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English Translation of Sahih al-Bukhari

On this page till 15 October 2019 our English translation of Sahih al-Bukhari (with commentary taken and translated from Maulana Muhammad Ali’s Urdu work Fadl-ul-Bari), was presented with Parts 1,2 and 3 in one pdf file, and the Parts 4 to 7 each in their own pdf files. This translation has now been revised and these parts amalgamated into one volume:

Link to the single volume (2022 reprint), comprising Parts 1 to 7 (of the 30 Parts of Bukhari).

It is also available from various retailers as a printed book; see this link (for example).

Summary of the translation

Sahih al-Bukhari is a work regarded in most of the Muslim world as “the most correct of books after the Book of Allah”, second only to the Quran. It is a compilation of Hadith reports — narrations by the Companions of the Holy Prophet Muhammad relating his sayings and actions. These reports, after being passed down orally to subsequent generations through lines of narrators, were later collected and arranged in book form according to subject matter by scholars such as Bukhari.

The compilers of Hadith books tried to sift the reports to include only the authentic ones by applying various tests, and Bukhari was the earliest and the most stringent of such compilers. Hence the high regard in which his work is held for the accuracy and reliability of its contents. Nonetheless, these reports are still subject to human error in their origin, transmission and recording.

An Urdu translation of the entire Sahih al-Bukhari, with detailed comments in footnotes, was produced by Maulana Muhammad Ali (d. 1951), the famous translator of the Holy Quran into English and into Urdu. Its publication was completed in 1937. The great wealth of knowledge and analysis in his massive Urdu commentary has inspired and prompted this English translation.

The present volume consists of the first 2046 reports out of the total of 7563 reports contained in Sahih al-Bukhari, reaching the point where Bukhari finishes dealing with the five fundamentals of Islam. The footnotes here follow closely the footnotes in Maulana Muhammad Ali’s Urdu work, with some small revisions and additions. The translation of the texts of the reports has been aided by their Urdu transl­tion, but has been carefully checked against the Arabic original.

List of Books of Bukhari in the above volume: