Collection of Ḥadīth: Fifth Stage

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

Bukhārī

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