isnad

Isnad, from the Arabic isnād, literally means “support” or “backing.” In Islamic hadith studies, it is the chain of narrators who transmit a report, and it accompanies the matn (the text) to establish the report’s provenance and assess its reliability. A typical isnad begins with a narrator who reports from someone higher in the chain and ends with the Prophet Muhammad or another known transmitter source. The standard form is a sequence such as “X reported from Y, who reported from Z, …, who reported from the Prophet.”

The isnad serves as a tool of verification. Along with the matn, it allows scholars to evaluate credibility. The science of hadith criticism, or uloom al-hadith, analyzes the chain’s integrity by examining each narrator’s memory, accuracy, honesty, and reliability. The discipline uses terms such as rijal (biographies of narrators), adalat (trustworthiness), and dabt (precision). Weak or unknown narrators, breaks in the chain, or inconsistent reports can render the isnad daif (weak) or even maudu (fabricated).

Classification often hinges on the chain’s completeness and the reliability of its transmitters. If the chain is uninterrupted and the narrators are judged reliable, the hadith may be classified as sahih (sound) or hasan (good); otherwise it may be daif (weak).

Historically, developments in the 2nd and 3rd centuries hijri saw the emergence of rigorous isnad-based evaluation, culminating in major collections by scholars such as al-Bukhari and Muslim. Shi’a scholarship likewise developed its own isnad methods. Today, isnad remains central to assessing hadith authenticity in both Sunni and Shi’a traditions, serving as a key tool for source criticism and historical reconstruction. Isnad is also used in other Islamic sciences to denote chains of authorities.