From the earliest days of Islam the Muslim has sought to have at his disposal everything known from, about, and surrounding the Prophet. Because of the vastness of the hadith literature, however, an inexhaustibly rich body of information covering subjects as diverse as law, language, doctrine and prayer, that desire has never been fulfilled.
It has been the vocation of great scholars and their disciples in past ages to bring together as much of this literature as possible. In recent times, however, scholars of this type have become rare. Nonetheless, we now have, technically, the possibility of bringing this enormous body of literature together from all the sources, all the libraries, and all the printed books. It is now possible to organize it digitally and to access any part of it with extraordinary rapidity. Thanks to this timely breakthrough a new tool is available for the continuous renewal of the Islamic response to the world, a response which changes through the ages, but which is based always on two sources, the Qur’an and the Sunna. The Qur’an, being relatively small, presents no real problems of access, but the Sunna, which is vast and scattered, poses a much greater problem. The Hadith Database allows the researcher access to this authoritative source. The intention of the Foundation is to create one vast library which contains everything that remains on earth that concerns the Prophet .