The Significance of Hadith: Understanding the Quran Through Prophetic Teach

(Not translated).

📖 Forty Hadith
✍️ by: Dr. Mohammad Akram Nadwi
📍 Oxford

🌟 Why You Don’t Always Understand Technical Texts
There is a reason why, when you read a very technical text, you don’t understand it. Even if most of the words used are familiar to you, the presence of technical terms makes it incomprehensible. These specialised words don’t connect with anything known in your world.
💡 If this technical text is an instruction or explanation, someone will need to explain the terms for you to understand and follow the instruction properly.

🧑‍🏫 But, if you have a teacher who explains and demonstrates, you’re more likely to understand it correctly.

📜 Understanding the Qur’an
The Qur’an, if you know Arabic, isn’t incomprehensible like a technical text. But, if you want to fully grasp its instructions, its meaning, and how to lead a good life, you’ll benefit from teaching, training, and practical demonstration.
📚 That’s why the great Imams have said that the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ is a second revelation, accompanying and exemplifying the Qur’an.

📖 The Role of Sunnah & Hadith
The Qur’an was revealed in a real, historical world, shared by the Prophet’s Companions. The best record we have of the interaction between Revelation and the real world is the corpus of Prophetic hadiths.
🙏 We should thank Allah that our great ancestors didn’t build monuments, but instead built up a reliable scholarly record of what the Prophet ﷺ said and did.

👶 Analogy of Naming a Child
Think of it like this: when a new child is named, everyone knows and uses that name. Over time, even after the witnesses die, the name remains established in the community based on the authority of the original occasion.
Similarly, the meaning of the Qur’an’s message depends on the first witnesses – the Prophet ﷺ and his Companions – and is sustained by the corpus of hadiths.

🔑 The Importance of Hadith
The hadiths are the most authoritative account of the intent, scope, and meaning of the Revelation. All subsequent Islamic knowledge depends on and is secondary to it.

💬 Famous Hadith of Hanzalah
In a famous hadith, the Companion Hanzalah said to the Prophet ﷺ: “When I’m with you, the hereafter is vivid to me, but when I return to my family, it fades away.”
The Prophet ﷺ didn’t criticise him. Instead, he said: “There is a time for this, and a time for that.”
This hadith reminds us that reflecting on hadith helps us imagine being in the company of the Prophet ﷺ, who had full certainty of God and the hereafter.

📚 Why Study Hadith?
Most people can’t read hadith all the time, and most of us aren’t scholars. However, the need for hadith isn’t any less for that. To make it easier, scholars compiled short selections from the hadith. One of the most famous is Imam Nawawi’s Forty Hadith.