Submitted To: Ma’am Hafsah Ayaaz

Submitted By: Ammara Tanveer

Assignment: 01

Department: Islamic Studies

Roll No: 001

Date: 16-sept-2019
Authenticity of sahih-al-bukhari:

Ibn al-Salah said: "The first to author a Sahih was Bukhari, Abū ʿAbd Allāh
Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Juʿfī, followed by Abū al-Ḥusayn Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj
an-Naysābūrī al-Qushayrī, who was his student, sharing many of the same
teachers. These two books are the most authentic books after the Qurʾān. As for the
statement of Al-Shafi‘i, who said "I do not know of a book containing knowledge
more correct than Malik's book," – others mentioned it with a different wording –
he said this before the books of Bukhari and Muslim. The book of Bukhari is the
more authentic of the two and more useful.
Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani quoted Abu Jaʿfar al-‘Uqailee as saying, "After Bukhari had
written the Sahih, he read it to Ali ibn al-Madini, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Yahya ibn
Ma'in as well as others. They considered it a good effort and testified to its
authenticity with the exception of four hadith. Al-‘Uqailee then said that Bukhari
was actually correct regarding those four hadith." Ibn Hajar then concluded, "And
they are, in fact, authentic.
Ibn al-Salah said in his Muqaddimah ibn al-Ṣalāḥ fī ʿUlūm al-Ḥadīth: "It has been
narrated to us that Bukhari has said, 'I have not included in the book al-Jami’ other
than what is authentic and I did not include other authentic hadith for the sake of
brevity. In addition, al-Dhahabi said, "Bukhari was heard saying, 'I have
memorized one hundred thousand authentic hadith and two hundred thousand
which are less than authentic.

Authenticity of sahih-al-Muslim:

There are at least five hundred extant manuscripts of Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim that have been
transcribed over a millennium by scribes from different regions. The
preponderance of its manuscripts is second only to Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī. An early
partial manuscript held in the Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Library was transcribed
some time in the 5th century AH. The exact date of its transcription is not
documented, but it was used by Abū Bakr al-Ṭūsī in 486 AH to teach the text.
Another partial manuscript dated to 471 AH is is held in the Ẓāhiriyyah Library
(al-Assad National Library) in Damascus. Although the details of Muslim’s
exemplar are unknown, important secondary and tertiary manuscripts were
accessible to classical scholars. The manuscript of al-Julūdī via the recension of
Ibrāhim ibn Sufyān was accessible in the 6th century to the commentator al-
Māzarī. Ibn al-Ḥadhdhāʾ’s (d. 416 AH) manuscript of al-Qalānisī’s recension—via
Ibn Māhan—was used by Abu ʿAlī al-Jayyānī (d. 498 AH) for his celebrated
work Taqyīd al-Muhmal. A recent study revealed that between the two major
recensions of the Ṣaḥīḥ—(i) Ibrāhīm ibn Sufyān and (ii) Ibn Māhān via al-
Qalānisī—there are only 117 instances of variations, 56 in the chains of
transmission and 61 in the texts; more than half of these variations, however, can
be harmonized. An example of this conflict is the description of Saʿīd ibn Jubayr’s
action: raḥaltu (I travelled) in the recension of Ibrāhīm ibn Sufyān and its
variant dakhaltu (I entered) in the recension of Ibn Māhān via al-Qalānisī. This
variation is not serious and can be harmonized by taking Ibrāhīm’s recension as a
reference to Saʿīd’s travel and Ibn Māhān’s variant as his entering Ibn ʿAbbās’
room after the travel. To put the negligible conflict between these recensions into
perspective, based on the Dār al-Taʾṣīl numbering of total reports in
the Ṣaḥīḥ (7525), variations are found in 1.55% of reports, an inconsequential
percentage considering the extensive nature of the work.

Scholars Views about sahih-al-Bukhari:

 Rafidi Shi’ah narrators in Sahih al-Bukhari

O you who believe! Be careful of your duty to Allah, and be with the truthful
(Holy Qur’an: Chapter 9, Verse 119)

The Shi’ah point of view was followed by many early scholars of Islam who were
considered truthful and trustworthy, and their narrations of the Ahadith of the
Prophet (s) were relied upon by famous Sunni scholars.
Listed below are a few of the Shi’ah scholars that al-Bukhari has relied upon in his
Sahih. If we add to these the rest of them including those narrators in the Sahih of
Muslim and the other four Sihah Sittah who followed the Shi’ah faith, then the
number would increase significantly. To save space, reference is given to the
section title (kitab) in each book for only one hadith by each person - the rest can
be found using indices or hadith software. The reader will notice the term Rafidi
every now and then in the following biographies. The Sunni scholars generally
define a Rafidi as a Shi’ah who openly criticizes or rejects the legitimacy of the
Caliphs before ‘Ali.

Scholars Views about sahih-al-Muslim:

Ibrahim Bin Abdullah Sa'adi and Sahih Muslim

It is said that Muslim Bin Hajjaj Naishaburi used to question the credibility of
reliable Sunni reporters without having any sound reason. From among such
reporters, is Ibrahim Bin Abdullah Sa'adi.

Commenting on Ibrahim Bin Abdullah, Dahabi says that he was truthful reporting
traditions from Yazid Bin Harown and others.

According to Abu Abdullah Hakim, Ibrahim used to belittle Muslim and that was
the reason why Muslim criticizes him without having any sound reason.

It goes without saying that such an action by Muslim undermines his justice,
causing one not to rely on the traditions he has reported in his book. It is due to this
that Ibn Jawzi says: It is a mistake that traditionists, under the influence of Satan,
criticize each other on revenge basis and this is what that paves the ground for not
considering them as the basis of Jarh and Ta'adi (criticizing and praising), a
methodology used by previous scholars to defend Islamic laws.

Abu Zar'ah Razi and Sahih Muslim

It is well-known among great scholars that Imam Abu Zar'ah Razi was critical of
Sahih by Muslim Bin Hajjaj. Commenting on Ahmad Bin Isa Misri, he in his
Tahdib Al-Tahdib and Mizan Al-Itidal says:
Sa'aeed Bard'ai says: Once I saw that somebody mentioned the name of Sahih
Muslim in the presence of Abu Zar'a, but Abu Zar'ah said: They are the people
who started an unwelcomed competition. To reach some commercial ends they
embarked on writing such books [as Sahih Muslim].
In his Al-Amta'a, Abu Al-Fazl Adfavi says: Abu Zar'ah used to sharply criticize
Sahih Bukhari saying that how one could consider it as authentic while it contained
unauthentic traditions.

Why sahih-al-bukhari is authentic:

Bukhari and other compilers of the traditions ascribed to the Holy Prophet set
different measures for the acceptance of a report. Though conditions set by
Bukhari are the strictest, as you have stated, and his book is considered very
authentic but Muslim scholars do not, generally, hold that a tradition recorded in
Bukhari (Or any other book containing Sahih traditions) is fault-free and should
necessarily be considered as the exact actual saying and/or action of the Prophet
(sws). As we all well know that even Imam Muslim, a disciple of Bukhari didn't
take the principles set by his teacher and established his own principles and
compiled a different book. Other Muslim scholars also did the same and compiled
books of their own. This testifies to the fact that Muslim scholars never took the
Sahih of Bukhari as the final and ultimate source for the absolutely true reports
about the Prophet (sws). As regards the question of contradictory reports, no
human endeavor is free of error. What Bukhari and Muslim and other compilers of
the traditions of the Prophet did is to apply strict checks on acceptance of a report
about the acts and sayings of the Prophet (sws). They honestly established checks
and then compiled the traditions accordingly. They presented what they understood
to be authentic. Now it is possible that to them the reports, which we find to be
contradictory, could be reconciled. Or, on the other hand, they may merely had
mentioned them finding them to be equally authentic from the perspective of the
chain of narrators, because they didn't want to reject a saying ascribed to the
Prophet (sws) as they may not have been sure of which of the two or more
contradictory was actually the true one. Nevertheless, the presence of such
contradictory reports or reports bearing any flaw doesn't deprecate the academic
work done by the great scholars. However, to hold that their works are error-free is
to give their work a position, which no human effort can deserve.
Why sahih-al-Muslim is authentic:

Many Muslims regard this collection as the second most authentic of the six major
hadith collections, containing only sahih hadith, an honor it shares only with Sahih
al-Bukhari, both being referred to as the Two Sahihs. Shia Muslims dismiss some
of its contents as fabrications or untrustworthy due to the questionable reliability of
some narrators. Despite the book's high stature, and the consensus of scholars on
that it is the second most valid categorized book of Hadith, after Sahih al-Bukhari,
it is agreed upon that this does not mean that every element in it is true, in
comparison to other Hadith books, but means that the book as a whole is valid.
Such as the preference of Sahih al-Bukhari to Sahih Muslim, which does not mean
that every Hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari is more valid than every Hadith in Sahih
Muslim, but that the total of what is contained Sahih al-Bukhari is more valid than
the total of what is contained in Sahih Muslim, and likewise, the validity of a
certain Hadith form the two books of Hadith, over Hadith from other Sahih books,
cannot be inferred except after the correctness of that particular Hadith is shown.