BUKHARI (Mohammed ibn Isms `il al-Bukhari) (810-872), Arabic author of the most generally accepted collection of tradi tions (jiadith) from Mohammed, was born at Bokhara (Bukhara), of an Iranian family, in A.H. 194 (A.D. 81o). Already, in his eighteenth year, he had devoted himself to the collecting, sifting, testing and arranging of traditions. He travelled over the Muslim world, from Egypt to Samarkand, and learned (as the story goes) from over a thousand men three hundred thousand traditions, true and false. His theological position was conservative and anti-rationalistic; he enjoyed the friendship and respect of Ahmad Ibn Hanbal. In law, he appears to have been a Shafi`ite. After sixteen years' absence he returned to Bokhara, and there drew up his Sahih, a collection of 7,275 tested traditions, arranged in chapters so as to afford bases for a complete system of juris prudence without the use of speculative law, the first book of its kind (see MOHAMMEDAN LAW). He died in A.H. 256, in banish ment at Kartank, a suburb of Samarkand. His book has attained a quasi-canonicity in Islam, being treated almost like the Koran. Pilgrimages are made to his grave.
See F. Wiistenfeld, Schafi`iten, 78 ff.; McG. de Slane's trans. of Ibn Khallikan, i. 594 ff.; I. Goldziher, Mohammedanische Studien, ii. ff.; Nawawi, Biogr. Dict. 86 ff.