Sunna (the way, the practice of the Prophet, and the legal grades of the recommended)

In language sunna means a way, custom or conduct, praiseworthy or blameworthy, and its plural is sunan. A hadith reads: whoever introduces a good sunna in Islam has its reward and the reward of those who act by it. It then came to mean the upright praiseworthy way. ¹ To call someone "of the people of the sunna" means that he follows the upright, praiseworthy way. ²

Sunna is the path followed in religion without obligation or prescription. Some use it for an act the Prophet persisted in without evidence that it is obligatory; others define it as what is requested with emphasis but not as binding. ² As a legal ruling it stands against the obligatory, the compulsory, the forbidden, the disliked and the permitted. Some jurists define it as what earns reward for doing and is not punished for leaving. ² The Shafi'is and Hanbalis divide the sunnas into emphasised and unemphasised; the Hanbalis add that leaving the emphasised ones is disliked, but not the others. ³

Ibn Abidin counts four grades of prescribed acts: compulsory (fard), obligatory (wajib), sunna and supererogatory (nafl). What is required with a definitive proof is fard; with a probable proof is wajib; what the Prophet and the rightly guided caliphs persisted in, without prohibition of leaving, is sunna; the rest is recommended or nafl. ³ For the Hanafis the sunna in the jurists' sense is of two kinds. The sunna of guidance is what completes the religion, whose omission is disliked or blameworthy, such as congregational prayer, the call and the second call; it is also called the emphasised sunna. The supplementary sunnas are those whose omission brings no blame, such as the Prophet's manner of dress, standing, sitting and eating. ³ For the Malikis the sunna is what the Prophet did, persisted in, performed openly in congregation, and for which no evidence of obligation exists. The raghiba is what the lawgiver urged but the Prophet did not perform openly in congregation; the nafl is what he did but did not persist in. ³

The agreed sources from which legal rulings are derived are four: the Book, the Sunna, consensus and analogy. The Sunna is what came from the Prophet in speech, act or tacit approval. ³ Some say the hadith is what issued from the Prophet in speech and so is narrower than the sunna, and the report (khabar) is wider; every hadith is a report, but not every report is a hadith. ³ By this meaning the sunna has three kinds: sayings, deeds, and tacit approval, which is his refraining and silence about what companions did in his presence or were told of. ⁴

By chain the sunna is mass-transmitted (mutawatir), widely transmitted (mashhur) or single-report (khabar al-wahid). ⁴ A mass-transmitted report gives certain knowledge; a single report requires action but not certainty, and this is the view of most scholars and of the jurists generally. Some place the widely transmitted with the mass-transmitted in giving certainty, and some with single reports, requiring action but not certainty. ⁴ The conditions of mass transmission and fame and the questions on single reports are treated in the usuli appendix. ⁴