—and of the stern warning attached to it. He then marshalled the proofs for this, followed by evidence prohibiting one from relating everything he hears, and evidence forbidding the narration of reports transmitted by weak narrators, urging caution when receiving such material. After that comes his discussion of the isnad—the chain of transmission—affirming that it is part of the religion, that reports are to be taken only from trustworthy transmitters, and that criticizing narrators for faults actually found in them is permissible, indeed obligatory. Such criticism is not the unlawful backbiting; rather, it is a defense of the noble Sharia. On this point he cites at length the proofs and statements of the hadith scholars.
He concludes the Introduction with a discussion of the authenticity of a muʿanʿan report (one transmitted with the wording “from so-and-so”), clarifying that the hadith scholars deem it sufficient for the narrator merely to be a contemporary of the one from whom he relates, without requiring proof that the two actually met—unless the narrator who uses this form is a mudallis, one who masks his source. Muslim harshly rebukes those who insist on establishing such a meeting.
There is no doubt that someone who, like al-Bukhari, stipulates an actual encounter between the narrator and the person he narrates from has adopted an extra measure of caution and verification, and that this stipulation enhances the standing of his book. Conversely, the fact that Imam Muslim does not require this condition in no way detracts from the rank of his work or casts aspersions on it; it merely reflects a difference in levels of authenticity, and for that reason Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhari is regarded as superior to Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim.
His topical arrangement
When Imam Muslim—may Allah have mercy on him—set about compiling his Sound Collection, he arranged it so that each group of hadiths addressed a single subject on its own. Yet he did not place explicit chapter headings, as Imam al-Bukhari did in his Ṣaḥīḥ. In truth, the work is effectively divided into chapters; Muslim, Allah knows best, may have refrained from adding headings so that the book would not grow in size and so that the reader’s mind would be sharpened to infer the appropriate heading himself. Al-Nawawi, in the introduction to his commentary on Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, said: “Muslim arranged his book by chapters, so in reality it is a chaptered work, but he did not mention the chapter titles so that the size of the book would not increase, or for some other reason.” He then added: “I say: Several scholars have supplied headings for its chapters; some of these are good, while others are not—either because the wording is deficient, stylistically weak, or for some other reason. As for me, God willing, I shall strive to express headings that befit each place, and Allah knows best.”