FIVE PILLARSFounded by Muhammad, who lived from about 570 to 632 AD. Its holy scripture is the Koran (Al Qu’ran), claimed to be the direct word of God as given to Muhammad by the Archangel Gabriel, later written down and compiled by his followers twenty years after his death. Tradition has it that Muhammad himself was unable to read or write.
The Koran (Al Qur’an)
Islam was founded by Muhammad, who lived from about 570 to 632 AD. Its holy scripture is the Koran (Al Qu’ran), claimed to be the direct word of God as given to Muhammad by the Archangel Gabriel, later written down and compiled by his followers twenty years after his death. Tradition has it that Muhammad himself was unable to read or write.
The Koran is too large to paste here. English translations (interpolations), sometimes with arabic scipt and recitations, can be found on the following links:
Sahih Bukhari
Sahih Bukhari is a collection of sayings and deeds of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), also known as the sunnah. The reports of the Prophet’s sayings and deeds are called ahadith. Bukhari lived a couple of centuries after the Prophet’s death and worked extremely hard to collect his ahadith. Each report in his collection was checked for compatibility with the Qur’an, and the veracity of the chain of reporters had to be painstakingly established. Bukhari’s collection 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).
Bukhari (full name Abu Abdullah Muhammad bin Ismail bin Ibrahim bin al-Mughira al-Ja’fai) was born in 194 A.H. and died in 256 A.H. His collection of hadith is considered second to none. He spent sixteen years compiling it, and ended up with 2,602 hadith (9,082 with repetition). His criteria for acceptance into the collection were amongst the most stringent of all the scholars of ahadith.
It is important to realize, however, that Bukhari’s collection is not complete: there are other scholars who worked as Bukhari did and collected other authentic reports.