Selected Sayings of The Holy Prophet of Islam — Page vii
The fourth important aspect is that the Arabs were famous for their excellent memory, ant that even before the advent of the Holy Prophet, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, it was not rare to find among them people who had memorized 100,000 verses of Arab poets or even more. In addition to this, it was a common custom to remember family trees. After the advent of the Holy Prophet, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, the moral standard of his followers was raised to a very high degree, and the habit of exaggeration was particularly condemned. Furthermore, great emphasis was laid in the Holy Qur'an, not only on truth, but also on the verification of statements. As a result of these factors, the Traditions of the Holy Prophet of Islam, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, were treated with very special care, unknown to other systems of collection of historical material. In the process of collecting these sayings, Muslim scholars worked so meticulously and so much attention was given to accuracy, that the collection of no other historical data can be compared with the compilation of the sayings of the Holy Prophet of Islam, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him. Every link in the chain of narrators of a particular Tradition is specified in the major works of Hadith. Even the study of the character of the narrators and their reliablity developed into a field of research in its own right. As a result, a new form of knowledge concerning the analysis of Traditions came into being for the first time in human history. For the benefit of those readers who know very little about Islam, we must mention here that out of the scores of books written on the subject of the Traditions, six are considered to be of extraordinary importance by Muslim scholars. They are known as the Sihah Sittah (The Six Authentic Ones). Most of the Traditions presented in this short collection are taken from these six books. The following is a brief introduction to these books and to the scholars responsible for their compilation: vii