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viPart 4 —Book 11:Book 12:Book 13:Book 14:Book 15:Book 16:Book 17:Book 18:GENERAL CONTENTSAl-Jumu‛ah — Friday Congregation . 442Ṣalāt al-Khauf — Prayer when facing fear . 469Al-‛Īdain — The Two Eid Festivals . 475Al-Witr — Witr Prayer . 492Al-Istisqā’ — Prayer for Rain . 498Al-Kusūf — Eclipses . 514Sujūd al-Qur’ān — Prostrations of the Qur’ān . 526Taqṣīr aṣ-Ṣalāt — Shortening the Prayers . 532Part 5 —Book 19: At-Tahajjud — The Tahajjud Prayer . 545Book 20: Faḍl aṣ-Ṣalāt fī Masjid Makkah wa-l-Madīnah —Excellence of Prayer in the Mosque of Makkah and of Madīnah 572Book 21: Al-‛Amal fi-ṣ-Ṣalāt — Actions during Prayer . 577Book 22: As-Sahw — Forgetting during Prayer . 589Book 23: Al-Janā’iz — Funerals . 596Part 6 —Book 24: Az-Zakāt — Zakāt: Obligatory Charity . 679Book 25: Al-Manāsik — Rites of the Pilgrimage . 737Part 7 —Book 26:Book 27:Book 28:Book 29:Book 30:Book 31:Book 32:Book 33:Al-‛Umrah — The Minor Pilgrimage . 836Al-Muḥṣar — One prevented from Pilgrimage . 850Jazā’ aṣ-Ṣaid — Penalty for hunting (in Iḥrām) . 857Faḍā’il al-Madīnah — Excellences of Madīnah . 876Aṣ-Ṣaum — Fasting . 886Ṣalāt al-Tarāwīḥ — Tarāwīḥ Prayers . 933Faḍl Lailat al-Qadr — Excellence of Lailat-ul-Qadr . 936Al-I‛tikāf — I‛tikāf (Retiring to the Mosque) . 941

From the Preface to Faḍl al-BārīAmong the works of the service of Islām which I had in mind, aftercompleting the translations of the Holy Qur’ān and its commentaryin English and Urdu, was the translation of Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī withexplanatory notes. A most substantial amount of material relating tothe religion of Islām, the life of the Holy Prophet Muḥammad, andthe history of early Islām, is to be found in books of Ḥadīth, andBukhārī holds the highest rank of all among these collections. Dueto my various other engagements this work kept being postponed.However, in the meantime, I had the opportunity to write a bookleton the compilation of Ḥadīth, with the object of removing misconceptions about this literature as well as clarifying the true positionof Ḥadīth. It therefore refutes the extreme views held by someIslamic groups which either give Ḥadīth a place even above theQur’ān or reject it altogether. This book was published under thetitle Maqām-i Ḥadīth and can serve as an introduction for a translation of Bukhārī, or indeed any other Ḥadīth collection. Topics discussed in it include the position of Ḥadīth in Islām, reliability of itsreports, and the status of Bukhārī among the collections of Ḥadīth.In this translation I have included also those reports fromBukhārī which have a break or missing link in the line of narrators(reports known as maqṭū‛ or mu‛allaq) as well as the sayings andcomments of the Companions of the Holy Prophet and authoritiesof the next generation. These are omitted by some translators, buttheir inclusion gives access to the reader to all reports that Bukhārīhas presented in his collection. However, as regards the isnād, thelists of names of the narrators in the chain which appear precedingeach report, I have omitted these, except for the name of the firstnarrator, most often a Companions of the Holy Prophet, as the fulllists are of no benefit to the ordinary reader.vii

viiiFROM THE PREFACE TO FAḌL AL-BĀRĪAs to the footnotes, the explanations I have provided in themare based on the principles which I have set down in my bookletMaqām-i Ḥadīth. If I found a report to contradict the Holy Qur’ān, Ihave tried to interpret it in a sense which makes it accord with theQur’ān. Where it proved impossible to find such an interpretation, Ihave rejected the report in whole or in part, as necessary. If a reportcould be interpreted in more than one way, I have given preferenceto the sense which makes it accord with human experience oraccepted history. In case of reports which clash with each other, Ihave accepted that view which is supported by the majority ofreports or by the stronger evidence. In writing these notes I haveborne in mind allegations of the critics of Islām as well as thedoubts and objections raised in our present times due to modernthought.I have to confess my handicap that I lack a sufficiently broadknowledge of the field of Ḥadīth. Most of all, I regret that, for thetranslation of Bukhārī, I could not benefit from the vast and detailedknowledge of the learned Maulana Nur-ud-Din, as I had done incase of translating the Holy Qur’ān. This regret was expressed bythe Maulana himself in the last days of his life when he said to me:“The Qur’ān has been done, but Bukhārī remains.” I must alsomention here that this shortcoming of mine has to some extent beenremoved by the participation of Maulana Ahmad in this work, whoshared with me the task of writing the footnotes. I also receivedmuch help from Maulana Abdus Sattar.Muhammad AliDalhousie (India)8 June 1926

Introduction to theFirst English EditionIn presenting this translation of the great work of Ḥadīth, the Ṣaḥīḥal-Bukhārī, to the English-speaking world, I am doing no moreservice than fulfilling practically a dying wish of the late MaulanaMuhammad Ali, to whom I owe so much in my humble knowledgeof Islām. Not only the instructions for the work as a whole, but alsothe bulk of knowledge contained in these pages is the gift of theMaulana. The translation of the text here presented is mostly myown responsibility, but the commentary is mainly from the Urduwork of the Maulana, Faḍl al-Bārī.The necessity of a work like the present one arises from the factthat being more or less conversant now with the contents of theQur’ān, as a result of a number of translations having seen the lightof day, inquisitive minds are eager to know the authentic history ofthe person who gave this wonderful Book to the world. This consideration aside, there is also the fact that Islām is pre-eminently areligion of practice, not a religion of principles and ideas alone, andpractice requires demonstration. None could be a better demonstrator than the man who received this religion from on High, andwhose heart was illumined by a direct impact of the Source of allknowledge. Rightly, therefore, Muslim saints, savants, theologiansand jurists united in regarding the Sunnah, i.e., the practice of theProphet Muḥammad, as the secondary source of the teachings andthe law of Islām, after the Qur’ān.Unlike other religions, Islām is a religion of one authoritativeman, responsible for the whole code of the law and its application toall the various aspects of life. Every word, deed and hint of the Holyix

xINTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST ENGLISH EDITIONProphet was taken, and instructed to be taken, as interpreting,explaining or demonstrating these laws. No corner of his life was inthat way private. Any other human would have been offended in afew days at being observed so closely. Even his wives viewed himin their most private moments as not merely a marital partner but amoral exemplar, and they saw all his deeds and actions in the lightof Quranic principles.The need for the Sunnah having been established, the questionsthat now arises are: where can it be found, and why was it not, aswith the Qur’ān, recorded contemporaneously? The fact is that theSunnah was a way of life, meant to be copied in action, not onpaper. The Sunnah of the Holy Prophet was naturally to be found inthe lives of those thousands of disciples who would avidly copy hisexample, even in the smallest matters. This is why no systematiceffort was made to codify these actions of the Holy Prophet duringhis life and even for some time after his death. The case of theQur’ān was different. It was a body of arguments, enunciations, precepts and laws of life. Its best place was on paper or the memoriesof men, and it was preserved accordingly. The Sunnah, on the otherhand, was preserved in the lives and habits of the believers. Some ofthe Holy Prophet’s exhortations were recorded in writing at the timebut this was rather infrequent.It may be noted that historicity is the very starting point of thetruth of a religion. To investigate its truth, the life and personality ofthe man to whom it was revealed must necessarily form the basis ofthe enquiry. The historical tests and documentary evidences aboutthe existence of the Prophet Muḥammad and his everyday life arenumerous and in abundance, more so than any other human being.For this unique documentary evidence, we are indebted to theCollectors of Ḥadīth. They have achieved a historical accuracywhich is unparalleled among all records of the life story of theFounder of a religion, and beyond which human resources cannotgo. These saintly chroniclers have given the names of the links inthe chain of narrators of each report. They have retained certaininaccuracies because of their unapproachable sincerity. Ṣaḥīḥ alBukhārī, the most careful of these illustrious collections, has been

INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST ENGLISH EDITIONxicalled “the most correct of books after the Book of Allāh.” This is astatement without the least exaggeration in it.In view of the various doubts that have been aroused in theminds of many people by numerous adverse criticisms of Ḥadīth,the present publication has become all the more necessary. Insteadof speculative criticism that has been going on, it will be moreuseful to read the Ḥadīth itself and then see how much truth there isin the criticism. Let the world know what this much-discussedliterature contains before it can be in a position to rightly evaluatethe observations, adverse or favourable, about Ḥadīth.AFTAB-UD-DIN AHMADAhmadiyya Buildings,Lahore-7, PakistanJanuary 12, 1956.Editor’s Note:The above Introduction has been revised from the original whichappeared in the 1956 edition. Maulana Aftab-ud-Din Ahmad died on 13January 1956 in Lahore.Born in Burdwan, West Bengal in 1901, Maulana Aftab-ud-DinAhmad obtained a degree, with distinction in English, from PresidencyCollege, Calcutta in 1923. He followed this up by studying Islam andArabic at the famous religious seminary of Deoband near Delhi foralmost two years. Shortly after this, being attracted towards the LahoreAhmadiyya Movement, he became a missionary, author and scholar ofthe Movement for the rest of his life. During the 1930s he served inEngland first as deputy Imam and then as Imam of the world-famousShah Jahan Mosque at Woking and the Woking Muslim Mission. Laterin Lahore in 1939 he became editor of The Islamic Review, the monthlyjournal of the Woking Muslim mission. In 1950 he was appointed aseditor of The Light, the English weekly organ of the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement published from Lahore, and served in this capacity tillhis death, while also engaged in translating Sahih Bukhari into Englishduring this time. He also translated the well-known Sufi work Futūh alGhaib, by Hazrat Shaikh Abdul Qadir Jilani, into English.

The Qur’ān and ḤadīthAs is well known, there are two sources from which all the principles and precepts of Islām are derived: the Holy Qur’ān and theḤadīth. The Qur’ān is a collection of revelations vouchsafed byGod to the Prophet Muḥammad (may peace and the blessings ofGod be upon him) and it is the Book of God. The Ḥadīth, using theword in its broader sense, is a collection of the Sayings of the HolyProphet and of reports about his actions and behaviour. Strictlyspeaking, it is the former, i.e. the Sayings, which is Ḥadīth, whilethe term for the latter is Sunnah.Of the two sources, the Qur’ān is obviously more important.The Ḥadīth is subordinate to the Qur’ān, and no reported saying oraction of the Holy Prophet in the Ḥadīth is to be accepted as authentic and authoritative which is not in conformity with the letter andspirit of the Qur’ān. However, the importance of the Ḥadīth as thesecondary source of Islām is emphasized by the Qur’ān itself. It iswritten:“Certainly Allāh conferred a favour on the believers whenHe raised among them a Messenger from among themselves, reciting to them His messages and purifying them,and teaching them the Book and the Wisdom, althoughbefore that they were surely in manifest error.” (3 :164)From this verse of the Holy Qur’ān it is clear that the Holy ProphetMuḥammad had come to this world as God’s Messenger with athreefold mission: (1) to convey to mankind the messages that wererevealed to him by God, to adopt measures to preserve them intact,and to spread them to all the corners of the world; (2) to explain thexii

THE QUR’ĀN AND ḤADĪTHxiiivarious doctrines and injunctions of the Qur’ān and to apply them tothe concrete and particular situations of life; and (3) to set a perfectexample for others to follow by practising in their true sense theteachings of the Qur’ān in his own daily life and in his dealingswith other people.All prophets, whenever they were raised by God, had comewith the same threefold mission. But the Prophet Muḥammad is thelast and greatest of the prophets. The Qur’ān revealed to him is theBook of complete and all-embracing Divine guidance for all mankind; and he himself is the perfect exemplar for people in all walksof life and for all times to come. Hence, the importance of both theQur’ān and the Ḥadīth.The Qur’ān says: “Obey Allāh and obey the Messenger”(24:54), where to obey Allāh obviously means to follow the HolyQur’ān (the Book of Allāh), and to obey the Messenger means tofollow the precepts and examples of the Holy Prophet (i.e., Ḥadīthand Sunnah). The Holy Prophet has been described in the Qur’ān as“an excellent exemplar” (33 :21) and “a mercy to all the nations”(21:107), and it is proclaimed: “O Prophet, surely We have sentyou as a witness and a bearer of good news and a warner, and as aninviter to Allāh by His permission, and as a light-giving sun”(33:45–46).The Qur’ān enjoins upon those who love God and long to winHis grace and attain nearness to Him, to follow in the footsteps ofthe Holy Prophet:“Say: If you love Allāh, follow me. Allāh will love you,and grant you protection from your sins, and Allāh isForgiving, Merciful.” (3:31)Thus, the importance of the Ḥadīth as a collection of the sayings of the Holy Prophet and reports of eye-witnesses about his lifeand actions cannot be denied by anyone. The Holy Qur’ān, as iswell recognized, lays down broad principles of life. It was the HolyProphet who provided the explanations and details and showed howthey were to be translated into practice.

xivTHE QUR’ĀN AND ḤADĪTHThe Qur’ān, as is well known, was written down in the lifetimeof the Holy Prophet. As soon as any revelation came to him, hewould have it written down, and several of his followers would alsolearn it by heart. Immediately after his passing away, the revelationsthus recorded and preserved were collected in the form of a book inthe order of sequence that the Holy Prophet had himself determinedunder Divine guidance.Why were the Sayings and the Sunnah of the Prophet notreduced to writing in the same manner in his lifetime? The answerto this is that the Holy Prophet was anxious that his own sayingsshould not get mixed up with the verses of the Qur’ān. It was forthis reason that the sayings and Sunnah of the Holy Prophet werenot, generally speaking, committed to writing in his lifetime.Nevertheless, it is an undoubted fact that hundreds of his followerswho saw him and heard his conversations, discourses and speechesmemorized them and conveyed them to others who were notpresent. Thus the reports of the sayings and actions of the HolyProphet passed from mouth to mouth, and from one generation toanother, and were preserved in the memories of his devoteddisciples before they were finally written down. The Arabs werefamous for their vast and retentive memories, and whatever hadbeen recorded on their minds was as good as recorded with pen andink on paper.But with the passage of time, as the early followers of the HolyProphet began to pass away, the danger was felt that the knowledgeof the Ḥadīth and Sunnah would die with them. So the need was feltto write them down and collect them in the form of books. Thecollectors of Ḥadīth observed certain definite principles and rules inaccepting a report about the life and sayings of the Holy Prophet forinclusion in their collections. The first and the most important ofthese principles was that the Ḥadīth must be in conformity with theletter and spirit of the Qur’ān. Secondly, that it must be in keepingwith the highest moral principles. Thirdly, that it must not be inflagrant opposition to reason and common sense. Fourthly, that itmust have come down to the collector through an unbroken chain ofnarrators from an eye-witness or from the first one who had heard it

THE QUR’ĀN AND ḤADĪTHxvfrom the Holy Prophet himself. If the chain of narrators was notcomplete or if it was broken at any point, then the report was notconsidered of the highest authenticity.Moreover, the collectors of Ḥadīth made inquiries about andstudied the characters of the narrators through whom the report hadcome to them. If anyone of the narrators was known to have told alie or was prone to exaggeration or was not otherwise a man ofperfect moral integrity, then the report which had come through himwas not regarded as reliable. If it was found that a particular reportwas serving and advancing the worldly ambitions of the narrator orof the faction to which he belonged, then also it was not consideredabove suspicion. The collectors of Ḥadīth also made sure that thenarrators had good memories and had enough intelligence to understand what they were reporting. If the report passed all these tests,then alone was it declared to be absolutely authentic. Otherwise thecollectors either totally rejected it or if they included it in theirworks they took good care to point out in what way and how far itfell short of the required test.No report of any historical event or statement of any historicalpersonage has ever been so thoroughly scrutinized and tested as thereports about the life and sayings of the Holy Prophet were testedby t

English translation by Dr Muhammad Muhsin Khan. Of course, for Parts 1 to 3, and some of Part 4, we already had the great advantage of our own English translation by Maulana Aftab-ud-Din Ahmad. I must pay tribute here to his excellent, accurate and idiomatic trans-lation. The revisions we made to his translation are mainly for