Al-Jāmiʻ al-Musnad al-Ṣaḥīḥ al-Mukhtaṣar min Umūr Rasūl Allāh ṣallā Allāh ʻalayhi wa-sallam wa-sunanihi wa-ayāmihi, <!-- The blessings 'ṣallā Allāh ʻalayhi wa-sallam' is part of the original name. It doesn't fall under MOS: Islam#Islamic honorifics -->commonly known as (), is the first hadith collection of the Six Books of Sunni Islam. Compiled by Islamic scholar al-Bukhari () in the format, the work is valued by Sunni Muslims alongside as the most authentic piece of Islamic text after the Qur'an.

Al-Bukhari organised the book mostly in the Hijaz at the Sacred Mosque of Mecca and the Prophet's Mosque of Medina, and completed the work in Bukhara around 846 CE (232 AH). The work was examined by his teachers Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Ali ibn al-Madini, Yahya ibn Ma'in, and others.

Content and Structure

Classical hadith scholars provided conflicting hadith counts through manual counting. The most prevalent number today is 7,563, given by the editor Muḥammad Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqī. ʿAbd al-Sattār critiques this figure, noting that ʿAbd al-Bāqī included several suspended (muʿallaq) and post-Prophetic reports in his count. Various other totals have been proposed. After surveying the various proposed numbers, Khaldūn al-Aḥdab argues that the correct count is 7,208.

Of the hadith in the Ṣaḥīḥ, 55% relate to law (aḥkām); 11% to comportment (ādāb); 11% to history and maghāzī; 7% to hagiography (manāqib); 7% to Qurʾānic exegesis (tafsīr); 4% to heart-softening (riqāq); 4% to theology; and 1% to eschatology (fitan). Among the notable works he drew upon are: Maghāzī of Mūsā ibn ʿUqba, Jāmiʿ Maʿmar ibn Rāshid, multiple recensions of Mālik's Muwaṭṭaʾ, Al-Shāfiʿī's Umm, Al-Farrāʾ<nowiki/>'s Maʿānī al-Qurʾān, Maʿmar b. al-Muthannā's Majāz al-Qurʾān, ʿAbd al-Razzāq's Muṣannaf, Ibn Abī Shayba's Muṣannaf, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal's Musnad, multiple works of Abu Ubaid al-Qasim, Al-Humaydi, Ibn Jurayj, and several early tafsīr documents.

Development

Collection

It is reported that Bukhari traveled widely throughout the Abbasid Caliphate from the age of 16. Bukhari found the earlier hadith collections including both ṣaḥīḥ (authentic, sound)' and hasan narrations. He also found that many of them included daʻīf (weak) narrations. This aroused his interest in compiling hadith whose authenticity was beyond doubt.

What further strengthened his resolve was something his teacher and contemporary hadith scholar Ishaq Ibn Rahwayh had told him. Bukhari narrates, "We were with Ishaq Ibn Rahwayh who said, "If only you would compile a book of only authentic narrations of the Prophet." This suggestion remained in my heart so I began compiling the Sahih." Bukhari also said, "I saw the Prophet in a dream and it was as if I was standing in front of him. In my hand was a fan with which I was protecting him. I asked some dream interpreters, who said to me, 'You will protect him from lies'. This is what compelled me to produce the Sahih."

Bukhari imposed four conditions the narrators of a hadith must meet, in order for the narration to be included in his Sahih:

  • being just,
  • possessing strong memory and all the scholars who possess great knowledge of hadith must agree upon the narrators' ability to learn and memorize, along with their reporting techniques,
  • complete isnad without any missing narrators,
  • consecutive narrators in the chain must meet each other.

Bukhari began organizing his book in the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, before moving to the Al-Masjid an-Nabawi in Medina. Bukhari completed writing the book in Bukhara around 846 CE (232 AH), before showing it to his teachers for examination and verification. Ibn Hajar quoted Abu Jaʿfar al-'Uqaili as saying, "after Bukhari had written the Sahih, he showed it to Ali ibn al-Madini, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Yahya ibn Ma'in, as well as others. They examined it and testified to its authenticity with the exception of four hadith." Ibn Hajar then concluded with al-'Uqaili's saying, "And those four are as Bukhari said, they are authentic." Bukhari spent the last twenty-four years of his life visiting other cities and scholars, making minor revisions to his book and teaching the hadith he had collected. In every city that Bukhari visited, thousands of people would gather to listen to him recite traditions.

Transmission

alt=Open book with Arabic text in Naskh style|thumb|Single volume of the Sahih al-Bukhari, from the mid-19th century in the [[Khalili Collection of Islamic Art]]

Each version of the Sahih is named by its narrator. Ibn Hajar in his book Nukat asserts the number of narrations is the same in each version. There are many books that noted differences between the different versions, the best known being Fath al-Bari. The version transmitted by Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Firabri (died 932), a trusted student of Bukhari, is the most famous version of the Sahih al-Bukhari today. All modern printed version are derived from this version. Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi quoted al-Firabri in History of Baghdad: "About seventy thousand people heard Sahih Bukhari with me." al-Firabri is not the only transmitter of Sahih al-Bukhari. Many others narrated the book, including Ibrahim ibn Ma'qal (died 907), Hammad ibn Shakir (died 923), Mansur Burduzi (died 931) and Husain Mahamili (died 941).

One of the Transmissions from Bukhari to present day

Source:

From later to earlier -

  1. Yemani sheikh Ali al-Jifri
  2. Imam Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Saqqāf
  3. Imam ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Ḥibshī
  4. Imam ʿAydarūs ibn ʿUmar al-Ḥibshī
  5. Imam ʿAbd Allāh ibn Aḥmad Bāsūdān
  6. Imam ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Bār
  7. Ḥāmid ibn ʿUmar ibn Ḥāmid
  8. Al-Ḥabīb ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAbd Allāh Bā Faqīh
  9. Al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī al-ʿUjaymī and Shaykh Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Mithlī
  10. Muḥammad ibn ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn al-Bāblī
  11. Abū al-Najā Sālim ibn Muḥammad al-Samhūrī
  12. al-Najm Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Ghīṭī
  13. Zakariyyā ibn Muḥammad al-Anṣārī
  14. Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī
  15. Ibrāhīm ibn Aḥmad al-Tanūkhī and ʿAbd al-Raḥīm ibn Razīn al-Ḥamawī
  16. Abū al-Faḍl Aḥmad ibn Abī Ṭālib al-Ḥajjār
  17. al-Ḥusayn al-Mubārak al-Zubaydī
  18. Abū al-Waqt ʿAbd al-Awwal ibn ʿĪsā al-Harawī
  19. Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Muẓaffar al-Dāwūdī
  20. Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh ibn Aḥmad al-Sarakhsī
  21. Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf ibn Maṭar al-Farabrī
  22. Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī

Manuscripts

The number of extant manuscripts of Sahih Bukhari is difficult to assess. An Islamic Manuscripts catalog published in 1991 by Royal Al Bayt Institute lists 2,327 manuscripts of Bukhari, while a study in 2016 indicates there are more than 1500 manuscripts in Turkey alone.

The oldest known copy was written in the year 370 AH/980 CE, according to the narration of al-Mirwazi from al-Farbari. It was first published by the Orientalist Mingana in Cambridge in 1936 CE.

Other Notable manuscripts includes a copy written by Al-Ṣadafī on 21 Muharram 508 AH/27th June 1114 CE and another by Ibn Sa'ada in 492 AH/1098-1099 CE of which three out of five volumes survive in National Library of Morocco.<gallery mode="packed" widths="200" heights="200">

File:Oldest Known Manuscript of Sahih Bukhari.pdf|link=|The oldest known extant manuscript of Bukhari, published by Mingana in 1936

File:Manuscript of Sahih Bukhari.jpg|link=|A manuscript of Bukhari, copied in Ramadan 490 AH/1097 CE in Maghrebi script, housed in a library of Mohammed V University

File:Manuscript of Sahih Bukhari containing an Ijazah.jpg|link=|A manuscript of Bukhari containing an Ijazah (transmission license) tracing back to Al-Bukhari, housed in the Princeton University Library,

</gallery>

Commentaries

thumb|[[Fath al-Bari by Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani]]

The number of detailed commentaries on the Sahih are numbered around 400, Ibn Khaldun said: “Explaining Sahih al-Bukhari is a debt owed by this nation.” As a result, numerous scholars have raced to settle this debt over time, and numerous commentaries on Sahih al-Bukhari have been produced.

Classical commentaries

The six most popular commentaries in history are:

  • Sharh Ibn Battal by Ibn Battal ()
  • Al-Kawakib al-Darari by Shams al-Din al-Kirmani ().
  • Umdat al-Qari by Badr al-Din al-Ayni () Ibn Hajar is noted to be one of them. Shah Waliullah Dehlawi had mentioned 14 reasons, later modified by Mahmud al-Hasan to make it 15. Zakariyya Kandhlawi is noted to have found as many as 70, even writing a book on the topic Al-Abwab wa al-Tarajim li Sahih al-Bukhari. derived from the Arabic text of Fath Al-Bari, published by the Egyptian Maktabat wa-Maṭba'at Muṣṭafá al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī in 1959. It is published by Al Saadawi Publications and Darussalam Publishers and is included in the USC-MSA Compendium of Muslim Texts. Large numbers of hadith narrations included in Hilali and Khan's work have been translated by Muhammad Ali and Thomas Cleary. The book is also available in numerous languages, including Urdu, Bengali, Bosnian, Tamil, Malayalam, Albanian, Malay, and Hindi, among others.

In 2019, the Arabic Virtual Translation Center in New York City translated and published the first complete English translation of Sahih al-Bukhari titled Encyclopedia of Sahih Al-Bukhari, including explanatory notes, a glossary of every term, and biographies of all characters and narrators in the isnad. The encyclopedia was produced by Mohammed Hasan Yousef Arar. The final edition was released on 01 February 2025. Al-Nawawi wrote about Sahih al-Bukhari, "The scholars, may God have mercy on them, have agreed that the most authentic book after the dear Quran are the two Sahihs of Bukhari and Muslim." Siddiq Hasan Khan (died 1890) wrote, "All of the Salaf and Khalaf assert that the most authentic book after the book of Allah is Sahih al-Bukhari and then Sahih Muslim."

In the Introduction to the Science of Hadith, Ibn al-Salah wrote: "The first to author a Sahih was Bukhari [...], followed by Abū al-Ḥusayn Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj an-Naysābūrī al-Qushayrī, who was his student, sharing many of the same teachers. These two books are the most authentic books after the Quran. As for the statement of al-Shafi'i, who said, "I do not know of a book containing knowledge more correct than Malik's book [<nowiki/>Muwatta Imam Malik]", [...] he said this before the books of Bukhari and Muslim. "The book of Bukhari is the more authentic of the two and more useful." In addition, al-Dhahabi quoted Bukhari as having said, "I have memorized one hundred thousand authentic hadith and two hundred thousand which are less than authentic".

Criticism

Criticism has also been directed at apparent contradictions within Bukhari regarding the of the Quran. Some narrations state the Quran was revealed only in the dialect of Muhammad's tribe, the Quraysh, while others state it was revealed in seven ahruf. Certain prophetic medicine and remedies espoused in Bukhari, such as cupping, have been noted for being unscientific. Sunni scholar Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, on the basis of contrary archaeological evidence, criticised the hadith which claimed that Adam's height was 60 cubits and human height has been decreasing ever since.

In the 2003 book The Idea of Women in Fundamentalist Islam, Lamia Shehadeh used gender theory to critique an ahaad hadith about women's leadership. Another hadith reported by Abu Hurayra was criticized by Fatema Mernissi for being reported out of context and without any further clarification in the Sahih. The clarification is given in a hadith reported by Aisha in al-Zarkashi's (1344–1392) hadith collection. According to Charles Kurzman, this case raises the question of whether other narrations in Bukhari have been reported incompletely or lack proper context. In 2017, Rachid Aylal, a Quranist, published a book criticizing the Sahih, titled Sahih Al-Bukhari: The End of a Legend. It was banned in Morocco for disturbing spiritual security, due to pressure from Islamists.

On August 29, 2022, Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation has included Sahih al-Bukhari into the federal list of extremist materials (except containing surahs, ayahs and quotes from the Quran) after the Supreme Court of Tatarstan supported the Laishevo District Court's decision to recognize the Sahih as extremist with its appellate ruling of July 5, 2022.

Notes

References

  • The Translation and the Meanings of Sahîh Al-Bukhâri: Arabic-English, trans. by Muhammad Muhsin Khan, ndw edn, 9 vols (Riyadh: Darussalam, 1997); also digitised in html
  • Sahih Bukhari – Translation by Muhammad Muhsin Khan from Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement (USC-MSA)
  • A Manual of Hadith by Muhammad Ali, pdf – a selected compendium of Sahih al-Bukhari with commentary