Distinctive Features
Amin Ahsan Islahi, the noted Islamic scholar, has summarized some unique features of Sahih Muslim:
- Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj recorded only such narratives as were reported by two reliable successors from two Sahabah (Companions of Muhammad) which subsequently travelled through two independent unbroken isnāds consisting of sound narrators. Muhammad al-Bukhari has not followed such a strict criterion.
- Scientific arrangement of themes and chapters. The author, for example, selects a proper place for the narrative and, next to it, puts all its versions. Muhammad al-Bukhari has not followed this method (he scatters different versions of a narrative and the related material in different chapters). Consequently, in the exercise of understanding ahādīth. Sahīh of Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj offers the best material to the students.
- Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj informs us whose wordings among the narrators he has used. For example he says: haddathanā fulān wa fulān wallafz lifulān (A and B has narrated this hadīth to us and the wording used here is by A). Similarly he mentions whether, in a particular hadīth, the narrators have differed over the wordings even over a single letter of zero semantic significance. He also informs the readers if narrators have differed over a specific quality, surname, relation or any other fact about a narrator in the chain.
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