The foundations of Sunni Islam were built upon a sea of forged traditions. By the mid-9th century CE, the compilers of the Kutub al-Sittah (Six Books) sifted through millions of reports attributed to the Prophet. What they found was damning: nearly ninety-nine percent of these reports were rejected as fabrications, exposing a religious culture flooded with false attributions that later became the cornerstone of Sunni orthodoxy.
Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 855 CE) is attributed with preserving any Hadith that he believed was not fabricated, and is said to have reviewed some 750,000 Hadith. Yet, his Musnad contains only approximately 30,000—meaning he considered over 700,000 reports to be fabricated. Similarly, al-Bukhari (d. 870 CE), the most revered Hadith collector in Sunni Islam, is said to have examined around 600,000 reports, yet accepted only 7,563 (about 1.26%) as authentic. His contemporary Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj (d. 875 CE) recorded a similar process: from 300,000 reports, he accepted just over 4,000. Other compilers such as Ibn Majah, al-Tirmidhi, Abu Dawood, and al-Nasa’i reached the same conclusion, discarding over 98% of what they collected. The math is inescapable—if these collectors are to be believed, then the overwhelming majority of Hadith circulating in the centuries after the Prophet were forged.
The enormity of this fact becomes even clearer when we examine reports about the sheer volume of Hadith memorized and transmitted. In An Introduction to Sahih Bukhari, Authors Biography, Recensions, and Manuscripts, Mustafa Al-Azami cites a tradition from Tarikh Bukhara (History of Bukhara) in which Bukhari is quoted as saying:
“I wrote from over a thousand teachers, and from each teacher over ten thousand hadiths. I remember the chain for every hadith that I know.”
If we are to trust Bukhari and his word, this would mean Bukhari wrote and memorized over ten million Hadith—an absolutely impossible number, but a telling example of just how many fabricated reports were in circulation. It underscores the sheer chaos of early Hadith transmission, where invention far outpaced authenticity. Ironically, the discipline of Hadith criticism itself was not initially embraced; it was often dismissed or resisted until the overwhelming flood of fabrications in the 10th century forced scholars to confront the problem.
Origins of Forgery in Early Islam
Hadith forgery was widely acknowledged to have begun early in Islamic history, especially after the murder of Caliph ‘Uthman, which fractured the unity of the Muslim community and gave rise to sectarian groups like the Shi‘a, Kharijites, and Mu‘tazila. Political rivalries, territorial expansion, and the influx of non-Arab converts created fertile ground for fabrications, which spread widely by the end of the first Muslim generation in Medina.
Scholars differ on when forgery began: some trace it to the caliphate of ‘Uthman, others to the conflict between ‘Ali and Mu‘awiya around 40 AH, and some even to Abu Bakr’s wars of apostasy. Regardless, political and religious disputes drove factions to justify their positions through distorted interpretations or outright inventions of hadith.
The following excerpt is from Chapter 7, entitled “ Hadith Forgery,” from the book “ A Textbook of Hadith Studies,” by Mohammad Hashim Kamali, which observes that historically, large-scale hadith forgeries are generally traced to the Umayyad dynasty.
“Extensive forgery in hadith was commonly known and acknowledged to have occurred in the early decades of the advent of Islam. It is believed to have begun following the turmoil over the murder of the third caliph, ‘Uthman, which dealt a heavy blow to the unity of the umma. This momentous event is held responsible for the emergence of serious political differences and partisan groups such as Shi’a, Kharijites and Mu’tazila, as well as the onset of forgery in hadith. Hadith forgery was to a large extent an epiphenomenon of these developments and the conflicts they precipitated eventually led to the collapse of the early caliphate barely forty years after its inception….
“Hadith forgery has not been confined to isolated cases but took rather a wide dimension barely before the end of the first generation of Muslims in Madina. A part of this phenomenon has been associated with the expansion of territorial domains of the Islamic state and the ever-increasing number of new immigrants of Persians, Romans, Egyptians, Syrians and others were easy to prey to misguided influences against hadith.”
“The historical origins of forgery in hadith are somewhat uncertain. While some observers have given the caliphate of ‘Uthman as a starting point, others have dated it a little later, at around the year 40 hijra, when political differences between the fourth caliph, ‘Ali, and the governor of al-Sham, Mu’awiya, led to military confrontation and division of the Muslims into various factions. According to a third view, forgery in hadith started even earlier, that is, during the caliphate of Abu Bakr when he waged war of apostasy (ridda) against the refuses of zakah. But the year 40 is considered the more likely starting point for the development of serious and persistent differences in the communit y. Muslims were thus divided and hostility between them acquired a religious dimension when they began to use the Qur’an and Sunna in support of their claims. When the misguided elements among them failed to find any authority in the sources for their views, they either imposed a distorted interpretation on the source materials, or embarked on outright fabrication.”
“Forgery in hadith is believed to have begun in the context of personality cults (fad’il al-ashkhas) which aimed to credit or discredit leading political figures with exaggerated claims. An example of this is the following statement attributed to the Prophet: “Whoever wishes to behold Adam for his knowledge, Noah for his piety, Abraham for his gentleness, Moses for his commanding presence and Jesus for his devotion to worship – let him behold ‘Ali.
“Political differences between ‘Ali and Abu Bakr, ‘Ali and Mu’awiya, and ‘Ali and ‘A’isha, between ‘Abd Allah b. Zubayr and ‘Abd al-Malik b. Marwan, and generally between the Umayyads and ‘Abbasids were among the causes of hadith forgery. Numerous ahadith have thus been recorded in condemnation of Mu’awiy including, for example, the one in which the Prophet is quoted to have ordered the Muslims “When you see Mu’awiya on my pulpit, kill him.” The fanatical supporters of Mu’awiya and the Umayyad dynasty are, on th other hand, known to have fabricated hadith such as “The trusted ones are three: I, Gabriel and Mu’awiya.”
From the very first centuries of Islam, political rivalries fueled the mass production of forged hadith. By the late 1100s, Muslim scholars had become so inundated with fabrications that they adopted a sweeping principle: any hadith entering circulation that had not already been recorded in an earlier book was to be automatically dismissed as a forgery.
Different Kinds of Forgeries
The history of hadith transmission is inseparable from the history of fabrication. Muslim scholars themselves, in their works of hadith criticism, catalogued numerous examples of sayings that were invented, altered, or misattributed, often with far-reaching theological, political, and social consequences. The forgeries were not random but typically fell into distinct categories, reflecting the motivations of those who propagated them. Four broad groups of fabricators are repeatedly identified in the historical record: heretics, sectarian partisans, storytellers, and pious traditionalists. Together, these groups were responsible for producing tens of thousands of false reports attributed to the Prophet Muhammad.
Heretical Forgeries (Zanādiqa)
One of the earliest and most notorious categories of hadith forgers were the zanādiqa, often associated with Manichean, Persians, or dualist leanings. Their forgeries were deliberate acts of sabotage against the Muslim community. According to the testimony of the early scholar Hammad ibn Zayd, these heretics fabricated fourteen thousand traditions in the name of the Prophet. Among the most infamous was ʿAbd al-Karim ibn Abi’l-Arjaʾ, who alone was said to have forged four thousand hadiths in the name of the Prophet in a bid to declare the lawful as unlawful and the unlawful as lawful. Ibn Saba’, a Jew who apparently embraced Islam and traveled widely throughout the Muslim empire, fabricated a number of traditions in the name of ht Prophet and circulated them among the Muslims. Another figure confessed under interrogation by the Abbasid caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd to forging a thousand hadiths before being executed.
These heretical inventions were not subtle interpolations but wholesale fabrications designed to corrupt Islamic teaching and practice. The sheer scale of these efforts demonstrates how vulnerable the hadith corpus was in its formative centuries and how easily sayings could be manufactured and circulated as prophetic truth.
Sectarian and Political Forgeries
If the zanādiqa (heretics) forged hadiths to undermine Islam, the sectarians and partisans forged them to advance their own causes. These were more insidious because they came from within the Muslim community itself, often cloaked in religious devotion. Political factions, theological sects, and even legal schools produced hadiths to bolster their leaders, doctrines, or parties.
One of the earliest forms of forgery took shape in fadā’il al-ashkhās (personality cults), where the virtues of certain figures were exaggerated. Reports were attributed to the Prophet equating ʿAlī with earlier prophets, or exalting Muʿāwiya to near-prophetic status. Rivalries between ʿAlī, Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUthmān, ʿĀʾisha, Muʿāwiya, Ibn al-Zubayr, and later the Umayyads and Abbasids, all generated their own body of forged sayings.
The question of succession after Muhammad’s death became the first great crisis of the community. Supporters of ʿAlī claimed that the Prophet had designated him his successor, while others upheld the legitimacy of the first three caliphs. Both Sunnis and Shiʿa invoked the same reports but interpreted them differently. For example, both sides cited the famous saying, “ʿAlī is to me what Aaron was to Moses,” though they drew opposite conclusions from it. At the same time, counter-reports emerged to neutralize these claims. ʿĀʾisha, for instance, was cited denying that the Prophet had left any will for ʿAlī, yet other reports hint toward the opposite.
It was narrated that ‘Aishah said: “They say that the Prophet (ﷺ) made a will for ‘Ali, [1] but he called for a basin in which to urinate, then he went flaccid suddenly (and died), so how could he leave a will?!”
The Shaikh said: Azhar (one of the narrators) is Ibn Sa’d As-Samman.
[1] Meaning, appointing him as the Khalifah.
In this climate of division, hadith became a weapon of war. Partisans of ʿAlī fabricated a report in which the Prophet allegedly said: “If you see Muʿāwiya ascend my pulpit, then kill him.” Muʿāwiya’s supporters retaliated with fabrications of their own, such as: “It is as if Muʿāwiya were sent as a prophet because of his forbearance and trustworthiness with God’s word.” According to the historian al-Madāʾinī (d. 843 CE), Muʿāwiya himself even promoted the circulation of hadiths that praised other caliphs and Companions—always at ʿAlī’s expense.
This shows that hadith forgery was not accidental or peripheral. From the first civil wars onward, sayings attributed to the Prophet served as political propaganda, legitimizing rulers and demonizing rivals. It is telling, then, that the most widely transmitted hadith after the Quran is the warning: “Whoever lies about me, let him prepare his seat in the Hellfire.” The irony is that even this report is disputed—did it apply only to intentional lies, or to unintentional ones as well?
Virtually every major political conflict in Islamic history produced forged hadith. Examples abound:
One report has Muhammad allegedly telling his uncle al-ʿAbbās (ancestor of the Abbasid dynasty) that “From your descendants, a number like the Pleiades will rule the Muslim community.” This prophecy conveniently supported the Abbasid claim to power.
In a forged Shiʿite hadith, the Prophet supposedly predicted that “al-Ḥusayn will be killed sixty years after my emigration to Medina,” retroactively validating the tragedy of Karbala (680 CE) as a foretold event.
Even centuries later, hadith were weaponized. In the 12th century, an opponent of the Seljuq sultan Sanjar forged a report in which Muhammad allegedly predicted, “Sanjar will be the last of the non-Arab kings; he will live eighty years and then die of hunger.”
Fabrications continued well into modern times. As late as the 1990s, one Arab scholar claimed to discover a hadith predicting that “a leader whose name is derived from the word ‘tree’ (Bush) will invade and liberate a small hill fort (Kuwait).”
These examples reveal that hadith forgery was not accidental or isolated — it was a deliberate, ongoing tool of power, politics, and polemics, stretching from the earliest caliphal disputes to modern geopolitics.
For example, al-Muhallab (d. 702), a general and adversary of the Khawārij, confessed to forging traditions against them. ʿAwāna ibn al-Hakam (d. 774) and other partisans concocted pro-Umayyad traditions, while Abū’l-ʿAynāʾ Muhammad ibn al-Qāsim forged hadiths to support the claims of the ʿAlid party. Al-Talqānī (d. 922), a leading Murjiʾite, fabricated reports justifying the doctrines of his sect. Ghayyāth ibn Ibrāhīm invented traditions to flatter the caliph al-Mahdī, even altering prophetic sayings to please his patron. Muqātil ibn Sulaymān expressed willingness to invent traditions praising the caliph’s forefathers.
Muhammad ibn al-Hasan concocted hadiths praising ʿĀʾisha and favoring the Sunnis, while countless others forged reports extolling the virtues of specific tribes, towns, or rulers. These partisan forgeries demonstrate how hadith became a political weapon: a means to legitimize authority, glorify allies, or discredit opponents.
As Islamic legal schools crystallized and competed, fabricated hadiths were wielded as weapons of authority. In doctrinal debates, pro-Sunni fabrications emerged, such as one report declaring: “Whoever dies believing the Quran is created will meet God on Judgment Day with his head up his ass.” Likewise, in an 8th-century debate over clothing, a forged hadith appeared in which the Prophet allegedly commanded: “O people, take pants as clothing, for indeed they are the most modest of clothes, especially for your women when they leave the house.”
Legal rivalries between schools also fueled personalized fabrications. A notorious example claimed: “There will be in my community a man named Abu Hanifa, and he will be its lamp … and there will be in my community a man named Muhammad b. Idris [al-Shafiʿi] whose strife is more harmful than that of Satan.” These reports transparently served the interests of legal partisanship rather than genuine transmission.
Forgery was not confined to sectarian or legal matters — it also reflected the prejudices and chauvinisms of the day. One virulently racist hadith claimed: “The black African, when he eats his fill he fornicates, and when he gets hungry he steals.” Others projected local pride, such as the forged claim that “[The city of] Askalon [near modern-day Gaza] is one of the two Brides, from there God will resurrect people on the Day of Judgment.” Some went as far as producing entire collections, such as a “Forty Hadith” compilation forged by Ahmad b. Muhammad al-Marwazi (d. 934/5), extolling the virtues of the Iranian city of Qazvin.
Sectarian and Theological Motivations Behind Hadith Fabrication
In his classic work Ta’wīl Mukhtalif al-Ḥadīth (translated as The Interpretation of Conflicting Narrations), Ibn Qutaybah (d. 889 CE) candidly acknowledges that many Hadith circulating in his time were shaped not by genuine transmission from the Prophet, but by the theological and political agendas of various factions (pp. 92–98). He notes that each group within the early Muslim community—the Shi‘a, Khawārij, Murji’ah, Qadariyya, Jabriyya, and even the anthropomorphists (Mushabbiha)—sought to bolster its ideology by fabricating Hadith that gave divine sanction to its views. These reports were not incidental, but systematic attempts to canonize factional doctrines under the Prophet’s authority.
By tracing how each sect generated its own body of Hadith, Ibn Qutaybah provides one of the clearest early testimonies that Hadith literature was deeply entangled with partisan rivalries. What emerges from his analysis is not a single, unified prophetic voice, but a fragmented chorus of competing groups, each trying to pull the Prophet into its corner.
Shi‘a Faction (p. 92–93)
The Shi‘a were deeply invested in elevating the status of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib above other companions. To advance this agenda, they fabricated Hadith that exaggerated his virtues and portrayed him as superior to prophets or divinely chosen in unique ways. One famous example they circulated claimed that whoever wished to see Adam for his knowledge, Noah for his piety, Abraham for his gentleness, Moses for his commanding presence, and Jesus for his devotion—should look upon ʿAlī. This rhetoric positioned ʿAlī as a culmination of prophetic qualities, fabricating prophetic endorsement of their theological worldview.
Khawārij (p. 93–94)
The Khawārij, who rejected both ʿUthmān and ʿAlī, forged traditions that emphasized piety as the sole marker of legitimacy, dismissing lineage or political power. They narrated reports suggesting that rebellion against corrupt leadership was sanctioned by God, effectively legitimizing their revolt against established authority. Their fabrications reinforced their puritanical vision of Islam, where outward religiosity and uncompromising justice trumped communal unity.
Murji’ah (p. 94–95)
The Murji’ah, known for their belief that faith alone guaranteed salvation regardless of deeds, introduced Hadiths that downplayed the importance of works. They circulated reports asserting that anyone with even an atom’s weight of faith would enter Paradise, regardless of sins. These fabrications were designed to give theological support to their lenient view on sin and to counter groups like the Khawārij, who were harsher in their judgments of sinners.
Qadariyya (p. 95–96)
The Qadariyya, who championed human free will, invented Hadiths to counter the deterministic views of their opponents. For instance, they narrated reports portraying the Prophet as condemning those who claimed all acts were decreed by God, insisting instead that humans bore full responsibility for their choices. These traditions sought to root their theology of free will in the Prophet’s supposed words.
Jabriyya (p. 96–97)
In direct opposition to the Qadariyya, the Jabriyya upheld absolute predestination. To reinforce their position, they fabricated Hadith that depicted all human actions as predetermined by God, leaving no room for human autonomy. These reports often exaggerated God’s control, sometimes to the extent of negating accountability altogether.
Anthropomorphists (Mushabbiha) (p. 97–98)
Groups inclined toward anthropomorphism fabricated Hadith that depicted God with physical attributes, reinforcing a literalist theology. They introduced reports that gave the impression the Prophet endorsed such views, even though these contradicted the Qur’an’s assertion of God’s transcendence. These Hadith legitimized their attempts to humanize the divine in tangible terms.
Storytellers (Qussās)
One of the most prolific sources of hadith fabrication was the class of popular storytellers (qussās). Initially encouraged by rulers such as ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb to offer moral instruction, these preachers quickly descended into entertainers who invented hadiths to amuse crowds and profit from their credulity.
Their fabrications often mixed moral exhortation with fantastical imagery. One narrator, citing Ahmad ibn Ḥanbal and Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn, claimed that every letter of the shahāda (“lā ilāha illā Allāh”) was created from gold and pearl with the beak of a celestial bird. Another insisted that touching the tip of one’s nose with one’s tongue guaranteed salvation from Hell. Such tales were eagerly received by audiences, revealing how easily popular imagination could be manipulated.
Some storytellers even staged fraudulent spectacles: one would praise ʿAlī in one part of the city while another lauded Abū Bakr elsewhere, later splitting the proceeds after duping both Sunnis and Shiʿa. Their antics became so disruptive that Mālik ibn Anas forbade them from preaching in the mosque of Medina, and Baghdad authorities eventually outlawed their practices altogether.
In addition to comic or fraudulent inventions, many storytellers embellished their tales with Jewish, Christian, or Persian lore, weaving legendary figures into Islamic narratives. One story even introduced a supposed descendant of Satan, alive since Cain and Abel, who claimed to have passed down messages through biblical prophets to Muhammad.
Although many forgeries were crude, not all were malicious. A significant number of hadiths were invented by pious individuals who believed they were inspiring devotion and strengthening faith. These “well-intentioned” forgeries still corrupted the Prophet’s legacy, but they illustrate how deeply the culture of attributing sayings to him had permeated Muslim society.
Pious Forgeries and Scholarly Rationalizations
Not all hadith forgeries were born of politics or sectarian strife. A significant portion came from devout individuals who believed they were serving Islam by inventing sayings in the Prophet’s name. Some openly admitted this logic. Ghulām Khalīl of Baghdad (d. 888–9) confessed: “We forged these so that we could soften and improve the hearts of the populace.” Likewise, one narrator admitted fabricating hadiths to steer Muslims away from excessive reliance on jurists like Abū Ḥanīfa and historians like Ibn Isḥāq, hoping instead to direct them back to the Qur’an.
The paradox was clear: lying “for the Prophet” was rationalized as piety, even while lying “about the Prophet” was condemned. Yahyā b. Saʿīd al-Qaṭṭān (d. 813) remarked: “I have not witnessed lying in anyone more than I have seen it in those known for asceticism and piety.” Some jurists went so far as to say: “When we arrived at an opinion through reasoning, we made it into a hadith.” Cloaked in the belief that “the scholars are the inheritors of the prophets,” such men saw themselves as protecting Muhammad’s legacy when, in reality, they were eroding it.
Not all false reports were deliberate. Through a process known as idrāj (interpolation), sayings of scholars, saints, or even folk proverbs were mistakenly absorbed into hadith literature. The maxim “The love of this world is the root of every sin” was originally attributed to Jesus, while the legal principle “Necessities render the forbidden permissible” was a juristic maxim later misattributed to the Prophet. Other spurious sayings circulated as hadith in the ninth century, such as: “Beware of flowers growing in manure, namely a beautiful woman from a bad family,” or “Whoever says something, then sneezes, what he says is true.”
The scale of intentional forgery, however, is staggering. Nūḥ ibn Abī Maryam admitted to inventing hadiths praising the merits of Qur’anic chapters to encourage recitation. Abān ibn Abī ʿAyyāsh, despite his reputation for piety, produced more than 1,500 baseless reports. Sulaymān ibn ʿAmr, admired for his asceticism, was nevertheless condemned as a liar. Wahb ibn Ḥafṣ, said to have lived in silence for twenty years, was equally prolific. Some forged in the tens of thousands: Muḥammad ibn ʿUkkāsha and Muḥammad ibn Tamīm were each accused of fabricating over 10,000 hadiths; Ahmad al-Qaysī over 3,000; Ahmad al-Marwazī more than 10,000; Abū Saʿīd ibn Jaʿfar over 300 attributed to Abū Ḥanīfa.
Business-Centric Hadith
Another major source of fabrication came from merchants and tradesmen who saw in prophetic tradition a means to advertise their goods. When they could not find authentic hadith to promote their products, they simply invented sayings in the Prophet’s name to boost sales and attract customers. Historical sources record a wide range of commodities praised in spurious traditions, including pomegranates, dates, almonds, melons, grapes, bread, milk, vegetables, cucumbers, lentils, salt, dairy products, endives, chickens, eggplants, and even woolen cloth. It is likely that businessmen directly sponsored forgers to compose hadith in favor of their merchandise, ensuring religious legitimacy for what was essentially commercial marketing.
Even physicians participated in this practice, fabricating hadith to lend prophetic authority to their medicines and treatments. In this way, commerce and professional interest became engines of hadith forgery, embedding product endorsements into religious discourse. What might today be seen as crude advertising was, in earlier centuries, sanctified by attributing promotional slogans to the Prophet himself. Below are some examples of fabricated Hadith for business or commercial purposes (Khan, Israr Ahmad. Authentication of Hadith: Redefining the Criteria pp. 12–14).
Every pomegranate fruit is injected with a seed of the heavenly pomegranate.
Watermelon is mercy and its sweetness like that of the melon in Paradise.
In the grape are things to eat and drink and to make raisins out of.
“O Allah! Make us enjoy with Islam and the bread; if the bread was not there, we would not pray, fast, perform pilgrimage, and participate in war.”
“O ʿAlī! You must use salt because it serves as a cure for seventy diseases such as leprosy, white spots, and insanity.”
After taking curd the Prophet used to utter these words: “O Allah! Grant us blessing in it and increase it for us.”
He who takes cucumber with meat is protected from leprosy.
You must use lentils because they soften the heart, increase tears, and seventy prophets blessed them.
Almond and cheese are both maladies, but after reaching the stomach they become a source of cure.
You must serve vegetables on the dining table because they chase Satan away.
On each leaf of endive is a drop of water from Paradise.
The eggplant is a cure for every disease and there is no harm therein.
If people knew the significance of dairy products, they would buy them even in exchange for gold in equal weight.
The Prophet commanded the rich to take the goat and sheep and the poor the chicken.
A man came to the Prophet and complained of a problem concerning his sexual prowess. The Prophet, then, advised him to take eggs and onion.
Give your women during their menstruation period date fruit to eat; it will cause the baby thus born to be kind hearted; Mary took dates when Jesus was born; if Allah knew any other meal better than date fruit, He would have arranged it for her.
You must wear woollen garments; it will give you the sweetness of faith in your hearts. You must wear woollen garments; it will help you feel less hungry. You must use woollen garments; you will realize its significance in the hereafter. The woollen garment causes the heart to think, and thinking leads to wisdom, and wisdom runs in the stomach like blood in the veins.
He who has made a ring of carnelian stone and has engraved thereon – “This is but with the grace of Allah” – Allah will grant him all the good and the two angels who are always with him will love him.
One who has made the stone of his ring out of ruby, Allah would keep the poverty away from him.
The stomach is the cistern of the body and all the veins are connected to it. If the stomach is healthy, the veins will remain healthy; if the stomach becomes sick, the veins will also become sick. This tradition was fabricated by a physician named Ibrāhīm ibn Jurayj. It seems he did so to promote his clinic and his services as a physician.
All of these traditions were fabricated in the Prophet’s name for the purpose of promoting commerce and enticing customers.
Forgery of Isnād (Chains of Transmission)
While many assume that hadith forgery consisted mainly of inventing sayings of the Prophet, scholars note that forging isnāds—the chains of transmission—was arguably even more common than fabricating content itself. In early Islam, the credibility of a report rested heavily on its isnād, and without a reputable chain no hadith could be defended in debate or accepted by the ahl al-hadīth. As a result, transmitters often “equipped” existing sayings with prestigious isnāds or constructed entirely new ones. This practice, known as “stealing hadiths” ( sariqat al-hadīth) or “rigging isnāds” ( tarkīb al-asānīd), became a common feature of scholarly disputes.
One well-known example was ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd (d. 144/761), a Muʿtazilite theologian who opposed the ahl al-hadīth. To support his position that committing grave sins assured eternal punishment in Hell, he cited a hadith attributed to the Prophet through the famous ascetic al-Hasan al-Baṣrī. Yet critics pointed out that al-Hasan had never transmitted such a report, and that ʿAmr had forged the isnād in order to strengthen his theological argument.
The motivations behind isnād forgery varied. In some cases, transmitters sought to bolster a hadith’s reliability by attaching multiple impressive chains of transmission. The great hadith critic al-Dāraqutnī (d. 385/995) recorded that Maysara b. ʿAbd Rabbih fabricated an entire notebook of hadiths praising human reason ( ʿaql). This collection passed through the hands of several transmitters, each equipping it with their own isnāds: Dāwud al-Muhabbir provided one set, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Abī Rajāʾ added another, and Sulaymān b. ʿĪsā al-Sinjārī did the same. The result was that a single hadith might circulate with four different isnāds, giving the impression of broad and independent support when in reality all the chains were forgeries.
In later centuries, rare and “short” isnāds—those with fewer transmitters between the scholar and the Prophet—became especially prized by collectors and jurists. The possession of such elevated isnāds enhanced a scholar’s prestige, and disingenuous transmitters could not resist the temptation to invent them. Al-Ṭabarānī (d. 360/971), for instance, narrated a hadith via an impossibly short isnād of only three people back to the Prophet. The transmitter at the center of this chain, Jaʿfar b. Ḥamīd, was strongly suspected of being a fabricator of precisely these kinds of “elevated” isnāds.
Thus, the history of hadith transmission shows that forgery was not limited to inventing content. It also included widespread manipulation of isnāds, carried out to support theological debates, strengthen the authority of particular reports, or simply to raise the scholarly standing of transmitters.
Conclusion
The evidence is overwhelming: the Hadith tradition was built atop a foundation of fabrication. From the earliest decades after the Prophet’s death, reports were invented for politics, sectarian rivalry, theological debate, commercial gain, and even misguided piety. By the admission of the most revered hadith collectors themselves, nearly ninety-nine percent of the traditions in circulation were discarded as false. That means the raw material from which Sunni Islam’s canonical collections were formed was not a body of preserved teachings, but an ocean of forgeries through which compilers had to salvage fragments.
The problem is not peripheral—it is structural. Hadith were not merely corrupted at the edges but shaped at their very core by the social, political, and economic forces of their time. Each faction and interest group manufactured a “Prophetic voice” to legitimize its own agenda, embedding propaganda, prejudice, and personal opinion into what later came to be regarded as sacred tradition. Even the chains of transmission, held up as the guarantors of authenticity, were routinely forged or manipulated to lend false credibility.
What remains, then, is not a pristine record of Muhammad’s words and actions but a corpus deeply entangled with human invention. The irony is stark: those who claimed to defend the Prophet’s legacy often did so by fabricating in his name. In doing so, they blurred the line between revelation and rationalization, devotion and deception. The hadith tradition, far from being the unfiltered voice of the Prophet, is instead a mirror of early Islam’s fractures, ambitions, and anxieties.