a single report in one place with two separate chains of transmission, each from a different teacher, yet he will attribute the wording to the second of the two. Al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar points this out in Fatḥ al-Bārī (1436), saying: “Careful examination of al-Bukhārī’s practice shows that whenever he cites a hadith from more than one teacher, the wording belongs to the last one mentioned—Allah knows best.”

Another feature of al-Bukhārī’s method in the Ṣaḥīḥ is that when he encounters an unusual term in a hadith that coincides with a word found in the Quran, he supplies the explanation of that Quranic word as well. In this way he combines the clarification of obscure expressions in both the Quran and the Sunnah. Ibn Ḥajar notes this in several places in Fatḥ al-Bārī; see, for example, 3/196, 324, and 343.

Through such painstaking analysis, al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar—may Allah have mercy on him—came to master al-Bukhārī’s technical conventions and overall methodology in the Ṣaḥīḥ. I have mentioned this in my book al-Fawāʾid al-Muntaqāh min Fatḥ al-Bārī