Criticism levelled by certain ḥuffāẓ against some of the hadiths in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī—and the answer to it:

Al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar states in the introduction to Fatḥ al-Bārī that al-Dāraqutnī and other leading preservers raised objections to 210 hadiths in the two Ṣaḥīḥs: 32 reports are common to both collections, 78 are unique to al-Bukhārī, and 100 are unique to Muslim. He devoted a special section to the reports criticised in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, arranging them according to the book’s own sequence and replying to each criticism in detail. At the beginning of that section he offered a concise rejoinder, saying: “In brief, our answer is this: there is no doubt that al-Bukhārī, followed by Muslim, excelled all the scholars of their time—and those who came after them among the imams of this discipline—in identifying sound reports and those with hidden defects.” He then cited several proofs for this, and added: “Once it is known and firmly established that the two of them do not …”