Hadith speech of a person. In Islamic terminology, according to Juan Campo, the term "hadith" refers to reports of statements or actions of Muhammad, or of his tacit approval or criticism of something said or done in his presence. Classical hadith specialist Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani says that the intended meaning of "hadith" in religious tradition is something attributed to Muhammad but that is not found in the Quran. Scholar Patricia Crone includes reports by others than Muhammad in her definition of hadith — "short reports (sometimes just a line or two) recording what an early figure, such as a companion of
Criticism of Hadith to be obsessed with isr’iliyyat, i.e. tales from Jewish lore about earlier prophets. According to author Israr Ahmed Khan, traditional methods used to establish authenticity of hadith rely almost entirely on the personal characters of the reported narrators, and fail to pay enough attention to the actual content of the hadith being evaluated. Among the problems he sees in the traditional hadith analysis are: the inability of some narrators to maintain preciseness of the report, textual conflicts among reports, ignoring textual analysis when the hadith was reported by a narrator of good character, and probability of fabrication of hadith. Related