He made series of journeys to meet most of the foremost traditionalists of his time and acquired from them the most reliable ahadis quoting sources through which it reached him. Since the author collected ahadis which no one ever assembled together, his sunan has been accepted as standard work by scholars from many parts of the Islamic world, especially after Ibn Al-Qaisarani’s inclusion of it in the formal canonisation of the six major collections.

Urdu Translation by Abu Ammaar Omar Farooq Saeedi
Tahqeeq-o-Takhreej by Hafiz Zubair Ali Zai

About Imam Abu Dawud

Abu Dawud Sulayman Ibn al-Ash’ath al-Azdi, commonly known as Imam Abu Dawud was one of the scholars who compiled the six collections of hadith and was famous for his book Sunan Abu Dawud, which is one of the references of the Prophet’s Hadith (sayings).

He lived in the third century AH, which witnessed a revolution in compiling Hadith at the hands of a group of scholars. He was a contemporary of al-Bukhari, Muslim and other scholars who also collected the Prophet’s Hadith.

Abu Dawood was born in 202 AH (817 AD) and died in 275 AH (888 AD). He was born in Sistan but he traveled to many countries of the Islamic world, as was the case with the scholars of this era. Most scholars sought a journey of learning and knowledge. Thus, he visited Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Khorasan.

During his travels to Basra, Kufa, Damascus, Baghdad, Balkh and other cities, Abu Dawood compiled many Hadiths from different sources, primarily from al Bukhari.