About Sahih al-Bukhari

The authentic collection (Arabic: الجامع الصحيح, al-Jaami al-Musnud al-Sahih or popularly al-Bukhari's authentic (Arabic: صحيح البخاري, Sahih al-Bukhari) is one of the six major Sunni Hadith collections (Hadith are oral traditions recounting events in the life of the Islamic prophet Muhammad ). Most Sunni Muslims view this as their most trusted collection of hadith and it has been called "The most authentic book after the Qur'an."^[1]

The Collection

These prophetic traditions were collected by the Muslim scholar Muhammad ibn Ismail al-Bukhari (810-870) and published during his lifetime. He was a scholar from Bukhara, hence the name by which he is known. Al-Bukhari belonged to the Shafi'i School ^[2]. He traveled widely throughout the Abbasid empire for sixteen years, collecting those traditions he thought trustworthy. It is said that al-Bukhari collected over 300,000 hadith and transmitted only the 2,602 traditions that he believed to be Sahih ^{[3] [4] [5]}

The book covers almost all aspects of life in providing proper guidance of Islam such as the method of performing prayers and other actions of worship directly from Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam. This 9-Volume Bukhari is the work of over 16 years by Bukhari who before writing any Hadith in this book performed ablution and two units of prayer asking guidance from Allah. Then he would do the necessary research and investigation, observing if the particular Hadith fits in to his strict criteria of authenticity and if he is sure that the Hadith is authentic, he wrote it in the book.

It is said that notable hadith scholars including Ahmad Ibn Hanbal 855, Ibn Maīn 847, and Ibn Madīni 848 accepted the authenticity of his book. Therefore al-Bukhari finished his work around 846, and spent the last twenty-four years of his life visiting other cities and scholars, teaching the hadith he had collected. In every city that he visited, thousands of people would gather in the main mosque to listen to him recite traditions. In reply to Western academic doubts as to the actual date and authorship of the book that bears his name, Sunni scholars point out that notable hadith scholars of that time, such as Ahmad Ibn Hanbal (855 CE/241 AH), Ibn Maīn (847 CE/233 AH), and Ibn Madīni (848 CE/234 AH), accepted the authenticity of his book [1] [2] and that the collection's immediate fame makes it unlikely that it could have been revised after the author's death.

During this period of twenty-four years, Bukhari made minor revisions to his book, notably the chapter headings. Each version is named by its narrator. According to Ibn Hajar Asqalani in his book Nukat, the number of hadiths in all narrations (versions) is the same. The most famous one today is the version narrated by al-Firabri (d. 932 CE/320 AH), a trusted student of Bukhari. Khatib al-Baghdadi in his book History of Baghdad quoted Firabri as saying: "About seventy thousand people heard Sahih Bukhari with me".

Firabri is not the only transmitter of Sahih Bukhari. There were many others that narrated that book to later generations, such as Ibrahim ibn Ma'qal (d. 907 CE/295 AH), Hammad ibn Shaker (d. 923 CE/311 AH), Mansur Burduzi (d. 931 CE/319 AH),and Husain Mahamili (d. 941 CE/330 AH). There are many books that noted differences between these versions, the best known being Fath al-Bari.