Sahih Bukhari

Sahih Bukhari (in Arabic صحيح البخاري, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī) is a collection of hadiths (narrations) by a central Asian, al-Bukhari, who was born in Bukhara in what is modern-day Uzbekistan around 200 years after the accepted death the prophet Muhammad ^[1]. He collected narrations which were transmitted only orally for generations and collated them into a book of sayings, stories, and traditions about the Prophet Muhammad and his companions. The collection is called "authentic" (sahih) and is considered second only to the Quran in terms of authenticity and authority amongst most Sunni Muslims. The "authenticness" of a narration are judged by for authenticity according to whether the people in the chain of narrators were good, truthful Muslims in the traditional Sunni reckoning. The most common narrators in Sahih Bukhari from Muhammad's generation are Abu Huraira and Aisha. See also [1] and [2].For each Hadith there is always a long list of narrators, listed as "so and so told so and so" etc. It is also part of "the six books" (الكتب الستة, Al-Kutub as-Sittah), the most trusted hadith collections in Sunni Islam. There are over 7000 narrations in the collection, but there are often different versions of the same story, so the actual number of narrations is less than 3000 ^[2].

Contents

Allah's hadiths

The words of Allah are not only in the Quran but in the hadiths also:

Folk Tales

Animals talk and Muhammad believes it:

Tall Tales

Monkeys stone a monkey as a punishment for adultery and `Amr bin Maimun joins them:

Strange Anecdotes

In The Book of Hunting, Slaughtering (كتاب الذبائح والصيد), al-Bukhari wrote at the beginning of chapter 12 (the texts in the beginnings of chapters are usually not translated in English translations):

Nun is the Arabic letter ن. It may however be taken to mean a whale or large fish.

Bukhari's original manuscripts

Bukhari's work is only extant through his student al-Firabri.

Translations

The first translation of the entire collection to English by Muhsin Khan in 1971, titled ""The Translation of the Meanings of Sahih Al Bukhari Arabic English." His translations uses the 97 books version. The collection was translated into many other languages.^[4]

This English translation suffers from several deviations from the original Arabic. For example the book "كتاب السلم" (kitaab us-sallam, book of payment) is named "A book of Sales in which a Price is paid for Goods to be Delivered Later". Other translations are literal to the point of losing the meaning, even to the point of not being translation, but only a transliteration, for example "Khusoomaat" (Quarrels).

His translation also tends to sanitize portions of the book which would be unpalatable to modern sensibilities.

For example, in the 58th Book (with only a transliterated name) "Jizyah and Mawaada'ah" (the tax and the peace treaty), the first chapter is named:

• In English: "Al-Jizya taken from the Dhimmi"
• In Arabic: "باب الْجِزْيَةِ وَالْمُوَادَعَةِ مَعَ أَهْلِ الْحَرْبِ"
  • باب (baab) - chapter
  • الْجِزْيَةِ (al-jizya) - (of) the tax
  • وَالْمُوَادَعَةِ (wal-mawaada'ah) - and the peace treaty
  • مَعَ (ma'a) - with
  • أَهْلِ (ahl) - people
  • الْحَرْبِ (al-harbi) - (of) the war

We would expect that the English word "dhimmi" is a transliteration of the Arabic word dhimmi (ذمي), but the name of the chapter actually says "people of war" (أَهْلِ الْحَرْبِ, ahl il-harbi) and doesn't use the word dhimmi (ذمي). Also the chapter mentions the Mawaada'ah (الموادعة), the peace treaty (of not killing them), while the translation says only "jizya".

A new translation of the entire work in English by the Arabic Virtual Translation Center in New York titled "Encyclopedia of Sahih Al-Bukhari" was released in 2019. It includes not just the entire, complete text of Sahih Al-Bukhari but also commentary as well.

Ambiguous numbering

There is more than one way of numbering the hadiths in this collection. Every hadith has it's own number (from 1 to 7495 ^[5], 7563^[6] or 7658 ^[7]), but the collection is also divided into volumes and books. There are either 93^[8], 97 ^[9] or 98 ^[10] books and there are 9 volumes (in the 93 books version). For example, a hadith in the book 98, might not be found in a collection with 93 books, in such a collection the hadith would actually be in the book 93. Also, what is in one version considered as two separate hadiths might be in another collection considered to be one larger hadith. Thus determining the exact number of hadith can be difficult.

In the 93 books (USC-MSA) version, the hadith numbering is not from the first hadith of the whole collection, but from the first hadith of the first book of the volume. The hadith identificator is volume:book:hadith. For example, 9:84:53, is the first hadith of the book 84, and it has the number 53, because volume 9 started with the book 83 and the book 83 has 52 hadiths. The same hadith could be described as 88:1, because it is the 1st hadith of the book 88 in the 97 books version (or 89:1 in the 97 books version). It could be also described with one number 6918, as it is the 6918th hadith from the beginning of the whole Sahih Bukhari collection (in the 93 books version). And it could be also described with the number 7004 (more than 6918), because in the 93 books version, some hadiths from the 98 books version, were "joined" and considered to be one hadith.

This is a list of all names used in different versions ^[11]. The first three columns "98", "97" and "93" contain a number of the book with the name "Book name" in the 98, 97 or 93 version. The last three columns Q98, Q97 and Q93 contain the number (Quantity) of hadiths in the book "Book name" in the 98, 97 and 93 books version. "x" means that a book with this name is not a part of that version (the hadiths which would be in that book are in some other book instead).\

Conclusion

Sahih Bukhari is a collection of narrations from people who lived with Muhammad. The word "sahih" means "authentic", but modern scholars working mostly in the west have questioned their authenticity due to the large gulf in time between when they were collected and when the events they claim to narrate took place. Nevertheless this collection is considered to be the most authentic by most Sunni Muslims.

The English translation by Muhsin Khan suffers from several issues, but a new translation is now available into English.

The collection is divided into 9 volumes and volumes are divided into books. There are more than 90 books. One book can contain from a few to hundereds of hadiths (narrations). Since the numbering of both books and hadiths is problematic (there are more numbering methods), it's not a simple matter to delineate how many books and how many hadiths there are, likewise as to which book contains the largest number of hadiths. It is possible to say (in all numbering methods) that the 3 biggest books are:

• Military expeditions led by the prophet
• Prophetic commentary on the Qur'an
• Fighting for the cause of Allah (jihaad)

So two out of three biggest books of narrations about Muhammad's life narrate violent struggle in the Prophet's life. The book "Military expeditions led by the prophet" contains over 500 hadiths. While the book of "Peacemaking" contains less then 30 hadiths. From this it is possible to see the great role that struggle and strife play in the traditional understanding of the Prophet of Islam.

See Also

• Sahih
• Hadith

• Sahih Bukhari online with English translation

References