Authentication of Hadith: Redefining the Criteria (IIIT)

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.

Sunan Ibn Majah is one of the six most authentic collections of the Ahadith and contains 4,341 total Ahadith. Like the other translations of the six books of hadith, Dar-us-Salam Publications, has taken great care in correct translation, simple and clear modern English language, and high quality publishing.

Ahadith in the book are followed by comments to explain issues and to help readers derive lessons. To aid readers further, Dar-us-Salam, has added several features like section on how to benefit from Sunan Ibn Majah, about the Arabic and technical terms used, information about the hadith compilations and a glossary of Islamic terms in the last volume.

Each hadith is also followed by its status in regards to the authenticity. The status is explained more in detail in the Arabic text. The chain is also complete in the Arabic text while it is removed from the English to reduce the length and not being of much benefit to the English readers.