—a blessed fifteen-year span that he devoted to painstaking investigation, rigorous verification, and meticulous organization of this fundamental source for recognizing authentic hadiths. Throughout that entire period, several of his students assisted him in writing it.

Ahmad ibn Salamah, one of Imam Muslim’s disciples, said—as al-Dhahabi records in Tadhkirat al-Huffaz—“I wrote together with Muslim, may Allah have mercy on him, in his Sahih for fifteen years, and it numbers twelve thousand hadiths.”

Nor was Imam Muslim content with the immense effort he had already poured into its composition; he went on to present the work to the giants of hadith scholarship and seek their counsel. Al-Nawawi relates in the introduction to his commentary on Sahih Muslim that Makki ibn ‘Abdan, one of the eminent hadith preservers of Nishapur, said: “I heard Muslim say, ‘I submitted this book of mine to Abu Zur‘a al-Razi; whatever he pointed out as having a defect I left out, and whatever he declared sound and free of defect I retained.’” This demonstrates Imam Muslim’s utmost caution and diligence on the one hand, and his humility and pursuit of accuracy on the other.

Owing to such exhaustive care—as the foregoing testimony shows—Imam Muslim felt a deep satisfaction with this valuable achievement and urged people to benefit from it, asserting that it is a cornerstone upon which one may safely rely for distinguishing authentic reports. This is evident from another statement narrated by al-Nawawi from Makki ibn ‘Abdan: “I heard Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj say, ‘If the people of hadith were to continue writing for two hundred years, they would still revolve around this Musnad’—meaning his Sahih.”