ibn Anas, Sufyān al-Thawrī and more than one of the imams narrated it from Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd, and we know it only through Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-Anṣārī. (Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī 1647, ed. Shākir, ʿAbd al-Bāqī and ʿAwaḍ, vol. 4, p. 180; translation ours)
Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ gives this hadith as his example of a report whose chain is solitary at one end and well known (mashhūr) at the other:
فإن إسناده متصف بالغرابة في طرفه الأول، متصف بالشهرة في طرفه الآخر، كحديث: " إنما الأعمال بالنيات "
Its chain is solitary at its first end and well known at its other end, like the hadith «إنما الأعمال بالنيات». (Muqaddima, p. 271; translation ours)
Where it is written
| Book | Numbers |
|---|---|
| Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī | 1, 54, 2529, 3898, 5070, 6689, 6953 |
| Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim | 1907 (nine routes in one entry) |
| Sunan Abī Dāwūd | 2201 |
| Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī | 1647 |
| Sunan al-Nasāʾī | 75, 3437, 3794 |
| Sunan Ibn Mājah | 4227 |
al-Bukhārī placed it in seven chapters, and each time he heard it from a different teacher: al-Ḥumaydī, ʿAbdullāh ibn Maslama, Muḥammad ibn Kathīr, Musaddad, Yaḥyā ibn Qazaʿa, Qutayba ibn Saʿīd and Abū al-Nuʿmān.
What the shape tells you, and what it does not
«Solitary» describes the shape of a chain, not its grade. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ says that solitary reports are of two kinds, «إلى صحيح، كالأفراد المخرجة في الصحيح، وإلى غير صحيح، وذلك هو الغالب على الغريب», «the sound, like the solitary reports included in the Ṣaḥīḥ, and the unsound, which is what most solitary reports are» (Muqaddima, pp. 270–271). Of this hadith and two others he says: «فكل هذه مخرجة في الصحيحين مع أنه ليس لها إلا إسناد واحد تفرد به ثقة», «all of these are included in the two Ṣaḥīḥs, although each has only one chain, carried alone by a trustworthy narrator» (p. 78).
A single chain can be sound if its narrators are reliable and connected; more routes can strengthen a report, but counting branches alone does not decide it. The questions are about the people in it: whether each narrator was upright and precise, and whether each heard it from the one before him. These are the conditions in the definition of a sound hadith (see «Found in a book is not the same as authentic»).
The Arabic texts and chains come from Sanadset 650K (CC BY 4.0). The translation of the hadith is HadeethEnc's, unchanged. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ is quoted from the edition of Nūr al-Dīn ʿItr (Damascus, 1986), al-Tirmidhī's comment from the edition of Shākir, ʿAbd al-Bāqī and ʿAwaḍ (Cairo, 1975), and Ibn Ḥajar from Fatḥ al-Bārī (Cairo: al-Salafiyya, 1380–1390 AH), each read in turath.io's text of the printed edition on 25 or 26 October 2026; the other translations are ours.