Muhammad al-Bukhari · Lablypedia

Born in Bukhara, in present-day Uzbekistan, he began studying hadith at the age of ten and became noted for his exceptional memory. He travelled extensively throughout the Abbasid Caliphate in search of traditions and studied under numerous influential contemporary scholars. He is said to have interviewed about a thousand shaykhs and examined more than 200,000 hadiths, rejecting many after careful scrutiny at a time when numerous spurious traditions were in circulation.

Al-Bukhārī memorized thousands of hadith narrations and compiled his principal collection, the Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, in 846 C.E. The work selected 7563 narrations including repetitions, from over 600,000 narrations, but fewer than 3,000 when repeated material is excluded; its contents are arranged principally by subject for ease of reference in ninety-seven "books", subdivided into 3,450 chapters. He spent the remainder of his life teaching the traditions he had collected. Near the end of his life he was exiled from Nishapur and subsequently moved to Khartank, near Samarkand.

The Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī became the most highly revered hadith collection in Sunni Islam. Together with the Ṣaḥīḥ of al-Bukhārī's student Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj (d. 875; AH 261), it is known collectively as the Ṣaḥīḥayn (Arabic: صحيحين, romanized: Saḥiḥayn). The two collections are regarded by Sunnis as the principal definitive compilations of reliable hadith and, after the Qurʾān, as authoritative sources for principles of legislation and religious practice. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī is also one of the Kutub al-Sittah, the six most highly regarded Sunni hadith collections. Among al-Bukhārī's other extant works are al-Tarikh al-Kabir and al-Adab al-Mufrad.

Sources of biography

Al-Bukhari's life is reconstructed primarily from contemporary accounts and biographical compendia written in the 3rd–4th centuries AH (9th–10th centuries CE).

The single most important source is Shamāʾil al-Bukhārī, a now-lost monograph by his personal scribe Abū Jaʿfar al-Warrāq, documenting al-Bukhari's life. Al-Warrāq's association with him spanned two periods: before 239 AH until al-Bukhari's second journey to Iraq (~243 AH), and from his return to Bukhara in 253 AH until shortly before his death in 256 AH. The work combined al-Warrāq's eyewitness accounts with external reports of events from other people, and circulated in two successive recensions, the second containing substantial additions.

Other early contemporary notices include Aḥmad ibn Sayyār al-Marwazī's (d. 268 AH) lost history of Khurasan, the earliest mention of al-Bukhari, and Ibn Abī Ḥātim's Al-Jarḥ wa-al-Taʿdīl (d. 327 AH), the earliest surviving notice, covering his stay in Rayy and the theological dispute over recitation of the Quran. Specialized narrator compendia of his biography include Ibn ʿAdī's (d. 365 AH) Mashāyikh al-Bukhārī, alongside notices by al-Nasāʾī (d. 303 AH), Ibn Yūnus al-Miṣrī (d. 347 AH), Ibn Ḥibbān (d. 354 AH), Ibn al-Nadīm (d. 385 AH), and Abū Aḥmad al-Ḥākim (d. 378 AH).

Though lost today, the Shamāʾil was extensively cited in the major biographic compendia of al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī (d. 463 AH), Ibn ʿAsākir (d. 571 AH), and al-Samʿānī. Both recensions were utilized by al-Dhahabī (d. 748 AH) across his historical works, and served as Ibn Ḥajar's main source for the biographical introduction of Hady al-Sari.

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Life

Ancestry and early life

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. He was of Persian descent 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. 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."

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. 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).

Travels and education

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. 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.

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.

Mihna, later years and death

According to Jonathan Brown, following Ibn Hanbal, Al-Bukhari had reportedly declared that 'reciting the Quran is an element of createdness’. Through this assertion, Al-Bukhari had sought an alternative response to the doctrines of Mu'tazilites and declared that the element of creation is applied only to humans, not the Word of God. His statements were received negatively by prominent hadith scholars and he was driven out of Nishapur. Al-Bukhari, however, had only referred to the human action of reading the Qur’an, when he reportedly stated "My recitation of the Quran is created" (Arabic: لفظي بالقرآن مخلوق, romanized: Lafẓī bil-Qur'āni Makhlūq) Al-Dhahabi and Taj al-Din al-Subki asserted that Al-Bukhari was expelled due to the jealousy of certain scholars of Nishapur. Al-Bukhari spent the last twenty-four years of his life teaching the hadith he had collected. During the mihna, he fled to Khartank, a village near Samarkand, where he then also died on Friday, 1 September 870. Today his tomb lies within the Imam Bukhari Mausoleum in Hartang, Uzbekistan, 25 kilometers from Samarkand. It was restored in 1998 after centuries of neglect and dilapidation. The mausoleum complex consists of Al-Bukhari's tomb, a mosque, a madrasa, library, and a small collection of Qurans. The modern ground-level mausoleum tombstone of Al-Bukhari is only a cenotaph, the actual grave lies within a small crypt below the structure.

School of law

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. This claim is supported by Hanbalis, although members of the Shafi'i and Ẓāhirī schools levy this claim as well. 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. Many are of the opinion that Al-Bukhari was a mujtahid with his own madhhab. 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. 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).

A significant number of scholars, both historical and contemporary, maintain that al-Bukhari was an independent mujtahid and did not adhere to any of the four famous madhhabs. Al-Dhahabi said that: Imam Bukhari was a mujtahid, a scholar capable of making his own ijtihad without following any Islamic school of jurisprudence in particular.

Theology

According to some scholars, such as Christopher Melchert, and also Ash'ari theologians, including Ibn Hajar al-'Asqalani and al-Bayhaqi, al-Bukhari was a follower of the Kullabi school of Sunni theology due to his position on the utterance of the Quran being created. Other Kullabis, such as al-Harith al-Muhasibi, were harassed and made to relocate, a similar situation al-Bukhari found himself towards the latter years of his life by other Hanbalis. He was also known to be a student of al-Karabisi (d. 245/859), who was a direct student of Imam al-Shafi'i from his period in Iraq. Al-Karabisi was also known to have associated himself directly with Ibn Kullab and the Kullabi school of thought.

Interpretation of God's attributes

According to Namira Nahouza in her work 'Wahhabism and the Rise of the New Salafists', al-Bukhari in his Sahih, in the book entitled "Tafsir al-Qur'an wa 'ibaratih" [i.e., Exegesis of the Qur'an and its expressions], surat al-Qasas, verse 88: "kullu shay'in halikun illa Wajhah" [the literal meaning of which is "everything will perish except His Face"], he said the term [illa Wajhah] means: "except His Sovereignty/Dominance". And there is [in this same chapter] other than that in terms of ta'wil (metaphorical interpretation), like the term 'dahk' (Arabic: ضحك, lit. 'laughter') which is narrated in a hadith, [which is interpreted by] His Mercy.

Views on predestination

Al-Bukhari also rebuked those who rejected of qadar (predestination) in Sahih al-Bukhari by quoting a verse of the Qur'an implying that God had precisely determined all human acts. According to Ibn Hajar al-'Asqalani, al-Bukhari signified that if someone was to accept autonomy in creating his acts, he would be assumed to be playing God's role and so would subsequently be declared a Mushrik, similar to the later Ash'ari view of kasb (acquisition, occasionalism, and causality, which link human action with divine omnipotence). In another chapter, al-Bukhari refutes the creeds of the Kharijites. According to Badr al-Din al-'Ayni, the heading of that chapter was designed not only to refute the Kharijites but any who held similar beliefs.