Bukhari, al-

Muhammad ibn Ismail al-Bukhari (810–870), compiler of Sahih al-Bukhari, the most respected hadith collection.

What it means

Born in Bukhara, he travelled widely to collect reports and is said to have spent sixteen years on his Ṣaḥīḥ. It has about 7,000 reports counting repetitions, and about 2,600 without them, chosen from a far larger number he examined. He required that narrators had met their sources, a stricter standard than some of his contemporaries.

What the sources say

The collection is regarded by Sunni scholars as the most reliable book after the Quran. Even so, scholars have debated individual reports in it, and later critics such as al-Daraqutni pointed out a small number of them for criticism.