562 Uhaydar ibn Abi Ja’far...

562 Uhaydar ibn Abi Ja’far, governor of Bukhara, is reported to have said: Muhammad ibn Isma’il once upon a day said to me: There might be a hadith I heard in Basrah writing it in the Sham, and there might be a hadith I heard in the Sham writing it in Egypt! Thereat I said to him: O Abu Abd Allah, (did you write it) completely? when he kept silent.

563 Muhammad ibn al-Azhar al-Sijistani said: One day I attended a meeting in the house of Sulayman ibn Harb, with presence of al-Bukhari who was only hearing but not writing anything. When one of the attendants was asked: Why doesn’t he write? He said: When he (al-Bukhari) returns to Bukhara he will write down out of his memory. 564 Ibn Hajar al-Asqallani says: What is unusual about al-Bukhari being that he used to report the hadith completely with one isnad and two (different) wordings.

565 Death of al-Bukhari Before Revising His Book: It is reported that al-Bukhari died before making a clean copy of his book.

Ibn Hajar, in Muqaddimat al-Fath reports that Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Ahmad al-Mustamli said: When copying al-Bukhari’s book from its original manuscript that was with his companion Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Farbari, I found in it incomplete things and other things that were not revised, among which explanations after which nothing was recorded, and traditions that were not explained. So I added some of these to some of those ones.

Abu al-Walid al-Baji says: What proving the veracity of this statement the narrations of Abu Ishaq al-Mustamli, Abu Muhammad al-Sarakhsi, Abu al-Haytham al-Kashmihi and Abu Zayd al-Maruzi, with some differences in order and placing of words though they were copied from one origin! That was due to the fact that every one of them used to copy as much as he could from patchments and scapula, wherever it be, from which he would add to what he collected before.

From this it can be concluded that two or more expositions are found connected to each other with no traditions in between them. 566 In Fath al-Bari (Vol. VII) 567 he (Ibn Hajar) writes: Throughout the copies of al-Bukhari I have never come across any biography for Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf, or Sa’d ibn Zayd who were among the ten (promised with paradise) – though dedicating a special biography for Sa’id ibn Zayd in the beginning of al-Sirah al-Nabawiyyah.