Qur'anic Verse
Az-Zumar 39:23
"God has sent down the best of discourse" (ahsan al-hadith). An aesthetic/rhetorical claim about revelation's superiority, not a technical statement about the later Hadith genre — though the verse's self-referential use of the word hadith is cross-referenced against the Qur'an's other occurrences of the term.
Revert Way rendering, in the style of early public-domain English translations (cf. Pickthall 1930)
Content discussing this verse
- Research Paper
Islam: History, Authority and the Development of Islamic Tradition
A historical-critical review of the Qur'an and Hadith as sources of religious authority in Islam, distinguishing established fact, scholarly consensus, majority and minority opinion, disputed claims, and theological interpretation at every step.
- Article
Islam: A Reader's Guide to the Qur'an, Hadith and Early Islamic History
A plain-language companion to Revert Way's academic review of the Qur'an and Hadith: the same evidence, sources, and arguments, with every technical term and historical figure introduced on first use.