The Other important Collections Of Hadeeth 1) Sunan Abu Dawood 2) Sunan Al-Tirmithi 3) Sunan An-Nasa’ee 4) Sunan Ibn Majah

Quick Reminder Remember that the compliers of the books of Saheeh only intends to collect Saheeh Hadeeth. In the books of Sunan the authors intends to collect both the Saheeh and Hassan Hadeeth. However, they will sometimes include narrations with minor to moderate weakness in their chains of narration.

Books Of Sunan 1. Sunan-ut-Tirmithi The compiler of Sunan-ut-Tirmithi is the Imam Muhammad Ibn Isa At-Tirmithi. He was born near Termez in present day Uzbekistan in the year 209 A.H. and passed away there in the year 279 A.H at the age of seventy years.t-Tirmithi was a student of Imam Al- Bukhari, Muslim and Abu Dawood. At-Tirmithi was a well-known and respected scholars of Hadeeth. He was known for his extreme fear of Allah, religious commitment, and precision.

Imam Al-Bukhari used to admire him, And once said to him, with great humility, “I benefited from you more than you benefited from me.” It has been reported that towards the end of his life At-Tirmithi lost his eyesight from crying so much out of the fear of Allah. It is sometimes difficult for us today to understand the amazing levels of piety that these great scholars of Islam had. His collection of Hadeeth incorporated a lot of different branches of science of Hadeeth. He did the following: 1. He carefully categorized the Hadeeth based on its main theme. 2. He indicated any problems with the chain of Hadeeth. 3. He graded each Hadeeth based on its overall strength or weaknesses. 4. He clarified the names and nicknames of narrators.

5. He Summarized what was said about strong or weak narrators. 6. He differentiated between narrators who actually met the Messenger of Allah (P. B. U. H.), and those who did not but narrated Hadeeth directly to him. 7. He mentioned the opinions of scholars on different Fiqh points like the opinions of Imam Ash-Shafiee, Malik, and Abu Hanifah. 8. He also summarized the number of chains of narration of a particular Hadeeth and weather it had other narrations that supported it. Imam Al-Tirmithi did not repeat many ahadeeth in his Sunan. Instead he mentioned the strongest Hadeeth for each topic. He also mentioned how many other chains were available for the Hadeeth. His book is very comprehensive containing about 3,965 Hadeeth.

Quote from Imam Imam Tirmithi said, “I wrote my book and presented it to the scholars of Hijaz (Madinah and Makkah)and they accepted it. And I presented it to scholars of Iraq and they accepted it. And I presented it to the scholars of Khurasan and accepted it. Whoever has this book in his house it is as a messenger from Allah talking.

2. Sunan Abu Dawood The compiler of Sunan Abu Dawood is Abu Dawood Sulayman ibn Ash’ath al-Azdi As-Sijistani. Imam Abu Dawood was born in Sejestan, Afghanistan in 202H. And passed away in 273H,at the of 71. He was a student of Imam Al-Bukhari and Ahmad Ibn Hanbal. Imam Abu Dawood traveled to Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Makkah, Madinah, Nasboor to search for Hadeeth and Islamic knowledge. After years of travel and study he became widely recognized as one of the greatest scholars of Hadeeth of his time.

Imam At-Tirmithi and Imam An-Nasa’ee were both were his students. He summarized his book from around 500,ooo chains of narration to about 4,800 Hadeeth. Quote from Imam Imam Abu Dawood said about his collection: “I have collected in it around 4,800 Hadeeth. I mentioned the Saheeh and what comes close to it (Hasan). It is enough for a person’s religion to have four of them “(because most of the rules can be summarized in ): 1. The Messenger of Allah P,B.U,H. said, “Action are judged by the intentions” 2. And he said,“It is part of being a good Muslim to ignore that which dose not concern you” 3. And he said, “A believer is not a believer until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.”

4. And he said, “What is permissible is clear and what is forbidden is clear, between them are unclear issues that not many people know (whether they are forbidden or not). So whoever avoids the unclear issues protects his honor and religion and those who fall into the unclear issues will fall into what is forbidden.” His book became widely accepted by scholar from all schools of Fiqh.

3. Suanan-un-Nasa’ee Imam Ahmad Ibn Shau’ayb was born in Niasa,Turmenistan in 215 A.H. And passed away in Palestine in 303 A. H. He traveled to Iraq, Syria, Makkah, Madinah, and Egypt where he stayed for a long time of period of time. During his travels he studied with many scholars including Imam Abu Dawood. He wrote many books about the grading of narrators of Hadeeth and was widely recognized as one of the greatest scholars of his time.

Describe briefly the following books: a. Sunan Abu Dawood. b. Sunan-ut-Tirmithi. c. Sunan Ibn Majah. d. Sunan-un-Nasa’ee.

He collected around 11,949 narrations in his collection called Al-Sunan Al-Kubra. He was asked “Is all of it sound?” He said, “No”. So he was asked to summarized the strong hadeeth from it. He did so in a book called “Al-Mujtaba,” which means “the selected,” where he documented 5,662 of the narrations. In his book he followed the example of Imam Al- Bukhari in categorizing and repeating Hadeeth to highlight the different lessons and ruling that can be inferred from them. He was very careful to point out if there were any problems with a narration that were not clearly apparent. Imam Ath-Thahabi once said, “No one memorized more Hadeeth than An-Nasa’ee at the start of the third century of Islam. He was comparable to Al-Bukhari.” Imam An-Nasa’ee was buried in Al-Quds, or Jerusalem.

4. Sunan Ibn Majah Imam Muhammad ibn Yazeed Ibn Maja was great scholar of Hadeeth in his time. He was born in the year 209 A.H. in Qazvin, Iran and passed away in 273 A.H. In his book, he collected the hadeeth pertaining to the Sunnah of Rasoolullah His book is placed last among the famous books, because it contains a lot more weak hadeeth compared to the other books. The book is important because it contains a number of hadeeth that are not found in other books. There are around 4,341 hadeeth in the book, of which 3,oo2 are narrated in other five books of Hadeeth (Al-Bukhari, Muslim, Tirmithi Abu Dawood, Nasa’ee).

Imam ibn Majah provides chains of narration that are often not found in the other books so his chains of narration act as supporting evidence, of the res of the ahadeeth: have sound chains of narration (Saheeh) have acceptable chains of narration (Hasan) have weak chains of narration have weak chain of narration that might even include liars.

Study Questions 1. Write a paragraph about how each of the following Imam inspired you: At-Tirmithi An-Nasa’ee Ibn Majah Abu dawood 2. How many of the eight Imams you have studied in this and the previous chapter come from “Arab” backgrounds. What lesson can you learn from this? 3. List the eight books and their authors in chronological order. 4. Define: Sunan. Al-Kutub-us-Sittah.