Hadith

Hadith are the tradition or collection of traditions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad [s] that include his sayings, acts, and approval or disapproval of things.

Hadith

QuranA Unique Collection of the Books of Hadīth

Hadith are collections of narrations, usually of statements by the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). These narrations are made of two parts, the text and the chain. The text is made up of the words of the narration, and the chain is the list of individuals who have transmitted the text. Hadith must be authentic to be considered valid.

 

Bukhari

Bukhari is one of the Sunni Six Major Hadith collections, collected by Muhammad al-Bukhari. He was born in hijra 195 and died in hijra 262. He spent 16 years writing it. It is the most famous hadith collection. It was published 4 years after his death. "Sahih" is an Arabic word that means among other things "authentic", so "Sahih Bukhari" could be translated as "Bukhari's Authentic Sources". The authentic part in the name is a reference to the credibility of the hadiths in his collection. Muhammad al-Bukhari chose between many hadith (it is claimed that he collected over 300,000 of them), and only included those he was completely satisfied with as being Sahih (authentic). It is said that before he placed a hadith in his collection, he would perform ghusl (full\greater ablution) and prayed two Rakah (Islamic unit for form of prayer) Nafl (voluntary prayer) to ask Allah for guidance.

Muslim

Muslim was compiled by Imam Muslim (full name Abul Husain Muslim bin al-Hajjaj al-Nisapuri), who was born in 202 A.H. and died in 261 A.H. He travelled widely to gather his collection of Hadith, including to Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Egypt. Out of 300,000 Hadith which he evaluated, only 4,000 approximately were extracted for inclusion into his collection based on stringent acceptance criteria. Each report in his collection was checked for compatibility with the Quran, and the veracity of the chain of reporters had to be painstakingly established. Muslim was a student of Bukhari.

Tirmidhi

Sunan al-Tirmidhi, one of the six canonical hadith compilations used in Islam. Written by Imam Tirmidhi, full name Abu Isa Muhammad ibn Isa ibn Musa ibn ad-Dahhak as-Sulami at-Tirmidhi (824-892, ie 209 AH - 13 Rajab 279 AH) was a medieval collector of hadith. He was born (and would die) at Bugh, a suburb of Termez (Arabic Tirmidh), to a family of the widespread Banu Sulaym tribe. Starting at the age of twenty, he travelled widely, to Kufa, Basra and the Hijaz, seeking out knowledge from, among others, Qutaiba ibn Said, Bukhari, Imam Muslim and Abu Dawud. Tirmidhi was blind in the last two years of his life. Tirmidhi wrote nine books, of which, after the Jami, al-Ilal is best-known; only four of his works survive. He played a major part in giving the formerly vague terminology used in classifying hadith according to their reliability a more precise set of definitions.

Nasa'i

Nasa'i compiled by Al-Nasa'i (201 -- 303 AH), full name Ahmad ibn Shu`ayb ibn Ali ibn Sinan Abu `Abd ar-Rahman al-Nasa'i, was a noted collector of hadith, and wrote one of the six canonical hadith collections recognized by Muslims, Sunan al-Sughra, as well as 15 other books, 6 dealing with the science of hadith. He was born in Nasa (in Khorasan) about 829 (214 AH), and traveled extensively in order to hear traditions. He resided in Egypt for a while, and then in Damascus. He died in 915 (303 AH), his final burial place is unknown and it may be in Mecca or Ramalah (Palestine).

Abu Da'ud

Sunan Abu Da'ud is one of the Sunni Six Major Hadith collections, collected by Abu Da'ud. Abu Da'ud declared some of Hadiths in his book to be unauthentic, which makes his book different from Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. The author collected 50,000 hadith, but included only 4,800 in this collection. Muslims regard this collection as fourth in strength of their Six major Hadith collections.

Ibn Majah

Ibn Majah compiled by Ibn Maja, who was born in Qazwin in modern-day Iranian province of Qazvin in 824 (209 AH) to a Persian family, clients (mawla) of the Arab tribe of Rabi`a ibn Nizar. His patronymic "Maja" means "month" in ancient Persian (corresponding to modern mah), and may have been his father's title, or his mother's or grandmother's name. At the age of 22, he left his hometown to travel the Islamic world; among the areas he visited were Kufa, Basra, Egypt, Sham (Syria), Baghdad, Rayy, Mecca, Medina, and Khorasan. He died in 887 (Ramadan 22, 273 AH.) After his travels, he wrote the Sunan Ibn Maja, recording 4,341 hadiths, of which 3,002 are recorded by the other five canonical hadith collectors; of the 1,339 hadith unique to him, 428 are graded sahih (authentic), while the remainder are considered less certain. According to Ibn Kathir, he also wrote a tafsir (commentary on the Qur'an) and a book on history, but neither survive. Other authors began to add him to the canonical five hadith collectors beginning in the 13th century, but his position remained controversial as late as the 18th century.

Ahmad

Musnad Ahmad ibn Hanbal is the collection of Hadith collected by the famous scholar Ibn Hanbal to whom the Hanbali madhab of Sunnis is attributed. It is said by some that Ibn Hanbal made a comment in regards to his book which read as follows: "There is not a hadith that I have included in this book except that it was used as evidence by some of the scholars." Anyone who has read the Musnad and has studied the general areas of Islamic sciences can verify this claim often attributed ot Ibn Hanbal. Certain scholars after the time of Ahmad claimed that the Musnad contains fabricated hadith.These hadith are generally thought to be fabricated by interpolation (i.e. that narrator jumbling up information, mixing texts and authoritative chains) rather than being mere creations of a dubious narrators imagination. An issue concerning Imam Ahmad's hadith collection, his Musnad, was that during his work on it, he struck out various hadith (as not belonging to his collection). This methodology was not understood by some of the copyists and they reinserted some of these hadith which Ibn Hanbal had made efforts to remove in their transcriptions.

Malik

The Al-Muwatta is an early collection of hadith of the Prophet Muhammad (s) that form the basis for the jurisprudence of the Maliki school. It was compiled and edited by Imam Malik. The Maliki school is popular in North Africa. The book covers rituals, rites, customs, traditions, norms and laws of the time of the Prophet Muhammad (s). The bulk of the book pertains to non-legal areas like Hajj, sacrifice, intercourse etc. This makes it valuable beyond law, for studying historical sociology of Arabs, for example. Imam Malik composed the 'Al-Muwatta' over a period of forty years to represent the “well-trodden path” of the people of Madinah. Its name also means that it is the book that is “many times agreed upon”— about whose contents the people of Madinah were unanimously agreed — and that is made easy and facilitated. Its high standing is such that people of every school of fiqh and all of the imams of hadith scholarship agree upon its authenticity. Imam Shafi’i said that "There is not on the face of the earth—& after the Book of Allah—a book & which is more authentic than the book of Malik."

Darimi

Darimi is a collection by Imam Al-Darimi Al-Ziyadat fil Kitab Al-Muzini of Imam Abu Bakr Naysaburi