إسناد
Isnād
The chain of narrators by which a report is traced back to its source.
What it means
“The chain is part of the religion,” said Abd Allah ibn al-Mubarak, “and without the chain anyone could say what he liked” (quoted in the introduction to Sahih Muslim). Ibn Sirin said that at first people did not ask about chains, but after the civil strife of the first century they said, “Name your men.”
This produced a large literature on the narrators: who they were, where they lived, whom they met, how good their memory was and whether they were honest.
Often misunderstood as
That Muslims accepted reports without any checking.
What the sources say
Whatever one concludes about the method, it was a deliberate attempt to test reports by their sources, and it was applied to the most revered figures as well as to unknowns. A report might be rejected because one narrator in the chain was unreliable, however attractive its content.