The book covers almost all aspects of life in providing proper guidance of Islam such as the method of performing prayers and other actions of worship directly from the Prophet Muhammad. Bukhari finished his work around 846, and spent the last twenty-four years of his life visiting other cities and scholars, teaching the hadith he had collected. In every city that Bukhari visited, thousands of people would gather in the main mosque to listen to him recite traditions.

Distinctive features

Amin Ahsan Islahi, the notable Islamic scholar, has listed three outstanding qualities of Sahih al-Bukhari:[10]

Quality and soundness of the chain of narrators of the selected ahdth. Muhammad al-Bukhari has followed two principle criteria for selecting sound narratives. First, the lifetime of a narrator should overlap with the lifetime of the authority from whom he narrates. Second, it should be verifiable that narrators have met with their source persons. They should also expressly state that they obtained the narrative from these authorities. This is a stricter criterion than that set by Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj.