Sunan Abi Dawud
Hadith of the Day
August 14, 2026“The Prophet (ﷺ) said, “There is a tree in Paradise (which is so big and huge that) if a rider travels in its shade for one hundred years, he would not be able to cross it.””
— Narrated by Anas ibn Malik · Sahih al-Bukhari 3118
Books in This Collection 43 books · 5,276 hadith
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About This Collection
Focused on hadith related to legal rulings (fiqh). Part of the Kutub al-Sittah.
About the Compiler
Abu Dawud Sulayman ibn al-Ash'ath ibn Ishaq al-Azdi al-Sijistani
Abu Dawud al-Sijistani was a leading hadith scholar born in Sijistan who began traveling for knowledge at age 18, visiting Baghdad, Khurasan, Iraq, the Hijaz, Syria, and Egypt to verify narrators' reliability. He studied under Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal and compiled his Sunan after selecting approximately 4,800 hadith from a collection of 500,000 narrations, focusing especially on fiqh-related topics. He resided in Basra in his later years, where he was celebrated for his piety, deep scholarship, and precise methodology. Ahmad ibn Hanbal reportedly praised him highly, saying that Abu Dawud had extracted the best from the vast ocean of hadith.
Scholarly View
Sunan Abi Dawud ranks among the top four of the Kutub al-Sittah and is considered an essential reference for Islamic jurisprudence. Al-Nawawi, al-Dhahabi, and Ibn al-Qaisarani praised it highly, and it became a standard text after the latter's systematization of the canonical six collections.
Methodology & Grading
Abu Dawud compiled fiqh-oriented hadith, preferring narrations supported by the practice of the Companions. Where no authentic hadith was available on a legal topic, he included weak or munkar narrations while noting their defects. His principle was that silence on a hadith implies it is sound, though he explicitly commented on defective chains.