Kutub al-Sittah (Arabic: ٱلْكُتُب ٱلسِّتَّة, romanized: al-Kutub al-Sitta, lit. 'the Six Books'), also known as al-Sihah al-Sitta (Arabic: الصحاح الستة, romanized: al-Ṣiḥāḥ al-Sitta, lit. 'the Authentic Six') are the six canonical hadith collections of Sunni Islam. They were compiled in the 9th-century CE.
They were first formally grouped and defined by Ibn al-Qaisarani in the 11th century, who added Sunan ibn Majah to the list.[1][2][3] The sixth book is disputed in Sunni Muslim jurisprudence; in particular, the Malikis and Ibn al-Athir consider al-Muwatta' to be the sixth book.[4] Some scholars considered Sunan al-Daraqutni to be the sixth book.[5] The reason for the addition of Ibn Majah's Sunan is that it contains many Hadiths which do not figure in the other five, whereas all the Hadiths in the Muwatta' figure in the other Sahih books.[4]
Significance
Sunni Muslims view the six major hadith collections as their most important, though the order of authenticity varies between madhhabs:[6]
Sahih al-Bukhari, collected by Imam Bukhari (died 256 AH, 870 CE), includesα 7,563 ahadith (including repetitions, around 2,600 without repetitions)[7][8]
Sahih Muslim, collected by Muslim b. al-Hajjaj (died 261 AH, 875 CE), includes 7,500 ahadith (including repetitions, around 3,033 without repetitions)[9][10]
Sunan ibn Majah, collected by Ibn Majah (died 273 AH, 887 CE), includes 4,341 ahadith (including repetitions)[15]
The first two, commonly referred to as the Two Sahihs as an indication of their authenticity, contain approximately seven thousand hadiths altogether if repetitions are not counted, according to Ibn Hajar.α[16]
Authors
The authors of the six collections are as follows:
Muhammad b. Isma'il al-Bukhari, the author of the Sahih al-Bukhari, which he composed over a period of sixteen years. Traditional sources quote Bukhari as saying that he did not record any hadith before performing ablution and praying. Bukhari died near Samarqand in 256/869–70
^α Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim contain many of the same Hadith with different chains, and Bukhari in particular also simply repeats the same Hadith with the same chain in multiple chapters. There is disagreement on the amount of unique hadith in the collections due to the disagreements over what Hadith to include as a repeat (chain/text variations) and whether to include same chain repeats in the total number etc.