Muhammad al-Bukhari
Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Ibrāhīm al-Juʿfī al-Bukhārī (Arabic: أبو عبد الله محمد بن إسماعيل بن إبرهيم الجعفي البخاري; 21 July 810 – 1 September 870) was a 9th-century Muslim muhaddith who is widely regarded as the most important hadith scholar in the history of Sunni Islam. Al-Bukhari's extant works include the hadith collection Sahih al-Bukhari, al-Tarikh al-Kabir, and al-Adab al-Mufrad.
Al-Bukhari
21 July 810
13 Shawwal 194 AH
1 September 870 (aged 60)
1 Shawwal 256 AH
Imam Bukhari Mosque near Samarkand, Uzbekistan
Born in Bukhara in present-day Uzbekistan, Al-Bukhari began learning hadith at a young age. He travelled across the Abbasid Caliphate and learned under several influential contemporary scholars. Bukhari memorized thousands of hadith narrations, compiling the Sahih al-Bukhari in 846. He spent the rest of his life teaching the hadith he had collected. Towards the end of his life, Bukhari faced claims the Quran was created, and was exiled from Nishapur. Subsequently, he moved to Khartank, near Samarkand.
Sahih al-Bukhari is revered as the most important hadith collection in Sunni Islam. Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, the hadith collection of Al-Bukhari's student Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj, are together known as the Sahihayn (Arabic: صحيحين, romanized: Saḥiḥayn) and are regarded by Sunnis as the most authentic books after the Quran. It is part of the Kutub al-Sittah, the six most highly regarded collections of hadith in Sunni Islam.
Life[edit]
Ancestry and early life[edit]
Muhammad ibn Ismail al-Bukhari al-Ju'fi was born after the Friday prayer on Friday, 21 July 810 (13 Shawwal 194 AH) in the city of Bukhara in Greater Khorasan in present-day Uzbekistan.[2][3][4][5] He has been described as Persian [6][7][8] and his father was Ismail ibn Ibrahim, a scholar of hadith and a student of Malik ibn Anas, Abd Allah ibn al-Mubarak, and Hammad ibn Salamah.[6][9] Ismail died while Al-Bukhari was an infant. Al-Bukhari's great-grandfather, Al-Mughirah, settled in Bukhara after accepting Islam at the hands of Bukhara's governor, Yaman al-Ju'fi. As was the custom, he became a mawla of Yaman, and his family continued to carry the nisba "al-Ju'fi."[10]
Al-Mughirah's father, Bardizbah (Persian: بردزبه), is the earliest known ancestor of Al-Bukhari according to most scholars and historians. Bardizbah was a Zoroastrian Magi. Taqi al-Din al-Subki is the only scholar to name Bardizbah's father, who he says was named Bazzabah (Persian: بذذبه). Little is known of both of them except that they were Persian and followed the religion of their people.[6][11][12] Historians have also not come across any information on Al-Bukhari's grandfather, Ibrahim ibn al-Mughirah (Arabic: إبراهيم ابن المغيرة, romanized: Ibrāhīm ibn al-Mughīrā).[6]
Travels and education[edit]
According to contemporary hadith scholar and historian Al-Dhahabi, al-Bukhari began studying hadith in the Hijri year 821 CE. He memorized the works of Abd Allah ibn al-Mubarak while still a child and began writing and narrating hadith while still an adolescent. In the Hijri year 826 CE, at the age of sixteen, Al-Bukhari performed the Hajj with his elder brother and widowed mother.[9][13] Al-Bukhari stayed in Mecca for two years, before moving to Medina where he wrote Qadhāyas-Sahābah wa at-Tābi'īn, a book about the companions of Muhammad and the tabi'un. He also wrote Al-Tārīkh al-Kabīr during his time in Medina.[9]
Al-Bukhari is known to have travelled to most of the important Islamic learning centres of his time, including Syria, Kufa, Basra, Egypt, Yemen, and Baghdad. He studied under prominent Islamic scholars including Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Ali ibn al-Madini, Yahya ibn Ma'in and Ishaq ibn Rahwayh. Al-Bukhari is known to have memorized over 600,000 hadith narrations.[9][14]
School of law[edit]
In terms of law, scholars like Jonathan Brown assert that al-Bukhari was of the Ahl al-Hadith, an adherent of Ahmad ibn Hanbal's traditionalist school in law (fiqh), but fell victim to its most radical wing due to misunderstandings.[33] This claim is supported by Hanbalis, although members of the Shafi'i and Ẓāhirī schools levy this claim as well.[34][35] Scott Lucas argues that al-Bukhari's legal positions were similar to those of the Ẓāhirīs and Hanbalis of his time, suggesting al-Bukhari rejected qiyas and other forms of ra'y completely.[36][37] Many are of the opinion that Al-Bukhari was a mujtahid with his own madhhab.[38][39][40][41] Munir Ahmad asserts that historically most jurists considered him to be a muhaddith (scholar of hadith) and not a faqīh (jurist), and that as a muhaddith, he followed the Shafi'i school.[33] The Harvard historian Ahmed el-Shamsy also asserts this, as he states that he was a student of the Shafi'i scholar al-Karabisi (d. 245/859).[42]