Gardens of the Righteous — Page x
INTRODUCTION abstained from in his capacity as the Excellent Exemplar, the following of whose example was the source of all blessing and the way of winning through to the pleasure and love of the Divine. It is understandable, therefore, how keenly the. Companions of the Holy Prophet watched his every gesture and drank in and preserved the memory of every word that he uttered. It is due to this keen watchfulness on the part of his devoted followers that we have a complete picture available to us, in its minutest detail, of the life of the Holy Prophet. . The Quran is the code, the Sunnah of the Prophet is its illustration. The Holy. Prophet cautioned his Companions to be extremely careful in watching, listening to, and reporting whatever he said or did or abstained from. To make assurance doubly sure, he laid down the criterion that if anything attributed to him was not in accord with the Quran it was to be rejected as not proceeding from him. This criterion prescribed by the Prophet himself is a wholesome safeguard in judging the weight and value of what might be ascribed to him. . With the early and rapid spread of the dominion of Islam, the need of an authentic record of the Sunnah of the Prophet began to be insistent, and it became meritorious to report from mouth to mouth whatever came to anyone's knowledge having a bearing upon the Sunnah. A large part of this related to the niceties of juristic definition and interpretation. With that we are not here primarily concerned. We are concerned here, mainly, with that part of the. Sunnah which illustrates the carrying into effect of moral and spiritual values. . There began to emerge fairly early a Science of Tradition. It is not necessary for our purpose to describe it in detail; suffice it to say that it concentrated. mainly on examining and checking on the chain of narrators of a hadith. If a single link in the chain was judged weak or defective, the whole was rejected. . Despite great care taken in that regard, and the use of a wise discretion in other respects, an enormous store of Tradition began to be accumulated as time passed. . The first great Teacher of Tradition was the revered founder of the Maliki. School of Jurisprudence, Imam Malik ibn Anas. His collection of hadith known as the Muwatta of Imam Malik ranks with the most authentic compilations of hadith which had become known as the Sahih Sitta, i. e. the Six Authentic. Compilations. These were the Sahih of Bokhari, Muslim, Tirmidhi, Abu Daud,. Nisai and Ibn Majah. The best known traditions are often found in two or more of these compilations. It is rare for a tradition to have been included only in one of them. It does not follow, however, that for that reason the authority of the particular hadith is in any way reduced. There are other criteria to be applied for judging the weight and value of a tradition included in the Sahih. This enormous collection of tradition, though freely available in Arabic, could not be easily mastered even by devout scholars, more particularly as a large number of comentaries on the Sahih began to be compiled and were circulated. The need thus arose of briefer compilations designed to serve limited purposes. Of these, one of the most useful and popular is that known as Riyadh as-Salihin, of which an English translation is, for the first time, here respectfully presented.