community, but they had a break of more than 30 generations between them and Moses, and the Christians limited their use of the sanad to the prohibition of divorce. Ibn Taymiyyah also said that the knowledge of isnad is particular to the followers of Prophet Muhammad. The practice of paying particular attention to the sanad can be traced to the generation following that of the Companions, based upon the statement of Muhammad Ibn Sirin: “They did not previously inquire about the sanad. However, after the turmoil occurred they would say, ‘Name for us your narrators.’ So the people of the Sunnah would have their hadith accepted and the people of innovation would not.” Those who were not given to require a sanad were, in the stronger of two opinions, the Companions of the Prophet, while others, such as al-Qurtubi, include the older of the Followers as well. This is due to the Companions all being considered upright, trustworthy transmitters of hadith, such that a mursal hadith narrated by a Companion is acceptable. Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, stating likewise, cited various evidences for this, from them, the Quranic verse, “And you were the best nation brought about to mankind.” The fitnah referred to is the conflicting ideologies of the Kharijites and the Ghulat that had emerged at the time of the third Caliph Uthman ibn Affan, his assassination and the social unrest of the Kharijites in opposition to the succeeding rulers, Ali and Muawiyah. The death of Uthman was in the year 35 after the migration. The matn According to scholar Daniel Brown, in traditional hadith studies, "the possibility" of criticizing the matn as well as the isnad "was recognized in theory, but the option was seldom systematically exercised". Syrian hadith scholar Dr. Salah al-Din al-Idlibi is expert in the relatively new field of matn criticism. Whereas traditional criticism has focused on verifying the trustworthiness of the people transmitting the hadith, matn criticism studies the contents of the hadith and compares this with the contents of other hadiths and any other available historical evidence with the aim of arriving at an objective historical reality of the event described by the hadith. Muhaddith: scholar of hadith The term muḥaddith (plural muḥaddithūn often translated as "traditionist") refers to a specialist who profoundly knows and narrates hadith, the chains of their narration isnad, and the original and famous narrators. According to the 8th century Imam, Sheikh