Marife Turkish Journal of Religious Studies

Abstract

Al-Tarikh al-Kabir is the most voluminous work of al-Bukhari. In this work,
he gives information about the transmitters of hadith until his lifetime. There are
some criticisms leveled against this work done by leading scholars like Abu Zur'a alRazi,
Abu Hatim al-Razi and Khatib al-Baghdadi, to name only four of them. These
criticisms focused on the mistakes in determining the names of the transmitters, of
their fathers and teachers. Yes, they are right in some of their criticisms; however
it is to be noted that these mistakes are resulted from different manuscripts of this
work. As it is well known, al-Bukhari began compiling al-Tarikh in the early period
of his life. Therefore, it is not surprising to find some differences between earlier
copies of it and the later ones.One of the indications of this difference is that out of
771 mistakes, which are allegedly reported in the manuscripts of Al-Bayan by Ibn
Abi Hatim, we found that 300 of them in approximate as true / corrected in the edited
copy.That is to say that we may consider the most of what al-Bukhari says
about other transmitters, who are not rejected by other leading scholars after all, as
reliable.