Overview of Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī

The Ṣaḥīḥ is only one of many works ascribed to Imām al-Bukhārī. By the age of eighteen, he had composed a treatise on the opinions of the Companions and the Successors and prepared a draft of his renowned al-Tārīkh al-kabīr.1 His purported oeuvre comprises over thirty books and tracts on theology, law, history, prosopography, polemics, and filial piety. To date, only about ten of his books are published.2 Many books are either misattributed to him, or they are different iterations (ibrāza) of the same book or sections extracted from his larger works.3 For instance, he is said to have composed a large collection on Qurʾānic exegesis, but this appears to be the chapter of Tafsīr from his Ṣaḥīḥ.4 During his lifetime, al-Tārīkh al-kabīr caught the attention and engagement of the scholarly community,5 but it was the Ṣaḥīḥ that would eventually not only overshadow his own scholarly output but dominate the hadith tradition as a whole.

At some point during his extensive academic travels, al-Bukhārī was in Nishapur sitting in the company of the great hadith scholar Isḥāq b. Rāhawayh (d. 238 AH) when someone in the audience suggested that one gather the circulating authentic hadith in a single collection, something unheard of at the time.6 As the seed was planted in al-Bukhārī’s mind, it began to germinate, and spurred him on a sixteen-year project of compiling his magnum opus.7 Al-Bukhārī initially compiled a massive collection entitled al-Mabsūṭ,8 wherein he gathered all his hadith and organized them into chapters. According to Ibn Ṭāhir al-Maqdisī (d. 507 AH), he then drew on this reservoir of narrations to compile the Ṣaḥīḥ, by handpicking those that met his standards of authenticity.9 The body of hadith that al-Bukhārī used for his Ṣaḥīḥ were a mixture of “live” oral traditions and previously compiled books.10 Some of the written corpora that he cites in his Ṣaḥīḥ include Maʿmar’s (d. 153 AH) Jāmiʿ, Mālik’s (d. 179 AH) Muwaṭṭāʾ, Ibn Abī Shayba’s (d. 235 AH) Muṣannaf, and al-Farrāʾ’s (207 AH) Maʿānī al-Qurʾān, among other books.11 Since the dominant culture at the time required that one cite a chain of transmission regardless of the form of one’s source, al-Bukhārī would narrate from written sources using phrases that are associated with live transmission (e.g., ḥaddathanī).12

Al-Bukhārī’s greatest accomplishment through the Ṣaḥīḥ was that he filtered the overwhelming body of hadith that was circulating by the early third century AH and gathered the most reliable ones in a single work. To be sure, he was not blindly collecting hadith based solely on reliability. Rather, the Ṣaḥīḥ is an expression of al-Bukhārī’s vision of Islamic law, theology, and ethics through rigorously authenticated reports from the Prophet (ṣ) and the early generations of Muslims. By his own admission, he left out many authentic hadith for the fear of unnecessarily prolonging the work.13 To compensate for the stringency of his standards for including hadith, al-Bukhārī introduced the concept of tarājim, that is, chapter headings that precede each section, comprising introductory material related to the chapter, such as verses, exegetical comments, and scholarly dicta.14 In addition to its exceptional interest in philological material, the Ṣaḥīḥ is thus a multifaceted work that ably treads the line between law and hadith and owes its complex structure to “the tension between the goals” of these two disciplines.15 The division of themes in the Ṣaḥīḥ demonstrates the predominantly legal nature of the Ṣaḥīḥ,16 but it also highlights the importance of topics that receive less importance in hadith literature, like Qurʾānic exegesis. 55% of the hadith in the Ṣaḥīḥ relate to law (aḥkām); 11% to comportment (ādāb); 11% to history and maghāzī; 7% to hagiography (manāqib); 7% to Qurʾānic exegesis; 4% to heart-softeners (riqāq); 4% to theology; and 1% to eschatology (fitan).17 The Ṣaḥīḥ consists of four types of narrations:

  • Primary hadith (uṣūl);
  • Corroborating reports (mutābaʿāt);
  • Suspended reports (muʿallaqāt);
  • Post-prophetic reports (āthār).

The latter two types are found in the chapter headings. His standards of authenticity were applied only to the primary hadith, i.e., prophetic hadith with continuous chains.18 The other categories were subject to a lower standard of verification.19 According to Ibn Ḥajar, the Ṣaḥīḥ comprises the following number of narrations. Including repetitions, there are 7397 primary hadith; 1341 suspended reports; and 344 corroborating reports and allusions to alternative routes.20 Thus, the total number of prophetic hadith including repetitions is 9079. Then, there are 1608 non-prophetic reports. Putting all the categories together, there are 10690 narrations in the Ṣaḥīḥ.21 For the sake of convenience, this study uses the prevalent number 7563 to account for the primary and corroborating hadith in the main text, as enumerated by the Egyptian editor Muḥammad Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqī (d. 1968), though it is not free of criticism.22 Ultimately, The exact number of narrations and chapters (discussed later) in the Ṣaḥīḥ depends on the method of counting one uses and the recension one consults.

According to the prevalent numbering system, the printed editions of Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī based on al-Farabrī’s recension contain 97 Kitāb titles. However, 19 of these titles do not appear in any reliable manuscript or recension, and two titles are only found in the mustakhraj works. From the remaining, the inclusion of 29 titles is agreed upon within the Farabrī tradition, and 55 titles are disputed.23 Although most printed editions of the Ṣaḥīḥ today contain 97 Kitāb titles, there is considerable disagreement among the secondary literature and earliest prints, chiefly due to conflicting views on labelling certain bābs as Kitābs. In recent secondary literature, for instance, Muḥammad al-Tūqādī’s 1896 index enumerates 68 Kitāb titles and Riḍwān Muḥammad’s 1949 index enumerates 91 titles.24 In the eighth century AH, al-Kirmānī estimated that there are about 100 Kitāb titles, an estimation that was reiterated by the Ottoman encyclopedist Ḥajjī Khalīfa (d. 1067 AH) in Kashf al-ẓunūn.25

We will explore the manuscripts of the Ṣaḥīḥ in a separate post. As for printed editions, the Ṣaḥīḥ was printed at least three times by the nineteenth century. The first lithographic edition of the Ṣaḥīḥ was printed in Delhi between 1851–1854 with editorial and commentarial work by Aḥmad ʿAlī al-Sahāranpūrī (d. 1880). The second is the Leiden edition published by Brill. The first three volumes were printed between 1862–1868 with editorial work by Ludolf Krehl (d. 1901), and the fourth volume was completed in 1908 by Theodor Willem Juynboll (d. 1948).27 The third is the Sulṭāniyya edition, which was published in nine volumes in 1895 from the Cairene publishing house al-Maṭbaʿa al-Amīriyya and reviewed by a committee of scholars from al-Azhar.29

  • 1 Al-Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ, 12:400.
  • 2 Interestingly, this corresponds to the number of titles recorded by our earliest source on his bibliography. See Ibn al-Nadīm, al-Fihrist (Beirut: Dār al-Maʿrifa, 1997), 1:282.
  • 3 ʿAbd al-Salām al-Mubārakpūrī, Sīrat al-Imām al-Bukhārī (Mecca: Dār ʿĀlam al-Fawāʾid, 1422 AH), 1:280–311; Muṣṭafā al-Aʿẓamī, An Introduction to Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī: Author’s Biography, Recensions, and Manuscripts (London: Turath Publishing, 2020), 27–31.
  • 4 Christopher Melchert, “Bukhārī and his Ṣaḥīḥ,” 433.
  • 5 Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Muwaḍḍiḥ li-awhām al-jamʿ wa-l-tafrīq (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr al-Islāmī, 1985) 1:7–8.
  • 6 Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh Madīnat al-Salām (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 2002), 2:327.
  • 7 On other factors that possibly influenced the compilation of the Ṣaḥīḥ, see Ibn Ḥajar, Hudā al-sārī muqaddimat Fatḥ al-Bārī (Beirut: Dār al-Maʿrifa, 1379 AH), 6–7; Muḥammad ʿAwwāma, “Annotations,” on Tadrīb al-rāwī, 2:266.
  • 8 For quotes from this now lost collection and two other lost works attributed to al-Bukhārī, see Muḥammad Mukhtār, “Jamʿ li-baʿḍ al-nuqūl allatī waṣalatnā min baʿḍ al-kutub al-mafqūda li-l-Imām al-Bukhārī, Majmūʿat al-Makhṭūṭāt al-Islāmiyya 29–30, (1441 AH) 119–135.
  • 9 Ibn Ḥajar, Taghlīq al-taʿlīq ʿalā Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1405 AH), 5:420. Also see idem, Fatḥ al-Bārī bi-sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ al-Imām Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī (Beirut: Dār al-Maʿrifa, 1379 AH), 13:246.
  • 10 This practice continued well into the fifth century AH. For instance, in his Sunan, Abū Bakr al- Bayhaqī cites at least 169 previously written books. See Najm Khalaf, Mawārid al-Imām al-Bayhaqī fī al-Sunan al-kubrā (Medina: Maktabat al-Rushd, 1990).
  • 11 ʿUmar al-Nashūqātī, Maṣādir Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, in Fawāʾid Tadrīsiyya min Majlis Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī fī Dār al-Ḥaḍīth al-Sharīf wa-l-Sīra al-Nabawiyya (Damascus: Majmaʿ al-Shaykh Aḥmad Kaftārū, n.d.).
  • 12 See al-Aʿẓamī, Studies in Early Ḥadīth Literature (Indiana: American Trust Publications, 1978), 298–99. For a list of written sources that al-Bukhārī employed in his Ṣaḥīḥ, see Maḥmūd Jastaniyya, Manhaj al-Bukhārī wa-Muslim fī al-nusakh wa-l-ṣaḥāʾif al-ḥadīthiyya (MA diss, the University of Jordan, 2004), 81–134. That a hadith in the Ṣaḥīḥ was transmitted from a written source was not always expressly stated. At times, when al-Bukhārī says, “Qutayba narrated to us from Malik from Nāfiʿ” he may well be drawing on the Muwaṭṭaʾ, which can be confirmed with a quick comparison between the two works. For a list of 644 hadith that al-Bukhārī narrates from Mālik and are found in the Muwaṭṭaʾ, see Fuat Sezgin, Bukhārī key maʾākhidh: Nāqidānah jāʾizah (Faisalabad: Maktabah Islāmiyyah Lahore, 2022), Urdu trans. Khālid Ẓafar Allāh, Appendix II. Interestingly, a variant is often preferred on the grounds that the wording corresponds to the written source that al-Bukhārī relied upon. See Ibn Ḥajar, Fatḥ al-Bārī, 4:277.
  • 13 Ibn ʿAdī, al-Kāmil fī ḍuʿafāʾ al-rijāl (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1997), 1:225.
  • 14 For a detailed study on the functions of the chapter headings in the Ṣaḥīḥ, see Zakariyyā al- Kāndhlawī, al-Abwāb wa-l-tarājim li-Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 2012), 1:97–243.
  • 15 Mohammad Fadel, “Ibn Ḥajar’s Hady al-Sārī: A Medieval Interpretation of the Structure al-Bukhārī’s al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaḥīḥ: Introduction and Translation,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 54, no. 3 (1995): 166–167.
  • 16 This confirms the comments of Anwar Shāh al-Kashmīrī (d. 1933) that “the legal views of the hadith compilers influenced [their selection] of hadith (sarā fiqhuhum ilā al-ḥadīth).” See “Annotations,” on Naṣb al-rāya fī takhrīj aḥādīṭh al-Hidāya (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Rayyān, 1997), 2:17; Muḥammad Yūsuf al-Bannūrī, Maʿārif al-sunan (Karachi: H.M. Saʿīd, 1992), 6:379-380; ʿAwwāmah, Athar al-ḥadīth al-sharīf, 152–153.
  • 17 Khaldūn al-Aḥdab, al-Imām al-Bukhārī wa-Jāmiʿuhu al-ṣaḥīḥ (Damascus: Dār al-Kamāl al- Muttaḥida, 2020), 341–349. The percentages were rounded for the sake of simplicity.
  • 18 This explanation is substantiated by the purported title of the Ṣaḥīḥ: al-Jāmiʿ al-musnad al-ṣaḥīḥ al-mukhtaṣar min umūr rasūl Allāh—ṣallallāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam—wa-sunanihi wa-ayyāmihi (The Comprehensive Sound Musnad Epitome of the Prophet’s Affairs, Deeds and Days), which suggests that the authenticity clause applies to the musnad narrations (prophetic hadith with continuous chains). See Abū Ghudda, Taḥqīq ismay al-Ṣaḥīḥayn wa-ism Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī (Aleppo: Maktab al- Maṭbūʿāt al-Islāmiyya 1993), 9–12. In the earliest reference to the Ṣaḥīḥ, al-Tirmidhī refers to it only as “Kitāb al-Jāmiʿ.” By the late third century AH, the celebrated bibliophile of Baghdad, Ibn al-Nadīm (d. ca. 380 AH), referred to it as “Kitāb al-Ṣaḥīḥ.” The earliest commentator on the Ṣaḥīḥ, Abū Sulaymān al-Khaṭṭābī (d. 388 AH), referred to it as “al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ.” See Ibn al-Nadīm, al-Fihrist, 282; al-Khaṭṭābī, Maʿālim al-sunan (Aleppo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-ʿIlmiyya, 1932), 2:10, 4:329. For an insightful presentation on the titles of Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī that is relevant for the current discussion, see Aḥmad Maʿbad, “al-Imām al-Tirmidhī wa-manhajuhu fī kitābihi al-Jāmiʿ,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTfd4sYkuF0, 29:10–1:07:30 (posted July 20, 2018; accessed March 10, 2023).
  • 19 According to Ibn Ḥajar, the corroborating reports occasionally reach the level of ḥasan (fair). See Ibn Ḥajar, Hudā al-sārī, 19; ʿAwwāma, “Annotations,” on Tadrīb al-rāwī, 2:280, 289.
  • 20 The printed edition of Hudā al-sārī has the number as 341, but an authoritative manuscript signed by Ibn Ḥajar has it as 344. See al-Aḥdab, al-Imām al-Bukhārī, 261, note 1.
  • 21 Ibn Ḥajar himself provides conflicting numberings. See Ibn Ḥajar, Hudā al-sārī, 468–469 and 477; idem, Fatḥ al-Bārī, 13:543; ʿAwwāmah, “Annotations,” on Tadrīb al-rāwī, 2:369–370; al-Aḥdab, al- Imām al-Bukhārī, 261–268 and 483–496.
  • 22 ʿAbd al-Sattār al-Shaykh mentions that ʿAbd al-Bāqī included several suspended and post- prophetic reports into his count, which partly accounts for his numbering being larger than the numbering of others. See ʿAbd al-Sattār al-Shaykh, al-Imām al-Bukhārī ustādh al-ustādhīn wa-imām al-muḥaddithīn (Damascus: Dār al-Qalam, 2007), 449–450. After an extensive analysis of the various proposed numbers, Khaldūn al-Aḥdab argues that the correct number of hadith in the Ṣaḥīḥis 7208. See al-Aḥdab, al-Imām al-Bukhārī, 495.
  • 23 ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm, Riwāyāt, 540–549.
  • 24 Muḥammad al-Tūqādī, Miftāḥ al-Ṣaḥīḥayn Bukhārī wa-Muslim (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1975), 4–6; Riḍwān Muḥammad, Fahāris al-Bukhārī (Cairo: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, n.d.), 541–598, 599–600; Abū Ghudda, “Annotations,” in Kashf al-iltibās (Aleppo: Maktabat al-Maṭbūʿāt al-Islāmiyya, 1993), 6–7, 99.
  • 25 Al-Kirmānī, al-Kawākib al-darārī, 1:12; Ḥajjī Khalīfa, Kashf al-ẓunūn ʿan asāmī al-kutub wa-l-funūn (Baghdad: Maktabat al-Muthannā, 1941), 1:541.
  • 26 On al-Sahāranpūrī’s edition, see Muntasir Zaman, Hadith Scholarship in the Indian Subcontinent: Aḥmad ʿAlī Sahāranpūrī and the Canonical Hadith Literature (Leicester: Qurtuba Books, 2021), 23–30.
  • 27 The Concordance was translated into Arabic as al-Muʿjam al-Mufahras li-alfāẓ al-ḥadīth al-nabawī (excluding its introductions), and A Handbook of Early Muhammadan Tradition was translated as Miftāḥ kunūz al-sunna. For an Arabic translation of the French introductions to Concordance et Indices de la Tradition Musulmane, see Saʿd al-Marṣafī, Aḍwāʾ ʿalā akhṭāʾ al-mustashriqīn fī al- Muʿjam al-mufahras li-alfāẓ al-ḥadīth al-nabawī (Kuwait: Dār al-Qalam, 1988).
  • 28 Mustafa Celil Altuntaş, “Ḥadīth Indexes of the Ottoman Period before Concordance (al-Muʿjam al-Mufahras),” Hadis Ve Siyer Araştırmaları 5, no. 1 (2019): 56–61.
  • 29 ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Yūsufān makes the interesting observation that the scholars of al-Azhar had completed most of the editorial work on the Ṣaḥīḥ prior to sultan ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd’s imperial order to work on the Ṣaḥīḥ. The sultan provided much needed financial support to complete the project. See ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Yūsufān, “Li-Allāh thumma li-l-tārīkh,” Majmūʿat al-Makhṭūṭāt al-Islāmiyya 2 (1438 AH): 28–29.
  • 30 On the Sulṭāniyya edition and its reliance on the Yūnīniyya and its copies, see Ṣalāḥ Fatḥī Halal, Taḥrīr al-aṣl al-muʿtamad fī al-Ṭabʿa al-Sulṭāniyya min Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (Cairo: Maʿhad al-Makhṭūṭāt al-ʿArabiyya, 2018).