Sahih Muslim

Books of Hadith 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 with    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

Sahih Muslim ( صحيح مسلم‎ )

Full title: Al-Musnadu Al-Sahihu bi Naklil Adli)

It is one of the Kutub al-Sittah (six major hadith collections). It is highly acclaimed by and considered the second most authentic hadith collection after Sahih al-Bukhari .It was collected by Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj, also known as Imam Muslim. Sahih translates as authentic or correct.

The Collector of Sahih Muslim, Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj,

The accumulator of the “Sahih Muslim”, Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj, was born into a Persian family in 204 AH (817/18 CE) in Nishapur (Iran) and died in 261 AH (874/75 CE) in the city of his birth. He traveled widely to gather his collection of ahadith, 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. 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, there are 1,400 authentic hadiths that are reported in other books, mainly the six major hadith collections.

Views about the Book

Many Muslims regard this collection as the second most authentic of the six major hadith collections, containing only sahih hadith, an honor it shares only with Sahih al-Bukhari, both being referred to as the Two Sahihs.

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, cannot be inferred except after the correctness of that particular Hadith is shown.

Distinguishing features

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

• Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj recorded only such narratives as were reported by two reliable successors from two Sahabah (Companions of Muhammad (SAW) 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 Ahadith. Sahih 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 hadith to us and the wording used here is by A). Similarly he mentions whether, in a particular hadith, 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.