Sahih Muslim
- Author died
- 261 AH
- Editions
- T al-Turkiyya · t Abd al-Baqi
Sahih Muslim (al-Musnad al-Sahih) is a foundational Sunni hadith compendium compiled by Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj (204 or 206–261 AH / 820 or 822–875 CE), dedicated exclusively to rigorously authenticated prophetic traditions arranged topically.
Title and Composition
The author originally designated his work as al-Musnad or al-Musnad al-Sahih ("The Authenticated Musnad"), and in western Islamic lands it was transmitted under longer descriptive titles such as al-Musnad al-sahih al-mukhtasar min al-sunan bi-naql al-'adl 'an al-'adl 'an Rasul Allah ("The Abridged Authenticated Musnad from the Sunnah via the Transmission of Upright from Upright to the Messenger of God"). It became widely known across Islamic scholarship simply as Sahih Muslim.
Muslim stated in his introduction that he composed the work in response to an inquiry from a student—identified by al-Khatib al-Baghdadi as Ahmad ibn Salama al-Naysaburi—requesting a comprehensive yet abridged compilation of prophetic traditions concerning religious rulings, rewards, punishments, and moral directives without distracting repetition. Muslim was also motivated by the proliferation of works blending sound and defective reports without distinction, which risked misleading non-specialists. The compilation was selected from 300,000 heard traditions over a period of fifteen years. During its preparation, Muslim presented his drafted texts to the critic Abu Zur'ah al-Razi, excising any report to which Abu Zur'ah pointed out a flaw.
Structure and Scope
The collection covers legal, doctrinal, ethical, and historical topics organized according to the chapters of jurisprudence (abwab al-fiqh). Muslim did not provide explicit chapter headings (tarajim) above individual sub-sections, leaving the traditions unbroken; scholars noted that this was done either to prevent an increase in the book's size or to leave the reader to extract legal rulings directly from the text without authorial interposition. Later commentators, most notably al-Nawawi, supplied the detailed chapter headings standard in later copies.
The total number of hadiths in the work is approximately 4,000 excluding repeated paths, and 7,275 including repetitions; another report counts 12,000 total narrations. In modern numbered editions edited by Muhammad Fu'ad Abd al-Baqi, non-repeated entries count 3,033 hadiths. Muslim did not aim to exhaust every authentic tradition in existence, remarking that he recorded only what had gathered scholarly consensus.
Method and Criteria
Muslim opened his collection with a critical theoretical introduction (Muqaddimah) addressing the gravity of falsely attributing statements to the Prophet ﷺ, the obligation to narrate only from trustworthy transmitters, and the rules of hadith evaluation. In this introduction, he divided narrators and hadiths into three tiers:
- Highly proficient, reliable masters of memory (al-huffaz al-mutqinun).
- Upright intermediate transmitters (al-masturun al-mutawassitun fi al-hifz).
- Weak and abandoned narrators (al-du'afa' wa al-matrukun), whose reports he excluded entirely.
For primary proof-texts, he relied on the first tier, drawing on the second tier primarily for supporting and corroborative chains (al-mutaba'at wa al-shawahid). Muslim required an uninterrupted chain (ittisal) through trustworthy narrators from beginning to end, devoid of hidden defects ('ilal) and anomalies (shudhudh). Regarding narrations transmitted with the particle 'an ("from"), Muslim held that contemporary coexistence (mu'asara) between transmitter and teacher was sufficient to assume direct hearing, provided the narrator was not known for obfuscation (tadlis), whereas al-Bukhari maintained the stricter condition of proven physical meeting (thubut al-liqya).
A distinctive feature of Muslim's methodology is his technical precision in presenting all variant chains, differing wordings, and subtle textual divergences in a single unified entry, preserving intact wording without segmenting hadiths across multiple chapters.
Scholarly Reception and Standing
The Sunni scholarly consensus places Sahih Muslim as the second most authentic collection after Sahih al-Bukhari. A minority of scholars, particularly among Maghrebi jurists as well as eastern critics such as Abu Ali al-Naysaburi, prioritized Sahih Muslim over Sahih al-Bukhari, largely due to its superior organization and unified treatment of variant paths and texts.
Later traditionists composed critical examinations and supplementary works on the collection. al-Daraqutni examined specific narrations in his al-Istidrakat wa al-tatabbu', critiquing around two hundred hadiths across both Sahihs. Further critiques were registered by Abu Mas'ud al-Dimashqi and Abu Ali al-Ghassani al-Jayyani in Taqyid al-muhmal. Scholars such as Ibn al-Salah, al-Nawawi, Wali al-Din al-Iraqi, and al-Rashid al-Attar wrote extensive treatises responding to and resolving these criticisms.
Commentaries, Supplements, and Transmissions
The primary transmission paths of Sahih Muslim trace back to Muslim's students, predominantly Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn Sufyan and Ahmad ibn Ali al-Qalanisi. Numerous authors composed mustakhrajat (works extracting Muslim's hadiths via independent chains), including Abu Awanah al-Isfarayini, Abu Nu'aym al-Isfahani, Abu Bakr al-Jawzaqi, Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Naysaburi, and Abu al-Walid Hassan ibn Muhammad.
The collection gave rise to a substantial body of commentaries:
- al-Mu'lim bi-fawa'id Muslim by al-Mazari (d. 536 AH)
- Ikmal al-mu'lim bi-fawa'id Muslim by al-Qadi Iyad (d. 544 AH), completing al-Mazari's commentary
- al-Mufhim lima ashkala min talkhis kitab Muslim by Abu al-Abbas al-Qurtubi (d. 656 AH), a commentary on his own abridgment
- al-Minhaj fi sharh Sahih Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj by al-Nawawi (d. 676 AH), the most widely utilized commentary
- Ikmal ikmal al-mu'lim by Muhammad ibn Khalifah al-Ubbi (d. 727 AH)
- al-Dibaj 'ala Sahih Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj by al-Suyuti (d. 911 AH)
- Fath al-mulhim bi-sharh Sahih Muslim by Shabbir Ahmad al-Uthmani (d. 1369 AH)
The text was also abridged by various scholars, notably Abu al-Abbas al-Qurtubi and Abd al-Azim al-Mundhiri (Mukhtasar Sahih Muslim).
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