Sahih Muslim
Encyclopedia
Sahih Muslim is one of the Six major collections
of the hadith
in Sunni Islam, oral traditions relating to the words and deeds of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad
. It is the second most authentic hadith
collection after Sahih Al-Bukhari
, and is highly acclaimed by Sunni Muslims. It was collected by Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj
, also known as Imam Muslim. Sahih translates as authentic or correct.
) was born in 202 AH
(817/18 CE) in Naysabur
, Iran
into a Persian family and died in 261 AH (874/75 CE) also in Nishapur. He traveled widely to gather his collection of ahadith (plural of hadith), including to Iraq
, the Arabian Peninsula
, Syria
and Egypt
. Out of 300,000 hadith which he evaluated, approximately 4,000 were extracted for inclusion into his collection based on stringent acceptance criteria. Each report in his collection was checked and the veracity of the chain of reporters was painstakingly established. Sunni Muslims consider it the second most authentic hadith collection, after Sahih Bukhari
.Sahih Muslim is divided into 43 books,containing a total of 7190 narrations. However, it is important to realize that Imam Muslim never claimed to collect all authentic traditions as his goal was to collect only traditions that all Muslims should agree on about accuracy.
According to Munthiri, there are a total of 2200 hadiths (without repetition) in Sahih Muslim. According to Muhammad Amin, there are 1400 authentic hadiths that are reported in other books, mainly the Six major Hadith collections
.
, containing only sahih hadith
, an honor it shares only with Sahih Bukhari
, both being referred to as the Two Sahihs. Shia Muslims dismiss many parts of it as fabrications or untrustworthy
, the noted Islamic scholar, has summarized some unique features of Sahih Muslim:
Six major Hadith collections
The six major Hadith collections are collections of hadith by Islamic scholars who, approximately 200 years after Muhammad's death and by their own initiative, collected "hadith" attributed to Muhammad...
of the hadith
Hadith
The term Hadīth is used to denote a saying or an act or tacit approval or criticism ascribed either validly or invalidly to the Islamic prophet Muhammad....
in Sunni Islam, oral traditions relating to the words and deeds of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad
Muhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...
. It is the second most authentic hadith
Hadith terminology
Hadith terminology is the body of terminology which specify the acceptability of the narrations, hadith, attributed to the Islamic Prophet, Muhammad, as well as other early figures of religious significance...
collection after Sahih Al-Bukhari
Sahih al-Bukhari
Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī , as it is commonly referred to, is one of the six canonical hadith collections of Islam. These prophetic traditions, or hadith, were collected by the Persian Muslim scholar Muhammad ibn Ismail al-Bukhari, after being transmitted orally for generations. Muslims view this as one of...
, and is highly acclaimed by Sunni Muslims. It was collected by Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj
Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj
Abul Husayn Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj ibn Muslim ibn Warat al-Qushayri al-Nisaburi was the author of the second authentic sahih collection of hadith in Sunni Islam, Sahih Muslim.-Biography:...
, also known as Imam Muslim. Sahih translates as authentic or correct.
Collection
Imam Muslim (Muslim ibn al-HajjajMuslim ibn al-Hajjaj
Abul Husayn Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj ibn Muslim ibn Warat al-Qushayri al-Nisaburi was the author of the second authentic sahih collection of hadith in Sunni Islam, Sahih Muslim.-Biography:...
) was born in 202 AH
Islamic calendar
The Hijri calendar , also known as the Muslim calendar or Islamic calendar , is a lunar calendar consisting of 12 lunar months in a year of 354 or 355 days. It is used to date events in many Muslim countries , and used by Muslims everywhere to determine the proper day on which to celebrate Islamic...
(817/18 CE) in Naysabur
Nishapur
Nishapur or Nishabur , is a city in the Razavi Khorasan province in northeastern Iran, situated in a fertile plain at the foot of the Binalud Mountains, near the regional capital of Mashhad...
, Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
into a Persian family and died in 261 AH (874/75 CE) also in Nishapur. He traveled widely to gather his collection of ahadith (plural of hadith), including to Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
, the Arabian Peninsula
Arabian Peninsula
The Arabian Peninsula is a land mass situated north-east of Africa. Also known as Arabia or the Arabian subcontinent, it is the world's largest peninsula and covers 3,237,500 km2...
, Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
and Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
. Out of 300,000 hadith which he evaluated, approximately 4,000 were extracted for inclusion into his collection based on stringent acceptance criteria. Each report in his collection was checked and the veracity of the chain of reporters was painstakingly established. Sunni Muslims consider it the second most authentic hadith collection, after Sahih Bukhari
Sahih Bukhari
Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī , as it is commonly referred to, is one of the six canonical hadith collections of Islam. These prophetic traditions, or hadith, were collected by the Persian Muslim scholar Muhammad ibn Ismail al-Bukhari, after being transmitted orally for generations. Muslims view this as one of...
.Sahih Muslim is divided into 43 books,containing a total of 7190 narrations. However, it is important to realize that Imam Muslim never claimed to collect all authentic traditions as his goal was to collect only traditions that all Muslims should agree on about accuracy.
According to Munthiri, there are a total of 2200 hadiths (without repetition) in Sahih Muslim. According to Muhammad Amin, there are 1400 authentic hadiths that are reported in other books, mainly the Six major Hadith collections
Six major Hadith collections
The six major Hadith collections are collections of hadith by Islamic scholars who, approximately 200 years after Muhammad's death and by their own initiative, collected "hadith" attributed to Muhammad...
.
Views
Muslims regard this collection as the second most authentic of the Six major Hadith collectionsSix major Hadith collections
The six major Hadith collections are collections of hadith by Islamic scholars who, approximately 200 years after Muhammad's death and by their own initiative, collected "hadith" attributed to Muhammad...
, containing only sahih hadith
Hadith
The term Hadīth is used to denote a saying or an act or tacit approval or criticism ascribed either validly or invalidly to the Islamic prophet Muhammad....
, an honor it shares only with Sahih Bukhari
Sahih Bukhari
Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī , as it is commonly referred to, is one of the six canonical hadith collections of Islam. These prophetic traditions, or hadith, were collected by the Persian Muslim scholar Muhammad ibn Ismail al-Bukhari, after being transmitted orally for generations. Muslims view this as one of...
, both being referred to as the Two Sahihs. Shia Muslims dismiss many parts of it as fabrications or untrustworthy
Distinctive Features
Amin Ahsan IslahiAmin Ahsan Islahi
Amin Ahsan Islahi was a Pakistani Muslim scholar, famous for his Urdu exegeses of Qur'an, Tadabbur-i-Qur’an—an exegesis that he based on Hamiduddin Farahi's idea of thematic and structural coherence in the Qur'an.-Early life:...
, the noted Islamic scholar, has summarized some unique features of Sahih Muslim:
- Imam Muslim recorded only such narratives as were reported by two reliable successors from two Companions which subsequently travelled through two independent unbroken isnāds consisting of sound narrators. Imām Bukhārī has not followed such a strict criterion.
- Scientific arrangement of themes and chapters. The author, for example, selects a proper place for the narrative and, next to it, puts all its versions. Imām Bukhārī has not followed this method (he scatters different versions of a narrative and the related material in different chapters). Consequently, in the exercise of understanding ahādīth, Sahīh of Imām Muslim offers the best material to the students.
- The Imam informs us whose wordings among the narrators he has used. For example he says: haddathanā fulān wa fulān wallafz lifulān (A and B has narrated this hadīth to us and the wording used here is by A). Similarly he mentions whether, in a particular hadīth, the narrators have differed over the wordings even over a single letter of zero semantic significance. He also informs the readers if narrators have differed over a specific quality, surname, relation or any other fact about a narrator in the chain.
Commentaries and translations
- Siyanah Sahih Muslim by Ibn al-SalahIbn al-SalahAbū `Amr `Uthmān ibn `Abd al-Raḥmān Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Kurdī al-Shahrazūrī , commonly known as Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, was a Shafi'i hadith specialist and the author of the seminal Introduction to the Science of Hadith...
, of which only the beginning segment remains - Al Minhaj Be Sharh Sahih Muslim by Yahiya ibn Sharaf al-NawawiYahiya ibn Sharaf al-NawawiAbu Zakaria Mohiuddin Yahya Ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi , popularly known as al-Nawawi, an-Nawawi or Imam Nawawi , was a Sunni Muslim author on Fiqh and hadith. His position on legal matters is considered the authoritative one in the Shafi'i Madhhab. He was born at Nawa near Damascus, Syria...
- Fath al-MulhimFath al-MulhimFath al-Mulhim Sharh Sahih Muslim is a commentary on Sahih Muslim, written by Shabbir Ahmad Usmani.Imam Muhammad Zahid al-Kawthari regarded Allama Shabbir Usmani's incomplete commentary as the best on Sahih Muslim....
- Takmilat Fath al-MulhimTakmilat Fath al-MulhimTakmilat Fath al-Mulhim is arguably the most important work of Muhammad Taqi Usmani in Arabic, in which he completed in six volumes the commentary of Shabbir Ahmad Usmani on Sahih Muslim. Imam Muhammad Zahid al-Kawthari regarded Allama Shabbir Usmani's incomplete commentary as the best commentary...
- Sahih Muslim (Siddiqui) translated by Islamic scholar Abd-al-Hamid SiddiquiAbd-al-Hamid SiddiquiAbd-al-Hamid Siddiqui is a Sunni Islamic scholar who translated the Sahih Muslim into English. This translation became well known and is a part of the USC-MSA Compendium of Muslim Texts.-Works:...
. The text is used in the USC-MSA Compendium of Muslim TextsUSC-MSA Compendium of Muslim TextsThe Compendium of Muslim Texts contains the most known online hadith database, ranking highest in the Google search engine, although the collections they have are incomplete due to being one of the earliest sites on Islam on the net.-History:... - Summarized Sahih MuslimSummarized Sahih MuslimSummarized Sahih Muslim is the name of a 2 volume translation of Sahih Muslim, translated in English by Islamic scholar Abd-al-Hamid Siddiqui....
- Sharh Sahih Muslim by Allama Ghulam Rasool Saeedi
Further reading
- The Canonization of Al-Bukhari and Muslim: The Formation and Function of the Sunni Hadith Canon by Jonathan Brown, BRILLBrillBrill is a village and civil parish in Aylesbury Vale district in Buckinghamshire, England, close to the boundary with Oxfordshire. It is about north-west of Long Crendon and south-east of Bicester...
, 2007