Building on the previous chapter regarding formulations of authority among early hadith folk, this chapter now turns to examining whether they showed awareness of different levels of truth. The conclusions of this chapter will challenge dominant voices both within the tradition and in Western scholarship. I argue that these early discussions among hadith folk paved the way for the eventual acceptance of the term tawātur into the world of the hadith folk, under the aegis of legal theory, a development to be discussed in Chapter 4. The term tawātur was introduced into Sunnī hadith studies (ʿulūm al-ḥadīth) in the fifth/eleventh century, and the following pages will trace the centuries-long debates in the genre over whether any hadiths actually fulfilled the conditions of tawātur. Some hadith folk were labelling hadiths as mutawātir as early as in the fifth/eleventh century, but Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ was responsible for intensifying the debate, which eventually culminated in al-Suyūṭī producing the first systematic compilation of mutawātir hadiths. Having discussed this debate over the existence of tawātur within hadiths, the converse notion of tawātur existing independently of hadiths is discussed.