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OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE VIEWS and thoughts of the early Muslims about the life and career of their prophet is derived from Muslim traditions recorded in numerous and often voluminous compilations. These traditions are focussed on one man: the Prophet Muhammad, and contain stories about his sayings and acts which were transmitted through the ages from his Companions to their Successors. Each individual tradition is called a ḥadīth; it is normally preceded by a list, called an isnād, which contains the names of the various transmitters of the tradition. The list begins with the latest authority and reaches back to the earliest, which is, ideally, the Prophet himself.

Many of the ḥadīth compilations are arranged by chapters, each called a kitāb, or “book”. The titles of the chapters encompass a vast variety of topics revealing the multifarious fields of interest of the Muslim scholars, and the chapters themselves amount to what the scholars call the sunan. In its broader sense this term covers all aspects of Muslim law and dogma. In its stricter meaning it only signifies the practical aspects of the law. For the sake of convenience, we shall follow Goldziher in referring to the compilations arranged according to the topics of the sunan as the muşannaf collections. The verb şannafa means to arrange by chapters, so that a book thus arranged is musannaf. There are numerous such muṣannaf collections, and most notewor- thy of these are the so-called “Six Books” which acquired canonical status: the al-Jami’ al-ṣaḥīḥ of al-Bukhārī (d. AH 256), the al-Jāmi’ al-ṣaḥīḥ of Muslim (d. AH 261), the Sunan of Ibn Māja (d. AH 275), the Sunan of Abū Dāwūd (d. AH 275), the Jāmi' of al-Tirmidhi (d. AH 279), and the Sunan of al-Nasā’i (d. AH 303). The term jāmi’ signifies the wide range of subjects compiled in the work thus named, whereas the title sunan means that the compilation is dedicated mainly to the practical aspects of ḥadīth. The most authoritative of the Six are the Jami’ of al-Bukhari and Muslim, each of which came to be known as al- Şaḥiḥ (“Sound“). Apart from the “Six Books” there are many other compilations organized as muṣannaf. It should be observed in passing that not only ḥadīth proper was arranged by chapters. Many books of fiqh, i.e. of purely theoretical discussions of the law, were compiled according to the same system.