Firstly, regarding the issue of proving the authenticity of heritage books by relying on the original author’s copy, and doubting anything else, I say that this statement undermines most of the Islamic and non-Islamic heritage books. Even if it comes from an orientalist or a Shi’ite, we oblige them to adopt the same approach towards what they consider authentic from human heritage books. Where are the original copies of the teachings of the Greeks, Romans, and most philosophers?!
Secondly: The issue of criticizing “Sahih Bukhari” as a book, methodology, and narrations has been and still is the concern of a group of enemies of this nation and some ignorant members of it. They believe that this will undermine the system of narration, and this is a great ignorance.
Thirdly: “Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhāriy” has been narrated by hundreds and hundreds of the students of Imam Al-Bukhāriy and thousands of them in a way that has not happened for any other Ḥadīth book. Their method of narration relied on memorization and reading from the written text. The orientalist Menjana published in Cambridge in 1936 the oldest known handwritten copy of the book, which was written in 370 AH, according to the narration of Al-Marūziy from Al-Farbariy, a student of Al-Bukhāriy. If we know that Al-Bukhāriy (may Allah have mercy on him) died in 256 AH, it is proven that the copy was written about a hundred years after Al-Bukhāriy and not as claimed. It is noteworthy that Al-Marūziy transmitted it from Al-Farbariy who had his own copy. There is also the copy of Al-Ḥāfiẓ Abū ʽAliy aṣ-Ṣadafiy (d. 514 AH) which he wrote from the copy of Muḥammad ibn ʽAliy ibn Maḥmūd, read under the supervision of Abu Dhar (may Allah have mercy on him), and it is written with Muḥammad ibn ʽAliy’s handwriting. It was borrowed by the scholar Aṭ-Ṭāhir ibn ʽAāshūr, the Tunisian and Islamic scholar, from the Tobruk library in Libya.
Fourthly: The loss of written copies does not mean that they were not written, and this is one of the calamities of Orientalism. We must distinguish between writing and the existence of the written document. Writing has been reported to have occurred, but the existence of the written document is another matter subject to several factors:
– How many wars have occurred since the death of the author?
– How many cities and libraries have been destroyed and burned?
– How many books have been lost?
– How difficult was it to print many copies and to keep them in every situation?
– If we consider all this, we must expect the absence of some copies, but this does not negate their original existence.
Fifthly: The original method for transmitting the Quran and Sunnah from the beginning was through oral transmission, which is a natural phenomenon in Arabic sciences that is not appreciated by Orientalists and skeptics. Even Al-Bukhāriy himself did not collect all his Ḥadīths from written sources, some of them were written and some were memorized. So, do we also question Al-Bukhāriy and ask him where are the written sources he transmitted from? And yet he uses phrases such as “(so-and-so) related to us” and “(so-and-so) informed us”. Therefore, the absence of a written text does not discredit the narration if it was transmitted through a chain of narrators. If Al-Bukhāriy himself compiled his book from tens of thousands of Ḥadīths, and from his own memorization, it would not be difficult for those after him to memorize a few thousand of them, nearly half of which are repeated.
Sixthly: Ṣaḥīḥ Al-Bukhāriy has been explained by a large number of scholars, and there are nearly 400 authors who have written commentaries, studies, or analysis on it. I say that these scholars, such as Ibn Rajab, Ibn Ḥajar, Al-Qasṭalāniy, Al-ʽAyniy, and others, have followed the Ḥadīth narrations in the book and highlighted the differences between some of the written copies, which, in comparison to the size of the book, are few. In general, the loss of the author’s copy does not mean that it does not exist, and we do not need to attach the authentic (Ṣaḥīḥ) narrations specifically to Al-Bukhāriy himself, as Al-Bukhāriy gained his fame from writing a collection of Ṣaḥīḥ Ḥadīths, not the other way around.
We can understand the argument of those who argue that if Al-Bukhāriy had other books that were comparable to or even better than Ṣaḥīḥ Al-Bukhāriy, then his name would have been attached to those books to gain fame. However, if we know Al-Bukhāriy did not leave behind many or well-known books other than his two books, “Al-ʼAdab al-Mufrad” and “At-Tārīkh al-Kabīr,” then even though they are not as famous or accepted as Ṣaḥīḥ Al-Bukhāriy, they are still incomparable to the reputation and acceptance of Ṣaḥīḥ Al-Bukhāriy.
The question is, if someone forged Ṣaḥīḥ Al-Bukhāriy and attributed it to Al-Bukhāriy, then why didn’t the forger attribute it to themselves or to Imam ʼAḥmad, who preceded Al-Bukhāriy, or to ʽAliy ibn Al-Madani, one of Al-Bukhāriy’s teachers and well-known in the field of Ḥadīth criticism and praise, or to Al-Faḍl ibn Dukayn or someone else? Why Al-Bukhāriy specifically? Unless the book actually belongs to Al-Bukhāriy.
Fatwa by Dr. Khālid Naṣr