Hadith
How We Grade Hadith on ParallelQuran
Transparency about what hadith grades mean, who issued them, and what they do not say.
What a grade actually means
A hadith grade -- Sahih (sound), Hasan (good), Da'if (weak), Mawdu' (fabricated) -- is a scholarly assessment of the chain of transmission (isnad) for one specific narration. It is not a judgment about the Prophet's words themselves. A single Prophetic saying often has multiple chains; one chain may be weak while another chain of the same saying is sound. The grade describes the route by which the saying reached us, not the saying itself.
The Companions and Sahaba 'adalah
In classical Sunni hadith scholarship, the Companions of the Prophet -- the Sahaba -- are held to be collectively upright. This doctrine, known as al-Sahaba kulluhum 'udul (all Companions are trustworthy), means no Companion's narration is rejected on grounds of personal reliability.
On this site, every Companion appears in our narrator data as Sahabi (Companion), our highest narrator grade. If you ever see a Companion graded below Sahabi, that is a data error and we appreciate corrections. We maintain an internal audit tool that flags and fixes such cases.
When a hadith narrated by a Companion is graded Da'if, the weakness lies further down the chain -- in a later transmitter, in a break in the chain, or in a contradiction with stronger reports -- not in the Companion who originally narrated from the Prophet.
Whose assessment are you reading?
Where possible, we show the specific scholar who issued each grade -- for example, al-Albani, Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut, or the Darussalam editorial board. Different scholars sometimes assess the same chain differently. We display all the assessments we have rather than pick a winner.
When the original source records only a traditional grade without naming a specific scholar, we label it 'Traditional grade' so you know an attribution-level detail is missing from our data.
Sahihayn: the consensus around Bukhari and Muslim
The overwhelming Sunni scholarly consensus holds that every hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim with a complete, connected chain is sound. A small minority of respected scholars -- al-Daraqutni in the classical period, al-Albani in the modern period -- have raised technical critiques of specific narrations within these collections, but they have not undermined the authenticity of the underlying Prophetic traditions, which almost always have multiple supporting chains.
What we are not doing
We are not declaring any hadith authentic or inauthentic on our own authority. We are surfacing the scholarly record so you can see who said what, and why. If you act on a hadith for ritual or legal purposes, please consult a qualified scholar in your tradition.
Per-mode display
You can change how much grading detail appears using the View As selector in the site header. Kids and Family mode hides grading vocabulary entirely. New to Islam mode hides grade chips while browsing but shows them with full disclosure on the detail page. Everyone shows attributed grades by default. Scholar mode shows all per-scholar grades without softening.
Errata and corrections
Found a grading that looks wrong, or attribution that is missing? Get in touch. We maintain audit tools to fix systematic errors and welcome targeted reports.