robert spencer-did muhammad exist__ an inquiry into islams obscure origins-intercollegiate studies institute (2012) (1)

these are known as as-Sahih as-Sittah: the authentic and trustworthy ones (sahih means “sound” or
“reliable”). These include, in order of their importance and general reputation for reliability, Sahih
Bukhari, the most respected and authoritative Hadith collection, compiled by Bukhari (810–870); Sahih
Muslim, by Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj (821–875); the Sunan of Abu Dawud as-Sijistani (818–889); As-Sunan
as-Sughra, by Ahmad ibn Shuayb an-Nasai (829–915); the Jami of Abu Isa Muhammad At-Tirmidhi
(824–892); and the Sunan of Muhammad ibn Maja (824–887). Although Muslims consider Bukhari's and
Muslim's collections to be the most trustworthy, the others are held in high regard as well. Abu Dawud
as-Sijistani, for example, reportedly traveled to Arabia, Iraq, Khurasan, Egypt, Syria, Iran, and elsewhere
collecting hadiths. One respected imam, Zakariya bin Yahya as-Saji, declared: “The Qur'an is the
foundation of Islam and Sunan Abu Dawud is its pillar.” Another, Ibn al-Arabi, added: “There is no need
of acquaintance of anything after acquiring the knowledge of the Qur'an and of Sunan Abu Dawud.” 47
The most respected Hadith collection, Bukhari's, began in a dream, according to Dr. Muhammad
Muhsin Khan, a Saudi Islamic scholar and Qur'an translator. Dr. Khan writes that Bukhari dreamed that he
was “standing in front of Prophet Muhammad having a fan in his hand and driving away the flies from the
Prophet.” The imam interpreted this dream as a divine sign that he would “drive away the falsehood
asserted against the Prophet.” Accordingly, he spent his life attempting to distinguish authentic hadiths
from forgeries. According to Islamic tradition, Bukhari traversed the Islamic world collecting stories
about Muhammad's words and deeds—fully 300,000 of them. 48 Ultimately he rejected nearly 293,000 of
them as fabricated, or at least impossible to evaluate as to their reliability. He chose and published 7,563
hadiths, though these included repetitions; in all, he included 2,602 separate hadiths that he deemed
authentic. Even these run to nine volumes in a modern-day English-Arabic edition published in Saudi
Arabia.
The imam Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj was Bukhari's disciple. Born in Nishapur in what is now Iran, he is
said to have traveled to Arabia, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq to collect hadiths. According to Islamic tradition,
he also collected 300,000 hadiths, of which he preserved 4,000 as authentic in his Sahih. Most Muslim
scholars consider his collection, as well as that of Bukhari, to be almost entirely reliable; Muslims raise
virtually no question about the authenticity of traditions that appear in both Sahih Bukhari and Sahih
Muslim—of which there are many. One Internet-based introduction to Islamic faith and practice, which
assures readers that “nothing on this site violates the fixed principles of Islamic law,” sums up the
prevailing opinion among Muslims: “Sahih Bukhari is distinguished with it's [sic] strong reliability.” It
adds that the imam Muslim chose the hadiths that he included in Sahih Muslim “based on stringent
acceptance criteria.” 49
The Proliferation of Forgeries
Yet if the imams Bukhari and Muslim had to go to such extraordinary lengths to find a relatively small
number of authentic hadiths, this means that hundreds of thousands of stories about Muhammad were
either completely unreliable or of doubtful authenticity. The problem was beyond their, or anyone's,
ability to control. Ignaz Goldziher, the pioneering critical historian of the Hadith, notes that “the simplest
means by which honest men sought to combat the rapid increase of faked hadiths is at the same time a
most remarkable phenomenon in the history of literature. With pious intention, fabrications were
combated with new fabrications, with new hadiths which were smuggled in and in which the invention of