The Three Pillars: Sanad, Matn and Rawi

The chain carries the words: Every Hadith has a Sanad — the chain of narrators who passed the words from the Ma'sum (as) to the compiler of the book. The chain is read from the compiler back to the Imam (as), one person at a time.

The text is the message: The Matn is the actual words of the Hadith — the saying, the ruling, or the story itself. The Matn is the purpose of the Hadith. Everything else — the chain and the narrators — exists to serve the Matn.

The narrator is the link: Each person in the chain is a Rawi — a narrator. Ilm al-Rijal is the science that studies these people: who they were, whether they were honest, and whether they remembered well.

All three must be checked: A Hadith is only as strong as its weakest part. Scholars check the Sanad by studying the narrators, and they check the Matn by asking whether it agrees with the Quran and with other reliable Hadith. A Hadith is accepted only when both are sound.

Example

Here is a real Sanad from Al-Kafi: Al-Kulayni ← Ali ibn Ibrahim ← his father ← Ibn Abi Umayr ← Hisham ibn al-Hakam ← Imam al-Sadiq (as). Each arrow is one step — one person heard it from the next. And here is the Matn that follows it: Imam al-Sadiq (as) said, "Iman is knowledge by the heart, declaration by the tongue, and action by the limbs." — Al-Kafi. — to be checked.

Key Terms

• Sanad (سند) — the chain of narrators of a Hadith; also called Isnad (the support)
• Matn (متن) — the text of the Hadith, the actual words
• Rawi (راوی) — a narrator, one person in the chain
• Ilm al-Rijal (علم الرجال) — the science that studies the narrators

Quran or Hadith

Imam al-Sadiq (as) said: "Iman is knowledge by the heart, declaration by the tongue, and action by the limbs." — Al-Kafi, Usul, Kitab al-Iman wal-Kufr. — to be checked. This is the Matn — the words themselves — carried to us by the Sanad in the example above.

Fresh diagram to be drawn: A chain of six circles joined by arrows, labelled from right to left: Imam al-Sadiq (as) → Hisham → Ibn Abi Umayr → father → Ali ibn Ibrahim → Al-Kulayni, with the Matn written in a box below the chain.