Imam Muslim's hadith book overlaps with al-Bukhari's by thousands of reports
Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj of Nishapur befriended al-Bukhari and built a rival collection of sound hadith. Early critics grumbled that he left out too much and trusted weak narrators, yet his Sahih slowly climbed until Sunnis placed it second only to his friend's work.
Even his birth year is uncertain. Historians offer 202, 204 or 206 AH, roughly 817 to 822 CE, and Al-Dhahabi suspected it was earlier still. One chain of reports says he was 55 when he died in May 875, which would fix his birth at 206 AH. He was buried at Nasarabad, a suburb of Nishapur in Khorasan, now northeastern Iran. His origins are also described two ways: he is often called Persian, while the name al-Qushayri points to the Arab tribe of Banu Qushayr, whose members settled in Persia after the early conquests.
He studied across Arabia, Egypt, Iraq and Syria under teachers including Yahya ibn Ma'in and al-Bukhari himself before settling back home, where the two became lifelong friends. His own pupils included al-Tirmidhi and Ibn Khuzayma, both later hadith authors in their own right. Most of what is known about his life passes through al-Khatib al-Baghdadi's 11th-century History of Baghdad, which leaned in turn on al-Hakim al-Nishapuri's history of the city.
Composed in the mid-9th century, Sahih Muslim is one of the six canonical Sunni collections and, with al-Bukhari's, forms the pair called the Sahihayn. Counts of its contents range from three to twelve thousand hadith depending on how duplicates are handled. Al-Jawzaqi tallied 2,326 traditions common to both books, and roughly 2,400 narrators appear in each.
Acceptance was gradual. Ishaq ibn Rahwayh endorsed the work first, but Abu Zur'a al-Razi objected to its omissions and some weak transmitters, and Ibn Abi Hatim's later praise was noticeably cooler than for other masters. Muslim also wrote Al-Tamyiz, on hidden defects in hadith, and a reference work on narrators' names and kunyas.
Source: Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj
