The Scholars’ Attention to Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim:

Just as the scholars of the Muslim ummah devoted themselves to Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī—the most authentic book after the Book of Allah—they likewise bestowed great care upon Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, the next most authentic work after it. Commentators have expounded it, abridgers have produced summaries, biographers have written on its transmitters, and scholars have compiled mustakhraj collections (independent works that reproduce its traditions with their own chains of narration).

Their attention to these two books has been proportionate to the rank of each: priority has always gone to Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, with Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim occupying second place. Consequently, the writings produced on Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim are numerous, yet those devoted to Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī are even more abundant.

Although Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim boasts a large corpus of commentaries, none of them approaches the monumental work for which Allah granted success to the ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī—his commentary on al-Bukhārī entitled Fath al-Bārī. The most famous and widely circulated commentary on Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim in our own day is the one by Imām al-Nawawī. It is predominantly concise; its principal focus lies in fixing precise wording, drawing attention to subtle points of the chains of transmission, and only occasionally indicating the juristic implications of a given hadith.

Among contemporary scholars who applied themselves fully to Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim is Shaykh Muḥammad Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqī. He rendered a praiseworthy service by numbering its traditions and by producing a variety of indexes, so that finding any desired entry became easy, sparing the reader toil and hardship. He devoted to these indexes an ample volume replete with diverse tools that enable one to access the contents of this blessed book with the greatest ease.

Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim has been printed in four volumes, while the indexes occupy a fifth. How sorely the student of knowledge needs to acquire these indexes, for they are, in truth, the key to Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim.