its narrator is, in their view, a musnad; hence the term would cover the marfūʿ (a report traced back to the Prophet), the mawqūf (halted at a Companion), the maqṭūʿ (ending with a Successor), the muttasil (continuous), and the munqaṭiʿ (broken) reports.

There is no doubt that this opinion agrees with the plain sense of the Arabic language, for linguistically a musnad is whatever is ascribed to its transmitter—whether or not it is marfūʿ and whether the chain is connected or interrupted. Even so, the position adopted by the majority of ḥadith specialists remains that a musnad is specifically a report whose isnād is unbroken all the way to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.

As for the musnid, it is the narrator who attributes the ḥadith to his source; when he says, “So-and-so related to me,” the first person is the musnid and the second is the musnad ilayh. In other words, anyone who conveys the report is a musnid, and anyone to whom the report is attributed is the musnad ilayh.

The sanad refers to the men of the ḥadith, that is, its transmitters. Thus, when one says, “So-and-so told me, from so-and-so, from so-and-so,” those individuals constitute the sanad of the report, because the ḥadith rests upon them and they serve as its support.

With regard to isnād, some ḥadith scholars use the word synonymously with sanad; hence their frequent expression, “Its isnād is sound,” by which they mean that its transmitters are reliable. Others define isnād as the act of attributing the report to its transmitter, saying, “He ascribed the ḥadith to so-and-so.” The correct view is that the term is employed in both senses: sometimes it denotes the sanad—that is, the narrators—while at other times it refers to the very act of assigning the report to its transmitter, as in the phrase, “He gave the isnād of the ḥadith …”