Sahih Bukhari Hadith Lacks Consistency

Bukhari is considered the most renowned collector of Hadith in the traditional Muslim world. He was born in 810 and was the first individual to collect a compilation of only Sahih Hadith, which he published around the year 846, some two hundred years after the death of the prophet. Sahih means authentic and is said of a hadith that has been preserved and transmitted accurately. According to legend, he collected and memorized some 600,000 Hadith along with their corresponding chain of narrators. From this list, he removed nearly 99% of the Hadith because he considered them unreliable and selected only 7,563 Hadith that he put into his collection of Sahih Hadith.

One of the major mistakes people assume about Hadith is that the Hadith are explanations of the Quranic verses. Instead, these are snippets of supposed sayings or actions of the prophet and his companions. These Hadith usually lack much context or details and often times contradict one another. For instance, you will see Hadith that says the prophet lived 10 years in Mecca and 10 years in Medina and died at the age of 60 and had only twenty white hairs in his head and beard, while others state he stayed thirteen years in Mecca and ten years in Medina and died at the age of 63.

Narrated Rabia bin Abi Abdur-Rahman: I heard Anas bin Malik describing the Prophet (ﷺ) saying, “He was of medium height amongst the people, neither tall nor short; he had a rosy color, neither absolutely white nor deep brown; his hair was neither completely curly nor quite lank. Divine Inspiration was revealed to him when he was forty years old. He stayed ten years in Mecca receiving the Divine Inspiration, and stayed in Medina for ten more years. When he expired, he had scarcely twenty white hairs in his head and beard.” Rabi`a said, “I saw some of his hairs and it was red. When I asked about that, I was told that it turned red because of scent. “