Foreword by Shaykh Abdullah Judai

Foreword by Shaykh Abdullah Judai
To Madkhal ilā Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī by Mohammad Akram Nadwi

All praise belongs to God, Lord of all worlds. I bear witness that there is none worthy of worship except He Who is without partners and Who is the protector of the pious. I bear witness that Muḥammad is His servant and messenger, the trustworthy and truthful Prophet, God’s peace and blessings be upon him, his family, his Companions, and those who followed his guidance and example until the Day of Judgment.

When the esteemed noble scholar Dr. Mohammad Akram Nadwi forwarded me this book for my own review and comments, I found myself compelled to respond to his request and help realize his ambitions for a number of reasons. First, there is the great status of ḥadīth science in my own estimation: a unique discipline which many claim to master but few are actually able to do so in our times. Secondly, the Ṣaḥīḥ of Imām Bukhārī has engrossed me and taken up a good share of my own studies, particularly because of the rise of much deviant propaganda against the Prophetic Sunnah and its most notable sources, which this great Ṣaḥīḥ work represents. It gives me great pleasure that such a noble scholar has thought of me to shed some light from my own journey of nearly fifty years through a discipline that is the most endearing to my heart and on the most special of the sources on the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ. That is the Ṣaḥīḥ of Imām Bukhārī with which I have lived for my entire lifetime and continue to do so.

Since I have prior conviction that what this author has brought forth comes from a competent expert in the field, I did not feel that he wanted me to simply review it a number of times. Therefore, I designated for it the time that it deserved and studied it anxiously in order to truly benefit from what this great scholar was inspired to compile and organize on paper with his blessed hands. As a result, I benefited a great deal from the ample knowledge that it contained from the author’s exhaustive study and deep research.  He has done well with its authorship and careful compilation and arranged the sections and contents in the best way.

Dr. Nadwi has started the work with a suitable introduction to the personality and persona of Imām Bukhārī, revealing in the process some firm principles which lead to leadership and preeminence in religion. He also discussed Bukhārī’s teachers and their various commendations, providing detail on some of the most senior ones. He has attempted to highlight Bukhārī’s qualities of uprightness, honesty and high aspirations, and how he exerted these in learning and researching the Prophetic Sunnah. He has also discussed the mastery of numerous Islamic disciplines enjoyed by Bukhārī which were vital in enabling mature understanding, deep insight, and firm outlooks. These are the qualities which guaranteed his status among the best experts and people of ijtihad in this ummah. Bukhārī was an expert in language, tafsīr, and fiqh, and possessed great insights into history. This, along with his personal qualities, prepared him for attaining the highest levels in each discipline.

After this introduction, the author delves into the Ṣaḥīḥ to reveal its key characteristics and distinctions. He highlights the Companions in the chains of the ḥadīth reports of the Ṣaḥīḥ as well as the teachers of Bukhārī. He instructs us on the contents of the Ṣaḥīḥ, examining issues such as the number of ḥadīth reports, the phenomenon of repeating ḥadīth multiple times, summarizing them within chapters, and the fact that the primary corpus consists of only the connected Prophetic ḥadīth reports and not the reports of anyone else.
He also discusses the authenticity of the ascription of the Ṣaḥīḥ to Imām Bukhārī, a topic which the author has researched greatly and arrived at a blessed and correct stance. In fact, you will not find any other researcher arrive at conclusions in the manner of this author in exposing the fallacy of the detractors of the Ṣaḥīḥ harboring ill intentions.