Al-Adab Al-Mufrad

Sunan An-Nasai has the fewest weak ahadith after the two Sahih collections. This Sunan is one of the six is al-Mujtaba or as-Sunan as-Sughara, which is a synopsis of a large collection of ahadith which he considered to be fairly reliable. In the smaller collection, only those ahadith which he considered to be reliable have been included.

It was compiled by the great scholar of hadith, Abu Abdur-Rahman Ahmad bin Shu’aib bin Bahr An-Nasae (Nasa’ of Khurasan) (214-303AH). Imam An-Nesai, like other great scholars of hadith traveled to Baghdad, Ash-Sham, Egypt, Mecca, and many other cities to seek knowledge. He received the praises of many scholars including Ad-Daraqutni who said about him: “He is given preference over all others who are mentioned with this knowledge from the people of his time”. Some scholars consider his compilation to have the least number of defective or weak narrations among the four Sunan. This great book of his contains 5761 ahadith, making it as an invaluable addition to anyone’s library.

The authentic hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim are excellent in respect to both chain of transmissions and the texts as well as their general utility in that they gave guidance in almost all walks of life. The collections won the praise and acclaim of of Hadith scholars so much that they themselves produced works containing the same Ahadith as found in the collection of both Bukhari and Muslim but with their own independent chains consisting of a lesser # of sub-narrators and called their works Mustakhraj.

Imam Muslim is one of the foremost preservers of ahadith of the Prophet. His book comes second only to Sahih al Bukhari in terms of authenticity according to majority of scholars. It is considered to be better than Sahih Bukhari in terms of organization and repetition according to some scholars of Islam. It is the second in the collection of 6 books called “Sihah Sittah” or “6 most authentic books”. Imam Muslim took painstaking efforts in preserving the words/actions/sayings & approvals of the Prophet. He has mostly used 4-5 narrators in the chain of transmission although there are a couple of hadith containing 3 narrators. Imam Muslim was a very good student of Imam Bukhari and some of his Shuyukhs, although he did not narrate from Imam Bukhari too much, thus reducing the # of narrators.