Fourth...

Fourth: The Prophet (S) himself referring to fabrication of ahadith during his lifetime, and the most authentic hadith known to be uttered by him being: “Falsifiers to me have been multiplying, whoever falsifies my hadith should dwell in his abode in Fire.” Then he (Arsalan) said: Suspicion still hanging about so many traditions cited in the Sihah, not in respect of honesty in naql (reporting) but in respect of non-ability of human beings – except in very rare cases – to narrating whatever coming to their ears literally, or citing the events exactly with no any addition or deletion.

There may be two persons witnessing one and the same event, but each one of them may narrate it slightly or much different from the other. 610 Al-Mustakhrajat Al-Istikhraj (extraction) is a practice in which a memorizer embarks on citing al-Bukhari’s traditions one by one through asanid he approved of without observing the trustworthiness of the narrators from other than the turuq of al-Bukhari, till meeting with him in his Shaykh or that of a higher rank.

But it is impermissible for the extractor to deviate from the way through which he meets with the compiler of the origin to the remote way but only for an urgent purpose, like a significant addition or alike. The extractor might abandon traditions for which he couldn’t find an authentic isnad, or rather might have reported them from some narrators, or citing them through the original source.

Many of the huffaz cared much for istikhraj due to the significant advantages it had, restricting this most often to Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim as they being the main references in this science (in view of those adopting it).

From al-Bukhari extraction was done by Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Isma’ili and Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Barqani, and those extracting from Sahih Muslim were Abu Ja’far Ahmad al-Nisaburi and Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Raja al-Nisaburi, who shared Muslim in most of his shaykhs, and many others. Among those who extracted from both of them we can refer to Abu Nu’aym al-Isfahani with some other narrator, who extracted also from Abu Dawud and al-Tirmidhi.

Many benefits are there for mustakhrajat, some of which being the additions to the traditions cited by them that were not found in the original ones from which extraction was done.