Imam Muslim (204–261 AH)

He gathered three hundred thousand narrations and kept about three thousand. Imam Abul-Husayn Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj al-Qushayri an-Naysaburi (الإمام مسلم, 204–261 AH / 819–875 CE) spent fifteen years building a book that the scholars of Islam have placed second in authenticity only to Sahih al-Bukhari — and which many of them consider better arranged than anything before or since. This is a documented account of his life, his method, and his loyalty to his teacher when it cost him.

Name, Lineage and Birth

He is Abul-Husayn Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj ibn Muslim ibn Ward ibn Kawshadh al-Qushayri an-Naysaburi — of the Arab tribe of Qushayr, a branch of Rabi‘ah, and of Naysabur (Nishapur) in Khurasan. Naysabur in his day was not a provincial town but one of the great cities of the Muslim world and a centre of hadith learning that drew students from every direction.

He was born in 204 AH (819/820 CE); some biographers give 206 AH. The earlier date is the one consistent with the age at death that the sources record. His family was known for piety and his father was among the people of knowledge, so he grew up inside the discipline rather than coming to it later.

The biographers single out one trait repeatedly: he was scrupulous about his tongue. In a field built on assessing men — declaring this narrator reliable and that one weak — he was known never to have slipped into backbiting. That is not a decorative detail. It is a statement about the character of someone whose profession required him to criticise people for a living.

The Journey for Hadith

He began hearing hadith around 218 AH, as a boy of about fourteen, and made his first Hajj in 220 AH. He then travelled the length of the Muslim world for narrations: the Hijaz, Iraq, Syria and Egypt, returning repeatedly to Naysabur.

Among his teachers:

• Ishaq ibn Rahawayh (d. 238 AH) — the imam of Khurasan, and also al-Bukhari’s teacher
• Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 241 AH)
• Abu Bakr Ibn Abi Shaybah, ‘Ubaydullah al-Qawariri, Qutaybah ibn Sa‘id, Sa‘id ibn Mansur, ‘Abdullah ibn Maslamah al-Qa‘nabi, Harmalah ibn Yahya, ‘Amr an-Naqid
• Abu Zur‘ah and Abu Hatim ar-Razi — the two great critics of Rayy, whose judgement he sought on his own work
• Imam al-Bukhari (d. 256 AH) — the teacher who shaped him most

Among his students: Imam at-Tirmidhi, who narrates from him in his Jami‘; Ibn Khuzaymah; Abu ‘Awanah, who built his Mustakhraj on Sahih Muslim; Ibn Abi Hatim ar-Razi; Ahmad ibn Salamah, his close companion; Abul-‘Abbas as-Sarraj; and Musa ibn Harun.

A correction worth making: adh-Dhahabi is sometimes listed among Imam Muslim’s students — including on our own older author page. This cannot be so. Adh-Dhahabi died in 748 AH, nearly five centuries after Imam Muslim. He is a biographer of Imam Muslim, in Siyar A‘lam an-Nubala’ and Tadhkirat al-Huffaz, not a pupil.

Standing With Al-Bukhari

When al-Bukhari came to Naysabur, Imam Muslim attached himself to him. Al-Hakim records the scene of their meeting: Imam Muslim kissed his teacher between the eyes and asked to be allowed to kiss his feet, addressing him as the master of the masters, the teacher of teachers, and the physician of hadith in its hidden defects.

That devotion was tested. Muhammad ibn Yahya adh-Dhuhli, the senior scholar of Naysabur, turned against al-Bukhari over the question of al-lafz and drove him from the city.

What the dispute was actually about. It is often described — including on our own older page — as a disagreement over “the creation of the Qur’an.” That is imprecise, and the imprecision matters in a question of creed. Al-Bukhari held, as all of Ahlus-Sunnah hold, that the Qur’an is the uncreated speech of Allah. What he additionally said was that the acts of created beings — including a person’s own act of pronouncing the Qur’an — are created. Adh-Dhuhli understood this as the Mu‘tazili doctrine and accused him accordingly. It was a dispute over a subtle distinction, not over the fundamental principle, on which the two men agreed.

Adh-Dhuhli declared that anyone who held al-Bukhari’s position was not welcome in his gathering. Imam Muslim stood up in front of the assembly, had the narrations he had written from adh-Dhuhli gathered up, and sent them back to him — a load carried by a porter, in full view — and never narrated a word from him again. He is not quoted once in Sahih Muslim.

He was at the height of his own standing and adh-Dhuhli controlled the city’s scholarly life. He chose his teacher and the truth over his position.

Sahih Muslim

Its proper title is Al-Musnad as-Sahih al-Mukhtasar min as-Sunan bi-Naql al-‘Adl ‘an al-‘Adl ila Rasulillah ﷺ. He worked on it for about fifteen years, sifting a body of roughly three hundred thousand narrations down to those he was satisfied met his conditions, and he presented the finished work to Abu Zur‘ah ar-Razi, removing what Abu Zur‘ah identified as defective.

Three things make it distinctive:

• The arrangement. He gathers every route of a given hadith in one place, rather than scattering them across chapters. For anyone studying the variants of a narration, this is far more usable than the alternative — which is why scholars often say that Muslim’s arrangement surpasses al-Bukhari’s even while his conditions for acceptance are held to be slightly less stringent.
• Precision in transmission wording. He is exact in distinguishing haddathana from akhbarana, and marks where the wording of one narrator differs from another in the same chain — a level of care that lets later scholars reconstruct exactly what he heard and how.
• The Muqaddimah. His introduction is the first systematic treatment of hadith methodology placed at the head of a collection: the obligation of narrating only from the trustworthy, the ruling on weak narrations, the danger of tadlis. It is studied in its own right.

On the numbers, honesty is better than a round figure. Sahih Muslim contains roughly 3,000 distinct hadith; counts including repeated routes vary by edition and numbering system and are commonly given as somewhere around 7,500. Anyone quoting a single precise total should say which numbering they are using.

His Other Works

His Death

Al-Hakim relates that towards the end of his life he was asked in a gathering about a hadith he did not recognise. He went home, called for the sources, and sat working through the night with a basket of dates beside him, eating them absently one at a time as he searched. By morning the basket was empty and he had found the hadith — and he fell ill and did not recover.

He died on the evening of Sunday, 25 Rajab 261 AH (May 875 CE), aged fifty-seven, and was buried at Nasrabad, a suburb of Naysabur, where his grave is still known.

Of the three hundred thousand narrations he collected, he published a fraction. That restraint is the whole point. He was not trying to record everything that had been said; he was trying to establish what could be relied upon.

May Allah have mercy on Imam Muslim and reward him on behalf of the Ummah of Muhammad ﷺ.

Sahih Muslim at Dar-us-Salam

• Sahih Muslim (7 Vol. Set)
  The complete collection with Arabic text and English translation. The reference edition: all routes of each narration in place, as Imam Muslim arranged them.
• Summarized Sahih Muslim (2 Vol. Set)
  Al-Hafiz Al-Mundhiri’s abridgement, which strips the repeated chains and keeps the substance — 2,179 hadith in 70 books. The practical way to read the whole collection through.
• Urdu: Sahih Muslim (5 Vol. Set)
  The complete work in Urdu, in five hardcover volumes on premium paper.
• Arabic: Sharh Sahih Muslim (6 Vol. Set)
  Imam An-Nawawi’s classical commentary in Arabic — the first commentary any student turns to on this collection.

Browse the full Hadith & Sunnah collection or read more author biographies at Dar-us-Salam Islamic Bookstore, Houston.