How do we Benefit from the Six Books of Hadith? Shaykh Abdul-Muhsin al-'Abbad

[Shehzad Sattar]

Shaykh Abdul-Muhsin al-'Abbad stated in his book, How do we Benefit from the Six Books of Hadith?

All praise belongs to Allah; we praise Him, we seek His aid and we seek His forgiveness; we seek refuge with Allah from the evils of ourselves and the evils of our actions. Whoever Allah guides then none can misguide him, and whoever is left in misguidance then none can guide him. I testify that there is nothing worthy of worship except Allah alone, without partners, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His slave and Messenger, who was sent with the Guidance and True Religion in order to be supreme over all other religions; he conveyed the message, fulfilled the trust and advised the Ummah. O Allah make good mention of, and send peace and blessings to, Your slave and Messenger, our Prophet Muhammad, his family and his companions, and whoever follows their way and is guided by their guidance until the Day of Recompense.

What follows is a simple overview of how benefit is gained from the six books of hadith, namely: Sahih al-Bukhari, Sahih Muslim, Sunan Abu Dawud, Sunan an-Nasa’i, Jami’ at-Tirmidhi and Sunan Ibn Majah.

I believe that the greatest blessing which Allah the Most High has bestowed on the Ummah of Muhammad, is that He sent to it His noble Messenger Muhammad, may the best of prayers and complete peace be upon him, in order to remove its people from darkness into light; he fulfilled this mission in the finest manner and executed what Allah the Most High sent him to do in a complete and perfect way; he did not leave something good except that he directed and encouraged the Ummah to it, nor did he leave an evil except that he warned about it and prohibited it; may Allah’s prayers, peace and blessings be upon him.

Success and ability were the allies of the noble Companions y, since Allah the Most High chose them to accompany the Prophet (Sallallahu Alayhi Wassallam); He honoured their sight in the life of this world with looking at his face, and gratified their hearing with listening to the his honourable speech directly from his honourable mouth r; they received the Quran from him and all that he issued of speech, actions and tacit approvals. The Prophet r prepared them for those who would succeed them in a complete and perfect way. Thereby, the Companions became the foremost people in seeking every kind of good, and the best of this nation which is the best of all nations.

After the era of the Companions ended, the codification of hadith and its compilation of its chains of narrations back to the Messenger of Allah r began. Authorship in the codification of the Sunnah continued through to the third century (after hijrah), wherein writing flourished. The most important book written in respect to the Sunnah in an absolute sense is the Sahih of imam Abu ‘Abdullah Muhammad bin Isma’il al-Bukhari may Allah have mercy on him, born 194 AH and died 256 AH, then the Sahih of imam Abu al-Husayn Muslim bin al-Hajjaj al-Naysaburi, born 204 AH – the year imam Al-Shafi‘i may Allah have mercy on him died, and he died in the year 261 AH; thereafter the (most important books of Sunnah) are the Sunans of the four imams: Abu Dawud Sulayman bin al-Ash’ath al-Sijistani who died 265 AH, Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman Ahmad bin Shu‘ayb al-Nisa’i who died 303 AH, Abu ‘Eesa Muhammad bin ‘Eesa al-Tirmidhi who died 279 AH, lastly Abu ‘Abdullah Muhammad bin Yazeed bin Majah al-Qazwini who died 273 AH.

The abovementioned books are famously known as al-Kutub al-Sitta or the Six Books; and particular attention and tremendous importance has been given to their texts and narrators by the scholars.

The first of these books is the Sahih of imam Abu ‘Abdullah al-Bukhari may Allah have mercy on him. It is absolutely the most authentic book authored on the subject of hadith; it is followed by the Sahih of imam Muslim may Allah have mercy on him. These two books have received distinguished attention due to the care their authors took to compile a large portion of what is authentically attributed to the Messenger of Allah r; they do not contain everything authentic (from the hadith) and nor did they commit to that. Rather, there is a multitude of authentic hadith found outside al-Sahihayn, or the Two Sahihs; however, the hadiths in al-Sahihayan are a great number from those authentic hadith which have been truly attributed to the Messenger of Allah (Sallallahu Alayhi Wassallam).

Whatsoever the two shaykhs al-Bukhari and Muslim – may Allah have mercy on them both, agree upon, then it is considered the highest level (of authenticity) over what either one of them collected alone. Accordingly, the levels of authenticity in respect to what al-Bukhari and Muslim recorded, or did not record, are seven:

1. What al-Bukhari and Muslim agreed upon.

2. What al-Bukhari recorded alone.

3. What Muslim recorded alone.

4. What is recorded according to the conditions set by al-Bukhari and Muslim though they themselves did not record it.

5. What is recorded according to the conditions set by al-Bukhari though he did not record it.

6. What is recorded according to the conditions set by Muslim though he did not record it.

7. What is authentic but neither found in the Two Sahihs or according to the conditions the two imams set.

These are the seven levels of authentic hadith, the highest of them as has preceded is what al-Bukhari and Muslim agreed upon. The finest book which has been written in respect to that, is the book Al-Lu’lu wa al-Marjan fi ma Itafaqa ‘alayhi al-Shaykhan, by shaykh Muhammad Fu‘ad ‘Abd al-Baqi who died 1388 AH; the book is organised in according to the arrangement of imam Muslim and as for the wording he validated, then it is from Sahih al-Bukhari, i.e. he chose the closest wording in Sahih al-Bukhari which concords with what is found in Sahih Muslim, and only organised the book according to the arrangement of Muslim. This is because Muslim may Allah have mercy upon him collected hadiths based on one subject in one place and related them; he would mention a hadith which he would consider the basis, then bring other routes and chains of narrations, mentioning the additions, subtractions and differences between the hadith and the one he counted as the basis. As such, shaykh Muhammad Fu‘ad ‘Abd al-Baqi would recount the wording of the hadith according to Al-Bukhari but in the place where it was arranged in Sahih Muslim; he would follow this by saying “Al-Bukhari recorded it in book such-and-such, in the chapter of such-and-such”; he would then mention the number of the book and chapter. The shaykh decided not to validate the book according to the arrangement of Al-Bukhari because he divided hadiths and separated them into multiple chapters in order to extract evidences from them for the issues mentioned in the chapter headings; Al-Bukhari did so because he intended to make his book one which was concerned with both narration and study; the hadiths collected in the book Al-Lu’lu wa al-Marjan total 1906.

The scholars say, when referencing hadiths back to the Two Sahihs, “it was reported by Al-Bukhari and Muslim”, or “it was recorded by the two shaykhs”, or “mutafaqqun ‘alayhi” or “agreed upon”; this phrase “agreed upon” is a technical term which refers to a hadith being agreed on by Al-Bukhari and Muslim, but according to Al-Majd ibn Taymiyyah, the grandfather of Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah, the author of Muntaqa al-Akhbar, which Al-Shawkani explained in Nayl al-Awtar, he would append with the phrase “agreed upon”, imam Ahmad’s Musnad to [the Sahihs of] Al-Bukhari and Muslim. Therefore if he wrote “agreed upon”, he meant the above three.

Translated by Azhar Majothi