Introduction to Imam an-Nasai and the Sunan al-Kubra vs. al-Mujtaba

Ahmad ibn Shu'ayb an-Nasai was born in Nasa (in present-day Turkmenistan) in 215 AH (829 CE) and died in 303 AH (915 CE). He lived longer than any of the other compilers of the Six Books and used his long life to produce one of the most critically exacting hadith collections in the classical literature. Among the major scholars of the Six Books, he is widely considered the strictest in narrator criticism after al-Bukhari and Muslim — a distinction that reflects both his expertise and his willingness to weaken narrators that others accepted.

An-Nasai compiled two works that bear his name. The first and larger is al-Sunan al-Kubra (The Large Sunan), a comprehensive collection containing many thousands of hadiths organized by legal topic. The second, shorter work — al-Mujtaba (The Chosen), also known as al-Sunan as-Sughra, the Small Sunan — is the work that entered the canon of the Six Books. According to the most widely cited account, an-Nasai was asked by the governor of Ramla whether all the hadiths in al-Sunan al-Kubra were authentic, and he replied that they were not all of equal strength. He was then asked to select from it what was sound and he produced al-Mujtaba, selecting roughly 5,700 hadiths from the larger work. This selection process means that al-Mujtaba represents an-Nasai's highest editorial standard, though al-Sunan al-Kubra remains an important source for hadiths on topics not fully covered in the smaller work.

An-Nasai's strictness in narrator evaluation is evident throughout al-Mujtaba. He frequently weakened narrators that al-Bukhari and Muslim considered sound when they appeared with others who were more reliable, and he was particularly alert to narrators who had good memories in general but were imprecise on specific topics. His commentary on narrators — preserved in his other works on rijal criticism — shows a scholar who combined encyclopedic knowledge of transmission history with careful, systematic analysis.

The story of an-Nasai's death is one of the most poignant in hadith literature. Late in his life he traveled to Damascus, where he found the people holding an insufficiently positive view of Ali ibn Abi Talib, the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law. He composed a work on the virtues of Ali (Khasa'is Ali) and, when he read it publicly, was attacked by a hostile crowd who beat him severely. He asked to be taken to Mecca, where he died from his injuries — possibly in 303 AH, some accounts saying in Ramla, others in Mecca. Whatever the precise location, his death in consequence of defending the honor of a Companion of the Prophet gave his biographical tradition a martyr's quality that subsequent scholars remembered with reverence.

The scholarly consensus is that al-Mujtaba is the third most authentic collection after the two Sahihs, though this ranking is contested — some prefer Sunan Abu Dawud in third position. The debate reflects the different criteria scholars prioritize: an-Nasai's strict narrator criticism gives his selected hadiths high chain quality, while Abu Dawud's broader coverage gives his collection more practical utility. For hadiths that appear in both, the presence in an-Nasai's Mujtaba is considered an additional mark of reliability.