Introduction

Chapter One: The motive that moved Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Bukhārī to compile his Ṣaḥīḥ and the sincerity of his intention

Know—may God teach both you and me—that in the time of the Prophet’s Companions and the senior Successors, the traces of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) were neither written down in comprehensive collections nor arranged in chapters. Two causes lay behind this. First, at the outset they had been forbidden to do so—as is attested in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim—lest any of those reports become confused with the Majestic Qur’an. Second, their memories were vast, their minds quick-flowing, and most of them did not know how to write.

Toward the end of the Successors’ era, however, the recording of traditions and the classification of reports began, once scholars had dispersed throughout the lands and innovations had multiplied among the Khārijites, the Rāfiḍites, and the Qadarites. The first to gather such material were al-Rabīʿ ibn Ṣubayḥ and Saʿīd ibn Abī ʿArūbah, among others, each of them compiling a separate work for every subject.

When the leading scholars of the third generation appeared, they set down the legal rulings. Imām Mālik produced the Muwaṭṭaʾ, selecting in it the soundest ḥadīths of the people of al-Ḥijāz and blending them with the statements of the Companions, the fatwas of the Successors, and those who followed them. ʿAbd al-Malik ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Jurayj wrote in Mecca; Abū ʿAmr ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAmr al-Awzāʿī in Syria; Abū ʿAbd Allāh Sufyān ibn Saʿīd al-Thawrī in Kūfa; and Abū Salamah Ḥammād ibn Salamah ibn Dīnār in Baṣra. Many of their contemporaries followed the same pattern.

Later, some of those scholars concluded that the ḥadīths of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) should be collected on their own. That occurred at the beginning of the third century, when ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Mūsā al-ʿAbsī of Kūfa produced a Musnad, followed by Musaddad ibn Masarhad of Baṣra, Asad ibn Mūsā al-Umawī, and Nuʿaym ibn Ḥammād al-Khuzaʿī, who had settled in Egypt. The leading authorities then followed their path, so that hardly any ḥāfiẓ remained without arranging his material in musnads, such as Imām Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, Isḥāq ibn Rāhwayh, ʿUthmān ibn Abī Shaybah, and other illustrious scholars. Some arranged their works both by topical chapters and by musnad order, like Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shaybah.

When al-Bukhārī—may the Most High have mercy on him—examined these compilations, transmitted them, inhaled their fragrance, and pondered their features, he found that, by their very design, they combined narrations that met the criteria of authenticity and fair acceptability with many that fell under the ruling of weakness, so that the coarse could not be deemed fine. His resolve was therefore stirred to gather only those ḥadīths whose soundness no trustworthy scholar would doubt. What further strengthened his determination was what he had heard from his teacher, the Commander of the Believers in ḥadīth and jurisprudence, Isḥāq ibn Ibrāhīm al-Ḥanẓalī—known as Ibn Rāhwayh—as Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn ʿUmar al-Luʾluʾī related to us from the ḥāfiẓ Abū al-Ḥajjāj al-Mizzī, who said