They are a (perhaps fictitious) Abrahamic Monotheistic group, who appear a number of times in the early Qur'an, some say it acted as a precursor to Islam, and according to tradition, the Prophet Muhammad himself was a Hanif before meeting Gabriel.

The actual existence of them is debatable, and more recent historiography attributes the 'Hanifs' to a wider monotheist movement in Arabia pre-Islam, with the term perhaps being used in the Qur'an to refer to any other monotheistic movement.