Accueil › Biographies › Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj

Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj

Savant

Abū al-Ḥusayn Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj al-Qushayrī al-Naysābūrī is one of the greatest scholars of hadith. His collection, the Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, is considered by Sunni Muslims as the most authentic book after the Quran and the Ṣaḥīḥ of al-Bukhārī. Together, these two works are called "the two Ṣaḥīḥ" (al-Ṣaḥīḥān). He was born in Nichapour, in Khorasan, around 206 AH (821), and died there in 261 AH (875). Traveler training Muslim belongs to the Arab tribe of Banū Qushayr. He began studying hadith at a very young age, around the age of twelve. Like the great scholars of his time, he traveled widely in search of hadith: in Hejaz, Iraq, Syria and Egypt. Among his masters are: Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal; Isḥāq ibn Rāhawayh; Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā al-Naysābūrī; Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī. He spent a long time with al-Bukhārī when he stayed in Nichapour, and showed him great admiration. He remained loyal to him when al-Bukhārī was put in difficulty in the city. The Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim Muslim composes his Ṣaḥīḥ by selecting hadiths from among some three hundred thousand stories that he had heard. He worked there for about fifteen years. The collection contains several thousand hadiths, or around three thousand without repetitions. Its main originality is its organization. Muslim brings together in one place all the versions and all the chains of transmission of the same hadith. The reader can thus compare the different formulations and measure the solidity of the transmission. He opens his book with an important introduction (muqaddima), in which he explains his method and insists on the need to only transmit from reliable transmitters. Muslim and al-Bukhārī Scholars have compared the two Ṣaḥīḥ at length. The majority places that of al-Bukhārī in first place, in particular because its conditions on the meeting between transmitters are more strict. But many recognize Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim’s superiority in the organization and presentation of the texts. Some Maghreb scholars even preferred it to that of al-Bukhārī. The most famous commentary of Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim is that of Imam al-Nawawī, Al-Minhāj. His death Muslim died in Nichapur in Rajab 261 AH (875), at the age of about fifty-five. It is reported that he was absorbed, the night before his illness, in researching a hadith, and that he ate dates placed near him without realizing it. Things to remember Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj was a rigorous and methodical scholar, heir and companion of al-Bukhārī. His Ṣaḥīḥ, admirably organized, is one of the pillars of the transmission of the Sunnah. Image credit: Copy of Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim. Riad Salih, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.