Imam Bukhari: His Life and Works part 1

His Early Years

Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Ismail ibn Ibrahim al-Bukhari al-Jufi was born in

194 A.H. in the city of Bukhara .^[1]

His father Ismail was a well-respected scholar and

was one of the students of Hammad ibn Zaid, and Imam Malik. Unfortunately, he died
when his son Muhammad was quite young. He did, though, leave his son a good fortune
such that he was able to spend most of his time in learning and did not have to
worry about financial matters.

He began his studies at a very young age, studying the Qur’an and other

essential topics, as was the practice of his day. But from his youth, he was
especially attracted to the study of hadith. By the age of ten, he was reading the
available works; by the age of sixteen, he had memorized the works of Waki and
Abdullah ibn al-Mubarak and he was familiar with the opinions of the Iraqi jurists.

According to ibn Katheer, he could look at a book just once and memorize its
contents.^[2]

In order to help him memorize the chains of the hadith; he used to research the
narrators, discovering when exactly they lived, where they lived, who they studied
from and so on. In this way, the names in the chains were no longer simply names of
strangers, but became the names of people whom al-Bukhari was intimately familiar
with.

Abu Bakr al-Madini said,

According to his own narrative, he began to attend the lectures of the local

scholars around the age of ten. He attended al-Daakhili’s lectures in Bukhara. One
time he heard al-Daakhili read a hadith with the chain, “Sufyan from Abu al-Zubair
from Ibrahim.” He told the lecturer that that was a mistake. Obviously, al-Daakhili
was taken by surprise by being refuted by such a youngster. Al-Bukhari stated that
the correct chain was al-Zubair ibn Adi from Ibrahim because al-Zubair had never
recorded hadith from Ibrahim. He told al-Daakhili to check his original if it was
available to him. Al-Daakhili admitted his mistake. Al-Bukhari was eleven years of
age when that incident took place.

At the age of sixteen he left Bukhara with his mother and brother to perform the

pilgrimage to Makkah. After the pilgrimage, he stayed in Makkah and this became his
first real journey in search of knowledge. This occurred after he had gained
whatever knowledge he could in his homeland.

He stayed for some time in both Makkah or Madina. It was at this time that he

began his writing career. In Makkah, he wrote his Tarikh al-Kabeer which is a

biographical work concerning the narrators of hadith.

Concerning his travels, al-Bukhari himself once said, “

It was in Baghdad that al-Bukhari met Ahmad ibn Hanbal. Ahmad ibn Hanbal

was always very pleased with al-Bukhari and he was disappointed whenever he left
Baghdad to return to Bukhara. Ahmad had great praise for the scholarship and
exactitude of the somewhat younger al-Bukhari.^[3]

Al-Bukhari’s Teachers

Al-Bukhari recorded hadith from 1,080 scholars. Ibn Hajr wrote that al-Bukhari’s

teachers are divided into five categories^[4]:

The first category is those scholars who narrated hadith from the Tabieen

(Followers, one generation removed from the Companions), these included Muhammad ibn
Abdullah al-Ansar who recorded hadith from Humaid al-Taweel, Makki ibn Ibrahim and
Abu Asim al-Nabil both who heard from Yazid ibn Abu Ubaid, and Nuaim who heard
hadith from al-Amash.

The second category of scholars is those people of the same generation as the

first category but who did not have the fortune of receiving hadith from trustworthy
Followers. This category includes the following of al-Bukhari’s teachers: Adam ibn
Abu Iyas, Saeed ibn Abu Maryam and Ayyub ibn Sulaiman ibn Bilal.

The third category is the “intermediate” category. These scholars did not meet

any of the Followers but they received hadith from the leading scholars of the

generation immediately following that of the Followers. These teachers include

Sulaiman ibn Harb, Qutaiba ibn Saeed, Ali ibn al-Madini, Yahya ibn Maeen, Ahmad ibn
Hanbal, Ishaq ibn Rahawaih, Abu Bakr, and Uthman ibn Abu Shaiba and so on. Imam
Muslim also met many of these scholars and recorded hadith from them.

The fourth category is really al-Bukhari’s colleagues in learning hadith although

they started studying just prior to al-Bukhari. Muhammad ibn Yahya al-Dhuhli, Abu
Hatim al-Razi, Abd ibn Humaid and Muhammad ibn Abdul Rahim Saaiqa would fall into
this category. From these people, he used to record hadith that he did not hear
directly from their teachers (who were also al-Bukhari’s teachers) or the hadith
that he did not find with anybody else.

The fifth category is those people who were younger in stature or age than al-

Bukhari whom he recorded from due to some benefit in their narrations. This category
includes Abdullah ibn Hammad al-Amali and Abdullah ibn Abu al-Aas al-Khawarizmi.

By narrating from those scholars, al-Bukhari was applying the statement of Waki;

In Sahih al-Bukhari, there is one hadith from al-Bukhari’s student al-Tirmidhi (who
is famous for his own collection of Sunan). Al-Tirmidhi was very proud of this fact
and he boasted about it.

Those who learned from al-Bukhari include al-Tirmidhi (of Sunan fame), al-Nisai

(of Sunan fame), Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj (of Sahih fame), ibn Khuzaima (of Sahih fame),
Abu Zara al-Razi (an expert in illah) and Abu Hatim al-Razi (the author of al-Jarh
wa al-Tadeel).

1 Most of this biographical information comes from Ahmad ibn Hajr’s introduction to
Fath al -Bari, Hady al-

Sari (Riyadh: Dar al -Ifta), vol. 1, pp. 477-493. The interested reader may also
consult Taqi al-Din al-

Mudhari, Al-Imam al-Bukhari: Imam al-Huffadh wa al-Muhadditheen (Damascus: Dar
al-Qalam, 1988);

Abdul Ghani Abdul Khaliq, Al-Imam al-Bukhari wa Sahihuhu (Jedda: Dar al-Manara, 1985).

2 Imad al-Din ibn Katheer, Al-Bidaya wa al-Nihaya (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al -Ilmiyya,
1985), vol. 11, p.25

3 At the same time, Ahmad’s name may only be found twice in Sahih al-Bukhari. The
reason for that, as ibn Hajr explains, is that in al-Bukhari’s early trips to
Baghdad he was able to meet many of Ahmad’s own teachers and get their hadith
directly from them. In al-Bukhari’s later trips to Baghdad, after Ahmad faced his
inquisition, Ahmad was no longer occupied with narrating hadith and therefore
al-Bukhari did not have the opportunity to receive many different hadith from him.
That is why, in Sahih al-Bukhari, al-Bukhari often recorded hadith from Ali ibn
al-Madini but not Ali’s colleague Ahmad ibn Hanbal. See Ahmad ibn Hajr, Fath al-Bari
(Riyadh: Dar al-Ifta), vol. 9, p. 132.

4 Ibn Hajr, Hady al-Sari, p. 479.

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