Islam by Mahmoud Ayoub

Author:Mahmoud Ayoub
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oneworld Publications

THE SIX CANONICAL ḤADĪTH COLLECTIONS

The science of ḥadīth criticism as outlined above was not perfected and fully implemented until the middle of the third/ninth century. It was actually an integral part of the science of jurisprudence and its crowning achievement. The comprehensive works based on it were intended as sources and to some extent, as manuals to be used by later jurists.

The most important Sunni ḥadīth traditionists are Muḥammad b. Isma‘īl al-Bukhārī (d. 870) and Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj al-Nīsābūrī (d. 875). They were, as their names suggest, from the cities of Bukhārā in Central Asia and Nishāpūr in the province of Khurāsān in northeastern Iran, respectively. Although contemporaries, the two men did not know one another. Yet each of them journeyed for many years across the Muslim world in search of ḥadīth traditions. The two works these long searches produced are amazingly alike, a fact strongly suggestive of an already existing unified and well-established ḥadīth tradition.

Al-Bukhārī and Muslim are each said to have collected hundreds of thousands of ḥadīths out of which they selected about three thousand, discounting repetition. Their methodologies and systems of organization became the criteria that all subsequent ḥadīth compilers followed. Their two collections, entitled simply Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, soon achieved canonical status, second in authority to the Qur’ān. Although the Ṣaḥīḥ of Muslim is better organized and methodologically superior to that of al-Bukhārī, the latter has achieved first place among all ḥadīth collections.

Within less than half a century after Muslim and al-Bukhārī, four other collections, those of Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī, Ibn Māja, al-Tirmidhī, and al-Nasā’ī, were produced. It is noteworthy that all four men, like Muslim and al-Bukhārī, were from Central Asia and Iran. Their works are entitled Sunan (pl. of sunnah) and combine the sunnahs of action, consent, and speech. In contrast, the works of Muslim and al-Bukhārī are essentially collections of sound (ṣaḥīḥ.) ḥadīth, as their titles indicate.

The six canonical collections and others modeled on them are organized as legal manuals dealing first with laws governing the rituals of worship, then with the laws regulating the social, political, and economic life of the community. They are divided into books (or sections) beginning with the five pillars of the faith: first, imān and islām, then the prayers (beginning with the rules for ritual cleansing), followed by almsgiving (zakāt), fasting (ṣawm), and pilgrimage (ḥajj). In addition, they treat dietary laws, marriage and divorce, inheritance and related matters. They also include books on jihād, or war, and journeying in God’s way. This section includes laws dealing with the status and treatment of dhimmīs, that is Jews, Christians, and other protected religious communities. Other sections include rules covering criminal acts, trade, and related matters.

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