Sunan Abi Dawood - سنن ابي داؤد

After numerous collections of Hadith had been made during the third century of Islam, six works became recognized as authoritative. Two of them are believed to be completely authentic, namely the Sahih al-Bukhari and the Sahih Muslim.

The other four known as the Sunan Sahih al-Tirmidhi, Sunan Ibn Majah, Sunan Abu Dawud, and Sunan Nasai are also highly esteemed but it is regarded lower in category to Sahih Bukhari and Muslim

Hafiz Abu-Dawud lived a couple of centuries after the Prophets death and worked extremely hard to collect his ahadith. Each report in his collection was checked for compatibility with the Quran, and the veracity of the chain of reporters had to be painstakingly established. 

This collection of Ahadith is recognized by the overwhelming majority of the Muslim world to be one of the most authentic collections of the Sunnah of the Prophet (PBUH), however it is also known to contain some weak ahadith (some of which he pointed out, others which he did not), however in this collection all Ahadith have been referenced by: Hafiz Abu Tahir Zubair Ali Zai

Though Imam Abu Dawud collected in the region of fifty Thousand Ahadeeth, he only included about 4,800 hadeeth in this collection , which he taught in Baghdad and other major cities at that time.

Sunan Abu-Dawud is divided into 41 books on different subjects, each book containing many ahadeeth. The numbering system used by Abu-Dawud is consecutive and uninterrupted for the entire collection.

About Imam Abu Dawud

Abu Dawud, Sulaiman bin Al-Ash’ath bin Ishaq, bin Bashir bin Shaddad bin Amr bin Imran Al-Azdi As-Sijistani, who was one of the eminent Imam of Hadeeth, was born in 202 AH. 

He studied Hadeeth under Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal along with Al-Bukhari and taught many of the later scholars of Hadeeth, like At-Tirmidhi and An-Nasaa’ee. 

He was one of the most widely traveled scholars of ahadith, going to Hijaz (Saudi Arabia), Iraq, Khurasahn, Egypt, Syria, Nishapur, Marv, and other places for the sole purpose of collecting ahadith. 

His primary interest was in law, hence his collection focuses purely on legal ahadith. From about 50,000 ahadith, he chose 4,800 for inclusion in his work based on their superior authenticity.

Imam Abu Dawud died at Basra on Friday in the month of Shawwal 275 AH.