وَمَا كَانَ مِنْهَا فِي الثَّوَابِ وَالْعِقَابِ، وَالتَّرْغِيبِ وَالتَّرْهِيبِ، وَغَيْرِ ذَلِكَ مِنْ صُنُوفِ الْأَشْيَاءِ، بِالْأَسَانِيدِ الَّتِي بِهَا نُقِلَتْ وَتَدَاوَلَهَا أَهْلُ الْعِلْمِ فِيمَا بَيْنَهُمْ،
Also the reports concerning reward and punishment, encouragement and warning, and other subjects, together with the chains through which they were transmitted and circulated among scholars.
The scope includes more than legal rulings. “Bi-l-asānīd” is crucial: a report’s subject matter and its route of transmission must both be preserved.
An isnād is the sequence of transmitters through whom wording has passed; the matn is that transmitted wording. Understanding a matn and establishing its attribution are distinct scholarly questions.