This great work was brought to completion in the third century of Hijrah. It was then that two kinds of collections were made, Musnad (the earlier type) and Jāmi‘ or Muṣannaf. Musnad is derived from sanad meaning authority, and the isnād of a ḥadīth meant the tracing of it back through various transmitters to the Companion of the Holy Prophet on whose authority it rested. The collections known as Musnads were arranged, not according to the subject-matter of the ḥadīth, but under the name of the Companion on whose final authority the report rested. The most important of the works of this class is the Musnad of Imām Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal,21 which contains about thirty thousand reports. It is to the Jāmi22 or the Muṣannaf23 that the honour is due of bringing the knowledge of Ḥadīth to perfection. The Jāmi‘ not only arranges reports according to their subject-matter but is also of a more critical tone. Six books are recognized generally under the heading, being the collections made by Muḥammad ibn Ismā‘īl,24 commonly known as Bukhārī (d. 256 A.H.), Muslim (d. 261 A.H.), Abū Dāwūd (d. 275 A.H.), Tirmidzī (d. 279 A.H.), Ibn Mājah (d. 283 A.H.) and Nasā’ī (d. 303 A.H).25 These books classified reports under various subjects and thus made Ḥadīth easy for reference, not only for lawyers and judges but also for students and research scholars thus giving a further impetus to the study of Ḥadīth.26
Among the six27 collections mentioned above, Bukhārī holds the first place in several respects while Muslim comes second.28 In the first place, Bukhārī has the unquestioned distinction of being first, all the others modelling their writings on his. Secondly, he is the most critical of all.29 He did not accept any report unless all its transmitters were reliable and until there was proof that the later transmitter had actually met the first; the mere fact that the two were contemporaries (which is the test adopted by Muslim) did not satisfy him. Thirdly, in his acumen (Fiqāhah) he surpasses all. Fourthly, he heads the more important of his chapters with text from the Holy Qur’ān, and thus shows that Ḥadīth is only an explanation of the
21 Born 164 A.H., died 241 A.H. He is one of the four recognized Imāms (jurists).
22 Literally, one that gathers together.
23 Literally, compiled together.
24 Muḥammad ibn Ismā‘īl Bukhārī was born at Bukhārā in 194 A.H. He began the study of Ḥadīth when only 11 years of age, and by the time that he was 16 had acquired a high reputation for his knowledge thereof. He had a wonderful memory, and the students of Ḥadīth used to correct their manuscripts by comparing them with what he recited from memory.
25 The works of Abū Dāwūd, Ibn Mājah and Nasā’ī are more generally known by the name of Sunan (pl. of sunnah).
26 The Shī‘ās recognize the following five collections of Ḥadīth: 1. The Kāfī by Abū Ja‘far Muḥammad ibn Ya‘qūb (329 A.H.); 2. Man lā yastiḥdzirū-hu-l Faqīh by Shaikh ‘Alī (381 A.H.); 3. The Tahdhīb by Shaikh Abū Ja‘far Muḥammad ibn ‘Alī ibn Ḥusain (466 A.H.); 4. The Istibṣār by the same author; 5. The Nahj al-Balaghah by Sayyid al-Rāzī (406 A.H.). It will be seen that all these collections are of a much later date.
27 These are known as Ṣiḥāḥ Sittah or the six reliable collections.
28 The two together are known as Ṣaḥīḥain or the two reliable books.
29 A modern writer, and one who has made a special study of Ḥadīth expresses the following opinion about Bukhārī: “So far as one is able to judge, Bukhārī published the result of his researches into the content of what he believed to be genuine tradition with all the painstaking accuracy of a modern editor. Thus he records even trifling variants in the ḥadīth, and wherever he feels that an explanatory gloss is necessary either in isnād or matn it is clearly marked as his own” (Tr. Is., p. 29).