Sahih Muslim

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Ḥadīth
Sunni1 Kutub Al-Sittah ("The Six Books") Sahih Bukhari صحيح البخاري Sahih Muslim صحيح مسلم Al-Sunan Al-Sughra السنن الصغرى Sunan Abu Dawood سنن أبي داود Sunan al-Tirmidhi جامع الترمذي Sunan ibn Maja سُنن ابن ماجه Others Period (CE) Muwatta Imam Malik 8th–9th cent. Musnad Ahmad Ibn Hanbal 780–855 Sunan Al-Darimi 868 Shama'il Muhammadiyah (Shamaail Tirmidhi) 9th century Sahih Ibn Khuzaymah 923 Ṣaḥīḥ Ibn Ḥibbān 965 Al-Mustadrak a. Al-Ṣaḥīḥaīn 11th century Al-Mawdū'āt Al-Kubrā 1128–1217 Rīaḍ As-Ṣāliḥīn 1233–1278 Mishkat Al-Masabih 1340 Talkhis Al-Mustadrak 1274–1348 Majma Al-Zawa'id 1335–1405 Bulugh Al-Maram 1372–1449 Kanz al-Ummal 16th century Zujajat al-Masabih 19th century Muntakhab Ahadith 20th century
Shi'ah Al-Kutub Al-Arb'ah ("The Four Books") Kitab Al-Kafi الكتاب الكافي Man La Yahduruhu Al-Faqih من لا يحضره الفقيه Tahdhib Al-Ahkam تهذیب الاحکام Al-Istibsar الاستبصار Others Period (CE) Nahj Al-Balagha 10th century Bihar Al-Anwar 17th century Book of Sulaym Ibn Qays 7th century Al-Sahifa Al-Sajjadiyya 678–713 Uyun al Akhbar ar Reda 10th century Sharh Usul al-Kafi 11th century Wasā'il Al-Shīʿah 17th century Haqq al-Yaqeen 17th century Ain Al-Hayat 17th century Qalam-e-Mowla   Daim al-Islam 10th century Al-Ghadir 19th century
Ibadi Jami Sahih Tartib al-Musnad
Mu'tazila On the Peak of Eloquence  (13th century)
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Sahih Muslim (Arabic: صحيح مسلم‎‎ , Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim; full title: Al-Musnadu Al-Sahihu bi Naklil Adli) is one of the Kutub al-Sittah (six major hadith collections) in Sunni Islam.^[1] It is highly acclaimed by Sunni Muslims^[2] and considered the second most authentic hadith collection after Sahih al-Bukhari as well as Zaidi Shia Muslims. It was collected by Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj, also known as Imam Muslim. Sahih translates as authentic or correct.^[3]

Collection

The collector of the Sahih Muslim, Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj, was born into a Persian family in 204 AH (817/18 CE) in Nishapur (in modern-day Iran) and died in 261 AH (874/75 CE) in the city of his birth. He traveled widely to gather his collection of ahadith (plural of hadith), including to areas now in Iraq, the Arabian Peninsula, Syria and Egypt.

Out of 300,000 hadith which he evaluated, approximately 4,000 were extracted for inclusion into his collection based on stringent acceptance criteria. Each report in his collection was checked and the veracity of the chain of reporters was painstakingly established. Sunni Muslims consider it the second most authentic hadith collection, after Sahih al-Bukhari. Sahih Muslim is divided into 43 books, containing a total of 7190 narrations. However, it is important to realize that Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj never claimed to collect all authentic traditions as his goal was to collect only traditions that all Muslims should agree on about accuracy.

According to Munthiri, there are a total of 2,200 hadiths (without repetition) in Sahih Muslim. According to Muhammad Amin,^[4] there are 1,400 authentic hadiths that are reported in other books, mainly the six major hadith collections.

Views

Many Muslims regard this collection as the second most authentic of the six major hadith collections,^[5] containing only sahih hadith, an honor it shares only with Sahih al-Bukhari, both being referred to as the Two Sahihs. Shia Muslims (and some Sunnis) dismiss some of its contents as fabrications or untrustworthy due to the questionable reliability of some narrators.

Despite the book's high stature, and the consensus of scholars on that it is the second most valid categorized book of Hadith, after Sahih al-Bukhari, it is agreed upon that this does not mean that every element in it is true, in comparison to other Hadith books, but means that the book as a whole is valid. Such as the preference of Sahih al-Bukhari to Sahih Muslim, which does not mean that every Hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari is more valid than every Hadith in Sahih Muslim, but that the total of what is contained Sahih al-Bukhari is more valid than the total of what is contained in Sahih Muslim, and likewise, the validity of a certain Hadith form the two books of Hadith, over Hadith from other Sahih books, can not be inferred except after the correctness of that particular Hadith is shown.^[6]

Distinctive features

Sahih Muslim Cover

Amin Ahsan Islahi, the noted Islamic scholar, has summarized some unique features of Sahih Muslim:^[7]

• Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj recorded only such narratives as were reported by two reliable successors from two Sahabah (Companions of Muhammad) which subsequently travelled through two independent unbroken isnāds consisting of sound narrators. Muhammad al-Bukhari has not followed such a strict criterion.
• Scientific arrangement of themes and chapters. The author, for example, selects a proper place for the narrative and, next to it, puts all its versions. Muhammad al-Bukhari has not followed this method (he scatters different versions of a narrative and the related material in different chapters). Consequently, in the exercise of understanding ahādīth. Sahīh of Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj offers the best material to the students.
• Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj informs us whose wordings among the narrators he has used. For example, he says: haddathanā fulān wa fulān wallafz lifulān (A and B has narrated this hadīth to us and the wording used here is by A). Similarly he mentions whether, in a particular hadīth, the narrators have differed over the wordings even over a single letter of zero semantic significance. He also informs the readers if narrators have differed over a specific quality, surname, relation or any other fact about a narrator in the chain.

Commentaries and translations

1. Siyanah Sahih Muslim by Ibn al-Salah, of which only the beginning segment remains
2. Al Minhaj Be Sharh Sahih Muslim by Al-Nawawi.
3. Fath al-Mulhim by Shabbir Ahmad Usmani.
4. Takmilat Fath al-Mulhim by Muhammad Taqi Usmani.
5. Summarized Sahih Muslim by Abd-al-Hamid Siddiqui. The text is used in the USC-MSA Compendium of Muslim Texts.
6. Sharh Sahih Muslim by Allama Ghulam Rasool Saeedi
7. Tafsir al-gharib ma fi al-Sahihayn by Al-Humaydī

Translations of commentaries of Sahih Muslims are available in numerous languages including English, Urdu, Bangla, Tamil, and Bosnian.^[8]

See also

• Kutub al-Sittah
  • Sahih Bukhari
  • Jami al-Tirmidhi
  • Sunan al-Sughra
  • Either: Sunan ibn Majah, Muwatta Malik

References

Further reading and videos

• http://sunnah.com/muslim
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66a9EKs0cu0 Life of Imam Muslim by Navaid Aziz
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsMxmp3GSjY

Arabic Wikisource has original text related to this article: Sahih Muslim

• English translation with Arabic text
• English translation
• English translation with Arabic text pdf books
• English Translation of the Introduction to Sahih Muslim
• English translation with Arabic text
• English translation from Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement