(Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ's) Introduction to the Science of Hadith is a 13th-century book written by `Abd al-Raḥmān ibn `Uthmān al-Shahrazūrī, better known as Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, which describes the Islamic discipline of the science of hadith, its terminology and the principles of biographical evaluation. A hadith is a recorded statement, action or approval of the Islamic prophet Muhammad which serves as the second source of legislature in Islamic law. The science of hadith that this work describes contains the principles with which a hadith specialist evaluates the authenticity of individual narrations.

Hadith or Athar refers to what most Muslims and the mainstream schools of Islamic thought believe to be a record of the words, actions, and the silent approval of the Islamic prophet Muhammad as transmitted through chains of narrators. In other words, the ḥadīth are attributed reports about what Muhammad said and did.