Bukhārī and Early Hadith Criticism

Norman Calder has questioned the attribution of al-Taʾrīkh al-kabīr to al-Bukhārī (d. 256/870). Quotations from Ibn Abī Ḥātim al-Rāzī and al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, together with comparisons among the rijāl works of Bukhārī, suggest that al-Taʾrīkh al-kabīr was one of Bukhārī's last works, subject to some correction and rearrangement after his death. It cannot have been retrospectively derived from Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ, as Calder thought, yet neither can it have been the basis of the Ṣaḥīḥ, for it omits to mention fourteen percent of the men in the Ṣaḥīḥ and mentions personal evaluations of only six percent of all its subjects. Its principal function seems to have been to identify traditionists by name. Inasmuch as it bespeaks sole reliance on isnād analysis to sort strong and weak reports, al-Taʾrīkh al-kabīr may represent a particular Khurasani tendency in hadith criticism. More certainly, it represents the professionalization of hadith science as against the amateurism evident behind Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, al-ʿIlalwa-maʿrifat al-rijāl.