Method
Where we search
We search the Arabic text of these books:
- Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārīصحيح البخاري
- Ṣaḥīḥ Muslimصحيح مسلم
- Sunan Abī Dāwūdسنن أبي داود
- Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhīجامع الترمذي
- Sunan al-Nasāʾīسنن النسائي (المجتبى)
- Sunan Ibn Mājahسنن ابن ماجه
- al-Muwaṭṭaʾموطأ مالك (رواية يحيى بن يحيى الليثي)
- Musnad Aḥmadمسند أحمد بن حنبل
- Sunan al-Dārimīسنن الدارمي
Report numbers are the reference numbers that sunnah.com uses for each book. We have not checked them against the printed editions. Our data has no such numbers yet for Musnad Aḥmad, so its reports show their Sanadset entry numbers. These are not the numbers of a printed edition. A few reports in the other books have no such number in our data either. They also show their Sanadset entry numbers.
What “found” means
The wording of your text matches a report in one of these books. We show the book, the number, the Arabic text and the chain of narrators as the book gives them. Gold marks show the words that match.
What “partial” means
Part of your text matches a report and part does not. We mark the part that is not in the report we found. Messages that circulate online sometimes take a hadith that is in the books and add a reward, a threat or a “share this” line to it.
What “not found” means
We did not find your text in these books. That does not settle whether it is a hadith: it may be in a book we do not search, its wording may differ a lot, or it may be one of the reports missing from our copy of these books (a few hundred numbers in all, including most of the introduction of Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim). Ask a scholar you trust before you share it.
The Quran
If your text is from the Quran, we say so and give the sura and the verse. The verse text comes from the Tanzil Project.
Why we give no verdicts
Grading a report is the work of hadith scholars. We quote what graders said, with each grader’s name, and we add no grade of our own.
For a report in the main body of Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī or Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, we say that the compiler included it in his Ṣaḥīḥ. Each compiler meant the main body of his Ṣaḥīḥ to hold only reports he judged authentic by his own conditions, so the sentence reports his decision, not ours. The introduction (muqaddima) of Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, and the reports a Ṣaḥīḥ quotes with the start of the chain left out (muʿallaq), are not part of that main body, and we mark them.
Translations
We show a translation only when its licence allows it. Otherwise we link to the hadith on sunnah.com, where most books have an English translation. We never show a machine translation of a hadith or a verse.
The translation step
We search the Arabic text. If your text is in another language, we first search HadeethEnc’s translations of widely circulated hadith in that language, where it has them. If nothing close is found there, you can choose the translation step: an automatic translation service turns the key words of your text into Arabic search words. We use only the words that occur in the books we search. The service never writes any text that appears on this site.
Chains of narrators
We draw each chain from the names as written in the book. Where several books carry the same report, we merge their chains only where the names are spelled alike, letter for letter (vowel marks aside). A chain reaches “the Prophet ﷺ” only when the text explicitly attributes the words to him. Otherwise the chain ends with the last narrator it names.