Oh. There are different collections? Didn’t know that. Do you perhaps have a good link on that too? The site I use for my search is called “A Compendium of Muslim Texts” or something to that effect, and it doesn’t mention different collections, as far as I’ve seen…
Thank you for your help!
You mean
THIS site? If so it’s a very useful resource, you’ll find if you look in their ‘Sunnah’ section that they have four Hadith collections in their database: Sahih Al-Bukhari, Sahih Al-Muslim, Sunan Abu-Dawud and Malik’s Muwatta. The articles under ‘Science of Hadith’ are really good at understanding how all of this works, though it is a lot to take in at once.
Ok, there are many many Hadith collections in existence, dozens probably, each with varying degrees of authenticity. The two most famous and authentic Hadith collections which you’ll find quoted by Muslims most often are Sahih Al-Bukhari and Sahih Al-Muslim, ‘Sahih’ here means sound or authentic, and Bukhari and Muslim are the names of the scholars who compiled them. These two are part of the six *canonical *Hadith collections, which also include Sunan An-Nasa’i, Sunan Abu Dawud, Sunan Al-Tirmidhi, and Sunan Ibn Majah.
Now the ‘Sunan’ collections are those considered to be mostly authentics, but later scholars have deemed some of the Hadith reported therein to be incorrect, that’s why they’re not on the same level as the two ‘Sahih’.
Also there are other Hadith collections not considered canonical, but still reputable, it’s important to remember that just because a Hadith collection isn’t canonical, that doesn’t mean there aren’t any authentic Hadith in it. The Imams of the four madhabs, or schools of thought, for example all collected Hadith, so we have Al-Musnad by Imam Hanbali and Al-Muwatta by Imam Malik. You’ll see that Malik’s Muwatta is included in the ‘Compendium of Muslim Texts’ website’s Hadith database, that is because although it is not canonical and Imam Malik was not a scholar of Hadith, but a scholar of Fiqh (jurisprudence), his collection is still as well put together as the canonical ones.
There are other minor collections too, but these are easily enough anyone would need to know about except those looking for a scholarship in the subject.