AbstractThe traditional collections of hadith we have inherited were begun and completed roughly 200 and 300 years after the Prophet’s death, respectively. There was a vast amount of information to wade through—literally hundreds of thousands of reports. The compilers’ focus was on authenticating a report’s chain of transmission, not on assessing or validating its content. Many hadiths were included that the compilers openly acknowledged were unreliable, usually labelling them as such on a descriptive scale involving terms such as “weak” or “acceptable but unusual”. By contrast, the verses of the Qur’an were being memorised and written down on parchments as they were being revealed over the course of the 23 years of revelation, i.e. during Muhammad’s lifetime, and were compiled into a single volume just two years after his death in the year 632.