How many hadith are there?

No one knows an exact number. Everything later collected as hadith runs into the hundreds of thousands, but most of it is fabricated. The six major collections together contain around 40,000 to 50,000 hadith, many of them repeated.

If one takes together everything that was later collected as reports from the Holy Prophet Muhammad (saw), the total runs into the hundreds of thousands. Most of it, however, is fabricated. It was attributed to him without any justification.

Six major collections are regarded as the most important. Together they contain around 40,000 to 50,000 hadith. Many of these are repetitions, since some reports appear in every one of these collections.

Even in these collections, not every word certainly comes from the Holy Prophet (saw). Some reports contradict each other. He himself never contradicted himself. He did not say one thing in one breath and the opposite in the next. Where two reports exclude each other, at least one of them must have been wrongly attributed to him later.

No one has ever established an exact total, and it cannot be established. Many books of hadith were written by hand in an age without printing. Some are mentioned by scholars but are lost today, because they were thought unimportant. So anyone who wanted to count them all simply could not.

What matters more than the number is careful examination. The verses above require a report to be verified and forbid following what one has no knowledge of.