al-Bukhārī

al-Bukhārī (born July 19, 810, Bukhara, Central Asia [now in Uzbekistan]—died August 31, 870, Khartank, near Samarkand) was one of the greatest Muslim compilers and scholars of Hadith (the recorded corpus of the sayings and acts of the Prophet Muhammad). His chief work is accepted by Sunni Muslims—i.e., those following the majority tradition—as second only to the Qurʾān as both a source of religious law and a sacred work.

Al-Bukhārī began learning the utterances and actions of the Prophet by heart while still a child. His travels in search of more information about them began with a pilgrimage to Mecca when he was 16. He then went to Egypt, and for 16 years he sought out informants from Cairo to Merv in Central Asia. Al-Bukhārī was an extremely scrupulous compiler, showing great critical discrimination and editorial skill in his selection of traditions as authentic ones. From the approximately 600,000 traditions he gathered, he selected only about 7,275 that he deemed completely reliable and thus meriting inclusion in his Al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaḥīḥ (“The Authentic Collection”). He arranged his collection in sections according to subject so that the reader can compare the soundest accounts of the Prophet’s example, in word or deed, on points of law and religious doctrine as diverse as the validity of good deeds performed before conversion to Islam and marriage law.

As a preliminary to his Ṣaḥīḥ, al-Bukhārī wrote Al-Taʾrīkh al-kabīr (“The Large History”), which contains biographies of the persons forming the living chain of oral transmission and recollection of traditions back to the Prophet. Toward the end of his life, he was involved in a theological dispute in Nīshāpūr and left that city for Bukhara, but, following his refusal to give special classes for Bukhara’s governor and his children, he was forced into exile in Khartank, a village near Samarkand.