Hadith studies ( ʻilm al-ḥadīth "knowledge of hadith" or science of hadith) are a number of religious disciplines used in the study and evaluation of the Islamic hadith (the collections of the reports of what the Islamic prophet Muhammad said verbatim on any matter) by Muslim scholars. It has been described by one hadith specialist, Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti, as the science of the principles by which the conditions of both the sanad, the chain of narration, and the matn, the text of the hadith, are known. This science is concerned with the sanad and the matn with its objective being distinguishing the sahih, authentic, from other than it. Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani said the preferred definition is: knowledge of the principles by which the condition of the narrator and the narrated are determined.