In Islamic studies, the text or narration of a hadith (saying or story about the Prophet Muhammad), as distinct from its chain of transmission.
From Arabic 'matn' originally meaning 'back' or 'spine' of something, extended to mean the main body or core text. In hadith scholarship, it refers to the actual reported statement.
Islamic scholars developed incredibly sophisticated methods to verify hadith authenticity by checking both the 'metin' (the text itself) and the 'isnad' (the chain of who reported it)—it's like ancient fact-checking that influenced how modern historians verify sources!
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