The six books of hadith, and the men who gathered them

Sahih al-Bukhari

Muhammad ibn Ismail al-Bukhari, born 194 AH, died 256 AH, Bukhara. 7,563 narrations in 98 books. Read it.

He lost his father as a child and had the books of Ibn al-Mubarak by heart before he was sixteen. Then he travelled: Makkah, Madinah, Basra, Kufa, Baghdad, Egypt and Sham, hearing from more than a thousand teachers. Of some six hundred thousand narrations he kept only those whose chain he could defend, and arranging them took him another sixteen years. He died at Khartank, near Samarkand, at sixty two.

Sahih Muslim

Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj an-Naysaburi, born 204 AH, died 261 AH, Nishapur. 7,557 narrations in 57 books. Read it.

Born in Nishapur, he travelled to the Hijaz, Iraq, Sham and Egypt for hadith and sat with al-Bukhari when the older man came to his city, defending him when others turned away. His Sahih is arranged by subject with every chain of a narration gathered in one place, which is why scholars have always found it the easier of the two to use. He died in Nishapur at fifty seven.

Sunan Abi Dawud

Sulayman ibn al-Ashath as-Sijistani, born 202 AH, died 275 AH, Sijistan. 5,274 narrations in 43 books. Read it.

From Sijistan in the east, he studied under Ahmad ibn Hanbal and gathered half a million narrations, of which he kept the four thousand eight hundred a jurist needs: the Sunan is a book of rulings, and where a narration has a weakness he says so beside it. He settled in Basra at the caliph's request and died there at seventy three.

Jami at-Tirmidhi

Muhammad ibn Isa at-Tirmidhi, born 209 AH, died 279 AH, Tirmidh. 3,956 narrations in 49 books. Read it.

A student of al-Bukhari from Tirmidh on the Oxus, he was the first to grade every narration he recorded, sahih, hasan or weak, and to say which of the scholars acted on it. That is why his book is called a Jami, a gatherer: it carries the law, the virtues and the tafsir in one. He went blind late in life and died at home at seventy.

Sunan an-Nasa'i

Ahmad ibn Shuayb an-Nasa'i, born 215 AH, died 303 AH, Nasa. 5,758 narrations in 52 books. Read it.

From Nasa in Khurasan, he settled in Egypt and was the strictest of the six about whom he would accept a narration from. The Sunan the app carries is his own shorter selection from his larger Sunan, made when a ruler asked whether everything in the big book was sound and he answered no. He died in Ramla in Palestine at eighty eight.

Sunan Ibn Majah

Muhammad ibn Yazid Ibn Majah al-Qazwini, born 209 AH, died 273 AH, Qazvin. 4,341 narrations in 38 books. Read it.

From Qazvin in Persia, he travelled to Basra, Kufa, Baghdad, Makkah, Sham and Egypt for hadith. His Sunan is the sixth of the six books, admitted for the narrations it alone preserves, and it carries more weak chains than the other five, which is why the app shows gradings on it. He died at sixty four.