ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Light On the Muhammadan Sunnah Or Defence of the Hadith Muslim and His Book His name is Abu al-Husayn Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj al-Qushayri al-Nisaburi. He was born in Nisabur in the year 204 H, and dead in it in 268 H. He has reviewed the Sihah but not interferred in istinbat (deriving of rules) and alike matters. He excelled al-Bukhari in collecting the turuq (means of transmission) and good arrangement.

Besides, his book is easily availed of, as he dedicated for every hadith a proper place in which he stated the means he approved of, citing its numerous asanid and various wordings. Also he – contrary to al-Bukhari – was not narrating on the basis of meaning, nor commingling with the traditions any words of the or their followers.

And – as Ibn Hajar said in Muqaddimat al-Fath – was characterized with compiling his book in his hometown with existence of its sources in the lifetime of many of chiefs (mashayikh) of hadith, the reason why he was so careful in choosing the words and accurate in the context of hadith.

Further he has never followed the same method of al-Bukhari in deducing the rules, on the basis of which he was to classify the traditions, the fact entailing dividing of the hadith according to its chapters (babs), but he brought together all the turuq in one place, abstaining from reporting the mawquf traditions, not referring to them but very rarely, out of imitation not determination.

583 It is reported that he compiled his Musnad out of three hundred thousand commonly heard traditions, while the number of traditions constituting his book was four thousand except the repeated ones.

In Sharh Muslim al-Nawawi writes: The Muslim’s statement: “Whatever I stated here – in his book – is not necessarily correct, but I put here whatever attained the unanimous agreement of all,” is quite dubious, as he cited in it many traditions regarding the veracity of which there was much disagreement since they were taken from unreliable narrators whose traditions were not unanimously accepted. And so also said Ibn al-Salah.

Ibn Taymiyyah, in his interpretation of Surat al-Tawhid, says: The hadith reported by Muslim about creation of earth (turbah) on Saturday 584 is a defective hadith, traduced by leaders of hadith like al-Bukhari and others holding that it was taken from Ka’b al-Ahbar.