Journeys for one hadith

Before there were books of hadith, a hadith lived in people. If a man in another city had heard something from the Prophet ﷺ, the way to hear it from him directly was to go to him. The scholars of hadith call this al-riḥla, the journey.

A month's ride for one hadith

In the «Book of Knowledge» of his Ṣaḥīḥ, al-Bukhārī gives a chapter the title «باب الخروج في طلب العلم», «Going out in search of knowledge», and writes under it:

ورحل جابر بن عبد الله مسيرة شهر إلى عبد الله بن أنيس في حديث واحد

Jābir ibn ʿAbdillāh travelled a month's journey to ʿAbdullāh ibn Unays for a single hadith. (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Kitāb al-ʿIlm, chapter 19, before hadith 78; text as printed in Fatḥ al-Bārī 1:173; translation ours)

This line has no chain of its own in the Ṣaḥīḥ: it is a muʿallaq note in a chapter heading, not part of the book's main body. Ibn Ḥajar explains why al-Bukhārī could still state it firmly: «فإنه حيث ذكر الارتحال فقط جزم به؛ لأن الإسناد حسن وقد اعتضد», «where he mentions only the journey, he states it firmly, because the chain is good and is supported by others» (Fatḥ al-Bārī 1:174).

Ibn Ḥajar then traces the story through its routes. In one, Jābir says he heard of a hadith that a man had from the Prophet ﷺ, bought a camel, rode for a month and reached Syria (al-Shām), where he found ʿAbdullāh ibn Unays. In another, which Ibn Ḥajar calls «صالح», fit, the man was in Egypt. A third route, in al-Khaṭīb's book on journeys, he says has weakness in its chain (1:174). In his introduction to the commentary he writes that the journey was from Medina to Egypt (Hady al-Sārī, p. 251). He also draws the lesson: the hadith had already reached Jābir from ʿAbdullāh ibn Unays, «فلم يقنعه حتى رحل، فأخذه عنه بلا واسطة», «and that did not satisfy him until he travelled and took it from him without an intermediary» (1:175).

al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī gives Jābir's own words in one of these routes:

فابتعت بعيرا فشددت عليه رحلي فسرت إليه شهرا حتى أتيت الشام فإذا هو عبد الله بن أنيس الأنصاري

In our words: he bought a camel, tied his saddle on it and rode to him for a month until he came to Syria, and there was ʿAbdullāh ibn Unays al-Anṣārī. (al-Riḥla, p. 110)

And why he went:

فخشيت أن أموت أو تموت قبل أن أسمعه

In our words: he was afraid that he or ʿAbdullāh would die before he heard it. (p. 110)

Not the only one

al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī (d. 463 AH) wrote a whole book about such journeys, al-Riḥla fī Ṭalab al-Ḥadīth. One of its chapters is titled «ذكر من رحل في حديث واحد من الصحابة الأكرمين», «those of the noble companions who travelled for a single hadith» (p. 109). Another of its stories: Abū Ayyūb al-Anṣārī set out to see ʿUqba ibn ʿĀmir, who was in Egypt, to ask about one hadith he had heard from the Prophet ﷺ:

خرج أبو أيوب إلى عقبة بن عامر وهو بمصر يسأله عن حديث سمعه من رسول الله ﷺ

In our words: Abū Ayyūb went out to ʿUqba ibn ʿĀmir, who was in Egypt, to ask him about a hadith he had heard from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. (al-Riḥla, p. 118)

The hadith was about covering a believer's faults. When ʿUqba recited it, Abū Ayyūb said «صدقت», that he had spoken truly, and left: «ثم انصرف أبو أيوب» (p. 119).

The chains of this story are discussed. Ibn Ḥajar notes of Abū Ayyūb's journey to ʿUqba: «أخرجه أحمد بسند منقطع», «Aḥmad narrated it with a broken chain» (Fatḥ al-Bārī 1:175). The editor of al-Riḥla, Nūr al-Dīn ʿItr, writes of al-Khaṭīb's chain: «وفي سند الحديث أبو سعد المكي الأعمى مجهول لم يرو عنه إلا ابن جريج», «in the chain of the hadith is Abū Saʿd al-Makkī the blind, who is unknown; only Ibn Jurayj narrated from him». He adds that the hadith has many other routes, none free of criticism, «لكنها تقوي الحديث ويرتقي إلى درجة الحسن», «but they strengthen the hadith, and it rises to the grade of ḥasan» (al-Riḥla, p. 120, editor's note; translation ours).

The same scene appears in al-Tirmidhī's Jāmiʿ. A man came from Medina to Abū al-Dardāʾ in Damascus. Abū al-Dardāʾ asked whether he had come on some errand or for trade; he had come for nothing but a hadith he had heard that Abū al-Dardāʾ narrated (Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī 2682). The hadith begins:

Abu Ad-Dardā’ (may Allah be pleased with him) reported: The Messenger of Allah (may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him) said: "Whoever follows a path in pursuit of knowledge, Allah will facilitate for him a path to Paradise. Indeed, the angels lower their wings for the seeker of knowledge, out of pleasure at what he does. Verily, the inhabitants of the heavens and the earth, even the fish in the water, ask forgiveness from Allah for the knowledgeable. The superiority of a scholar over a devout worshiper is like the superiority of the moon over the rest of the stars. Indeed, the scholars are the inheritors of the prophets, who bequeath neither dinar nor dirham, only knowledge. So whoever acquires it has actually taken abundant wealth."

HadeethEnc: حسن — [Good hadith] [Narrated by Ibn Majah - Narrated by At-Termedhy - Narrated by Abu Daoud - Narrated by Ahmad - Ad-Daarimi]

Translation: HadeethEnc.com — Encyclopedia of Translated Prophetic Hadiths, by Rowad Translation Center; published by the Islamic Propagation Office in Rabwah. English, version v1.25.0. Full entry with explanation: https://hadeethenc.com/en/browse/hadith/6267

al-Tirmidhī adds a comment on the route he had for it:

ولا نعرف هذا الحديث إلا من حديث عاصم بن رجاء بن حيوة، وليس هو عندي بمتصل. هكذا حدثنا محمود بن خداش بهذا الإسناد. وإنما يروى هذا الحديث عن عاصم بن رجاء بن حيوة، عن الوليد بن جميل، عن كثير بن قيس، عن أبي الدرداء، عن النبي ﷺ وهذا أصح من حديث محمود بن خداش، ورأى محمد بن إسماعيل هذا أصح

We know this hadith only as a hadith of ʿĀṣim ibn Rajāʾ ibn Ḥaywa, and in my view it is not connected. This is how Maḥmūd ibn Khidāsh narrated it to us, with this chain. It is narrated, rather, from ʿĀṣim ibn Rajāʾ ibn Ḥaywa, from al-Walīd ibn Jamīl, from Kathīr ibn Qays, from Abū al-Dardāʾ, from the Prophet ﷺ, and this is sounder than the hadith of Maḥmūd ibn Khidāsh. Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl [al-Bukhārī] considered this sounder. (Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī 2682, ed. Shākir, ʿAbd al-Bāqī and ʿAwaḍ, vol. 5, p. 49; translation ours)

al-Bukhārī on the road

The compilers travelled too. al-Khaṭīb writes of al-Bukhārī:

رحل في طلب العلم إلى سائر محدثي الأمصار، وكتب بخراسان، والجبال، ومدن العراق كلها، وبالحجاز، والشام، ومصر

He travelled in search of knowledge to the hadith scholars of all the great cities, and wrote in Khurāsān, al-Jibāl, the cities of Iraq, the Ḥijāz, Syria and Egypt. (Tārīkh Baghdād, 2:322, as on the printed page: turath.io's text reads «ومد» for «ومدن»; translation ours)

And he reports al-Bukhārī's own words: «كتبت عن ألف شيخ وأكثر», «I wrote from a thousand teachers and more», and «رب حديث سمعته بالبصرة كتبته بالشام، ورب حديث سمعته بالشام كتبته بمصر», «many a hadith I heard in Basra I wrote down in Syria, and many a hadith I heard in Syria I wrote down in Egypt» (2:329).

Why the journey mattered

A journey let a student hear the words from the person who carried them, and see that person for himself. That is what a chain records. When a forwarded message says «the Prophet ﷺ said» with no chain and no book, it asks us to skip the journey. Looking it up is the short version of what Jābir did: going to where the words are kept, and asking who carried them.

The chapter heading of al-Bukhārī and Ibn Ḥajar's comments are quoted from Fatḥ al-Bārī (Cairo: al-Salafiyya), al-Khaṭīb from al-Riḥla, ed. ʿItr (1975) and Tārīkh Baghdād, ed. Bashshār ʿAwwād Maʿrūf (Beirut, 2002), and al-Tirmidhī's comment from the edition of Shākir, ʿAbd al-Bāqī and ʿAwaḍ (Cairo, 1975), all read in turath.io's text of the printed edition on 25 or 26 October 2026. The translation of al-Tirmidhī's report is HadeethEnc's, unchanged. Descriptions «in our words» are not translations; other translations are ours.