The Qur’an is the word of God. The Sunnah is what the Prophet ﷺ said, did and approved, and it is preserved in hadith: short reports, often just a few lines. There are tens of thousands of them, in collections that fill shelves. For anyone who wants to begin, the question is not whether, but where.
The example
The Sunnah is not an extra. The Qur’an itself points to the man it came to.
لَّقَدۡ كَانَ لَكُمۡ فِي رَسُولِ ٱللَّهِ أُسۡوَةٌ حَسَنَةٞ لِّمَن كَانَ يَرۡجُواْ ٱللَّهَ وَٱلۡيَوۡمَ ٱلۡأٓخِرَ وَذَكَرَ ٱللَّهَ كَثِيرٗا
There has certainly been for you in the Messenger of Allah an excellent pattern for anyone whose hope is in Allah and the Last Day and [who] remembers Allah often
The Qur’an says to pray; the Sunnah shows how. The Qur’an says to pay zakat; the Sunnah says how much and on what. And it keeps what no law code covers: how he spoke to children, what he said when he woke up, how he welcomed guests.
How it was preserved
Every hadith has two parts: the chain and the text.
The Companions learned hadith by heart and passed them on, and the Prophet ﷺ encouraged them to:
نَضَّرَ اللَّهُ امْرَأً سَمِعَ مِنَّا حَدِيثًا فَحَفِظَهُ حَتَّى يُبَلِّغَهُ غَيْرَهُ فَرُبَّ حَامِلِ فِقْهٍ إِلَى مَنْ هُوَ أَفْقَهُ مِنْهُ وَرُبَّ حَامِلِ فِقْهٍ لَيْسَ بِفَقِيهٍ
“May God make radiant a man who hears a hadith from us and memorises it until he conveys it to others. Many carry knowledge to someone who understands it better than they do, and many carry knowledge without understanding it themselves.”
Each hadith is told with an isnād, a chain of names: A heard from B, who heard from C, all the way back to the Prophet ﷺ. Then comes the matn, the text itself. Hadith scholars examined every link: was the man honest, was his memory good, did they really meet? From that, each hadith gets its grade:
- Ṣaḥīḥ, sound: the chain is unbroken and everyone in it reliable.
- Ḥasan, good: almost as strong, but someone in the chain falls a little short.
- Ḍaʿīf, weak: a flaw in the chain or the text. No ruling is built on it.
Six books
In the third century of the hijra the hadith were gathered into the collections everyone still uses.
Six collections are called al-kutub as-sitta, the six books. The number is the numbering on sunnah.com; some collections count the same hadith more than once, in different chapters or with different chains.
| Book | Compiler, died | Numbers | Known for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī | al-Bukhārī, 256 AH | 7,563 | Only hadith he judged sound; held to be the most reliable book after the Qur’an |
| Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim | Muslim, 261 AH | 3,033 | Also only sound hadith; gathers all the chains of a hadith in one place |
| Sunan Abī Dāwūd | Abū Dāwūd, 275 AH | 5,274 | Hadith on the law: prayer, fasting, trade |
| Jāmiʿ at-Tirmidhī | at-Tirmidhī, 279 AH | 3,956 | Grades each hadith himself and reports the scholars’ views |
| Sunan an-Nasāʾī | an-Nasāʾī, 303 AH | 5,758 | Strict on chains; held to have the fewest weak hadith after the two Sahihs |
| Sunan Ibn Mājah | Ibn Mājah, 273 AH | 4,341 | Has hadith the others lack, but also more weak ones |
Two older collections stand beside them: al-Muwaṭṭaʾ by Mālik (179 AH), one of the oldest that survives, and al-Musnad by Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (241 AH), a huge collection ordered by the Companions who narrated.
“Sahih” in a book’s title means the author took only what he judged sound. The other collections contain hadith of every grade, and sunnah.com shows the scholars’ grade beside each one.
Where to start?
Not with Bukhārī. With forty hadith.
Most teachers recommend the same path, from small to larger:
- An-Nawawī’s Forty Hadith (al-Arbaʿūn an-Nawawiyya). Actually 42 hadith, chosen in the 7th century of the hijra by Yaḥyā an-Nawawī (676 AH) because each is a foundation of the faith. The hadith of Jibril is the second. The book opens with this one:
إِنَّمَا الْأَعْمَالُ بِالنِّيَّاتِ، وَإِنَّمَا لِكُلِّ امْرِئٍ مَا نَوَى
“Deeds are only by intentions, and every person will have only what they intended.”
- Riyāḍ aṣ-Ṣāliḥīn, “the gardens of the righteous” (sunnah.com/riyadussalihin). Also by an-Nawawī: 1,896 hadith in chapters on sincerity, patience, good conduct, parents, neighbours and prayer. Most chapters open with verses of the Qur’an. This is the book many families read together, a chapter an evening.
- Books about his person: ash-Shamāʾil by at-Tirmidhī (sunnah.com/shamail) describes his appearance, clothing, food and laughter, and al-Adab al-Mufrad by al-Bukhārī (sunnah.com/adab) collects hadith on conduct: towards parents, neighbours, guests and children.
- Bulūgh al-Marām by Ibn Ḥajar (852 AH) (sunnah.com/bulugh): the hadith the law is built on, arranged like a fiqh book. Best read with a teacher.
- Then the great collections, Bukhārī and Muslim, ideally with a commentary.
And for daily life: Ḥiṣn al-Muslim (sunnah.com/hisn), a small book of duas for morning, evening, meals and travel. Many of them are on the duas page here.
A few tips
- Read explanations. A hadith is short, but its context matters: when it was said, to whom, and what other hadith say on the same subject.
- Check the grade. sunnah.com shows it beside each hadith. A weak hadith may be beautiful, but it is no basis for a ruling.
- Don’t build rulings on a single hadith on your own. Scholars read every hadith in the light of the Qur’an and all the others. Ask an imam when the question is about what you should do.
- In Icelandic the collections don’t exist yet. sunnah.com has the Arabic text and an English translation; the hadith on this site are translated straight from the Arabic.