Categories of Hadith a khabar and, therefore, a hadith can be a true report or a concoction. It is on the basis of this premise that the Muslim scholars hold that a hadith offers a "ẓannī" (inconclusive/probably true) evidence. It is as though a hadith may have many possibilities on the plane of reliability. In one of the major works in the science of hadith, Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi has divided the individual narratives in the following categories, according to their epistemic value: Categories of Hadith Different categories of hadith (sayings attributed to the Islamic prophet Muhammad) have been used by various scholars. Experts in
Criticism of Hadith According to Racha El Omari, early Mutazilites believed that hadith were susceptible to "abuse as a polemical ideological tool"; that the "matn" (content) of the hadith -- not just the "isnad" -- ought to be scrutinized for doctrine and clarity; that hadith "supported by some form of "tawātur"", i.e. by a large number of "isnād" strands, each beginning with a different Companion, were valid. In writing about "mutawatir" (transmitted via numerous chains of narrators) and "ahad" (any ahadith that is not "mutawatir") and its importance from the legal theoretician's point of view, Wael Hallaq notes the medieval scholar Al-Nawawi argued