It has been generally agreed upon that Imâm Bukhari's work is the most authentic of all the other works in Hadith literature put together. The authenticity of Al-Bukhari's work is such that some scholars of Islam said concerning him: "The most authentic book after the Book of Allah (i.e. Al-Qur'ân) is Sahih Al-Bukhari."
Sahih Al-Bukhari covers almost all aspects of life in providing proper guidance from the messenger of Allah.
This is the First Volume of the English translation from the unabridged version consisting of 7563 ahadith. Each volume contains many chapters which represent one logical unit of Ahadith. Volume 4 consists of the translation of Hadith 2738-3648.
Imâm Bukhari was born on 13th Shawwâl in the year 194 A.H in Bukhara in the territory of Khurâsân (West Turkistân). His real name is Muhammad bin Ismâil bin Al-MughIrah Al-Bukhari. At the age of ten, he started acquiring the knowledge of Hadith. He traveled to Makkah where he lived for 2 years following he traveled to Madina and lived there for 4 years. He then left for Basrah, Küfa, and Baghdad and visited many other places including Egypt and Syria. He met many religious learned scholars including Imâm Ahmad bin Hanbal.
It is said that Imâm Bukhari collected over 300,000 Ahadith and he himself memorized 200,000 of which some were unreliable. He undertook the great task of sifting the forged Ahadith from the authentic ones. He labored day and night and although he had memorized such a large number he only chose approximately 7,275 with repetition and about 2,230 without repetition of which there is no doubt about their authenticity.
Imâm Bukhari died on first Shawwâl in the year 256 A.H. and was buried in Khartank, a village near Samarkand. May Allah have mercy on his soul.
