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USC-MSA Compendium of Muslim Texts

MSA-USC Hadith Database

Warning (especially for Muslims)

There are many early hadith scholars and teachers to whom we are indebted for introducing the critical science of collecting and evaluating ahadeeth. These teachers each collected many different ahadeeth. They did not allow students to quote from their collections until the students had actually come to them and learnt from them directly.

Today, the situation is different. The collections of ahadeeth have for the most part stabilized, and with the advent of the printing press, the collections are easily mass-produced. There is a blessing in all this of course, but there is a real danger that Muslims will fall under the impression that owning a book or having a database is equivalent to being a scholar of ahadeeth. This is a great fallacy. Therefore, we would like to warn you that this database is merely a tool, and not a substitute for learning, much less scholarship in Islam.

Classic MSA-USC Search:

  • This database supports searching for complete words only. A query for the word "eat" will only return data containing that word, and not data containing "eaten", "eating", etc.
  • Queries can only contain characters from the following set: alphanumeric characters, dash "-", left parenthesis "(", and right parenthesis ")".
  • Boolean operations are supported: "and", "or", and "andnot".
  • Searches on this database are very fast, however the disadvantage is that more complex types of queries are not supported. In particular, if you need to use wildcards, please try the Verity Search below.
  • Searches can be limited to specific collections of ahadeeth by using the checkboxes below.
  • The results of searching on this database is a list of individual hadeeth numbers. Each number is a link into a chapter from a particular collection. By clicking onto the link, your browser will be positioned directly on top of that particular hadeeth.
  • An example of a classic MSA-USC query string is: (paradise or heaven) and laugh and man and last

Search for query in:
Sahih Bukhari (complete collection)
Sahih Muslim (complete collection)
Sunan Abu-Dawud (partial collection)
Malik's Muwatta (complete collection)

New Ultraseek Search:

  • This database supports searching using USC's Ultraseek database. A powerful query language is supported. This language supports searching with stemmed variations, phrases, and boolean operators.
  • Searches using this database will automatically be executed over all hadith collections stored (see above for a listing).
  • The results of searching on this database is a list of hadeeth chapters, each of which can be clicked to take your browser to that document. However, once there, you may have to look for your query term manually to isolate which hadeeth is the matching one.
  • The search occurs over the entire chapter, and not by verse, hence it is more difficult to hone in a particular hadeeth you are looking for.
  • An example of a Ultraseek query string is: paradise heaven +laugh +man +last