Book of Revelation
Showing hadiths in this book
The most authentic book after the Qur'an — compiled by Imam Muhammad ibn Isma'il al-Bukhari (194–256 AH) over sixteen years from more than 600,000 narrations. Browse all 97 books, search by Arabic text, English meaning, narrator, or theme.
Sahih al-Bukhari (Arabic: صحيح البخاري) — full title Al-Jami' al-Musnad al-Sahih al-Mukhtasar min Umur Rasul Allah ﷺ wa Sunanihi wa Ayyamihi — is the most rigorously authenticated collection of the sayings, actions, and tacit approvals of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. Compiled by Imam Muhammad ibn Isma'il al-Bukhari in the 9th century CE, it stands by consensus of Sunni Muslims as the most reliable book in Islam after the Holy Qur'an itself.
Of the more than 600,000 narrations that Imam al-Bukhari examined, he accepted only 7,563 (including repetitions across chapters), totaling roughly 2,602 unique narrations, organized into 97 books and approximately 3,450 chapters. The compilation took him sixteen years, during which he travelled across Khorasan, Iraq, the Hijaz, Egypt and Syria to meet the masters of his age — and would, by his own report, never record a single hadith without first performing two rak'ahs and asking Allah for guidance.
Born in 194 AH / 810 CE in Bukhara (in modern-day Uzbekistan), Imam al-Bukhari was raised in a household of piety and learning. His father, Isma'il ibn Ibrahim, was himself a scholar — a student of Imam Malik and Hammad ibn Zayd — and died while al-Bukhari was an infant. The young Muhammad lost his sight in childhood, but his mother prayed earnestly for him, and (the biographers report) one night she saw the Prophet Ibrahim ﷺ in a dream, who said: "O woman, Allah has restored your son's sight because of the abundance of your prayers." He awoke seeing.
He memorized the foundational books of hadith by the age of sixteen and travelled with his mother and brother to Makkah for hajj. He then set out on the long road of rihla fi talab al-'ilm — the scholarly journey — staying in Basra for five years, in Hijaz for six, and visiting Kufa, Baghdad, Egypt, Damascus, Asqalan and Homs. He sat with more than a thousand teachers, the most famous being Ahmad ibn Hanbal, 'Ali ibn al-Madini, Yahya ibn Ma'in, and Ishaq ibn Rahawayh.
His criteria for accepting a hadith were the strictest of any compiler. He required that the chain be unbroken (muttasil), that every narrator be of established uprightness ('adl) and precise memory (dabt), that the chain show clear continuity through reported meetings between narrators, and that the text itself be free of contradiction with stronger texts and free of subtle defects. These conditions, later codified as the conditions of "Bukhari's Sahih," produced the gold standard of hadith authentication for all subsequent generations.
In his final years he was tested by the political fitnah of Naysabur and exiled to Khartank, a small town near Samarqand, where he passed away on the night of Eid al-Fitr in 256 AH / 870 CE — at the age of 62. His grave there remains a site of visitation to this day. He left behind, in addition to the Sahih, more than a dozen other works including Al-Adab al-Mufrad, Al-Tarikh al-Kabir, and Khalq Af'al al-'Ibad.
Unlike a chronological narration of the Prophet's life, the Sahih is arranged thematically by fiqh (jurisprudential) topic. Imam al-Bukhari opens with the famous Book of Revelation (Bad' al-Wahy), whose very first hadith — "Actions are by intentions" — sets the moral compass for the entire collection. From there he proceeds to belief (Iman), knowledge ('Ilm), purification (Wudu, Ghusl, Hayd, Tayammum), prayer (Salah) with all its sub-categories (timings, adhan, Jumu'ah, eclipse, witr, night prayer, fear prayer), funerals (Janaiz), zakat, fasting, hajj, sales (Buyu'), jihad, the military campaigns (Maghazi), Qur'anic commentary (Tafsir), the virtues of the Qur'an, marriage, manners, supplications, heart-softening (Riqaq), divine decree (Qadar), and concludes with the Book of the Oneness of Allah (Kitab al-Tawhid).
Each book is itself divided into chapters whose titles function as fiqh rulings — al-Bukhari uses the chapter heading to indicate his own interpretation of the hadith that follows. For this reason scholars have said: "al-Bukhari's fiqh is in his chapter titles." The collection has been the subject of commentaries (shuruh) running into the dozens of volumes — most famously Fath al-Bari by Ibn Hajar al-'Asqalani, 'Umdat al-Qari by al-'Ayni, and Irshad al-Sari by al-Qastallani.
Many of the best-known prophetic sayings are recorded in this collection: "Actions are by intentions" (#1), "Islam is built upon five" (#8), the long Hadith of Jibreel asking the Prophet about Islam, Iman and Ihsan (#50), "None of you truly believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself" (#13), "A Muslim is the one from whose tongue and hand the Muslims are safe" (#10), the dua Sayyid al-Istighfar (#6307), the hadith of the believer being to another believer like a building bracing itself (#481), and the magnificent hadith qudsi on closeness to Allah through worship and remembrance (#7405). Each is presented on this page with its full Arabic text, English translation, chain of narration (isnad), and a brief commentary.
Use the sidebar to browse the 97 books of the Sahih — selecting any book filters the main panel to hadiths from that book. The search field at the top of the sidebar searches across Arabic text, English translation, narrators, and themes. Use the per-hadith actions to copy a proper citation (book and number), bookmark hadiths you want to revisit, and mark as read the ones you have studied — the read state is saved in your browser between visits.
The page is fully bilingual: switch to Arabic using the language toggle in the navigation bar, and the entire UI — book names, commentary, isnad, and labels — re-renders in classical Arabic. The original prophetic Arabic متن of each hadith is always shown regardless of language, because it is the authoritative text.
Because Imam al-Bukhari applied the strictest known conditions for accepting a hadith — requiring every narrator in every chain to be of established uprightness and precise memory, and requiring evidence of actual meetings between consecutive narrators. The Muslim ummah, across centuries, has accepted that the hadiths he authenticated are, as a body, the most reliable narrations outside the Qur'an itself.
Yes. Every musnad (chain-bearing) hadith in the Sahih has been graded as authentic by Imam al-Bukhari. A small number of mu'allaq (suspended) narrations, where al-Bukhari dropped one or more early narrators for brevity, are treated more nuancedly — but the vast majority of these are also authentic and traceable in his other works.
7,563 hadiths counting repetitions across chapters (for cross-referencing fiqh topics), and roughly 2,602 unique hadiths once duplicates are merged. The standard print follows the numbering of Muhammad Fu'ad 'Abd al-Baqi.
This page presents a curated selection of famous narrations across many books. For the full text in Arabic with multiple English translations, the open scholarly portal sunnah.com is the standard online reference.