Abstract
<jats:p>The Causes of Repetitive Narrations and Their Methodological Implications The hadiths of the Prophet Muhammad (s.a.s.) occupy a fundamental position in Islamic scholarship, and Muslims have, since the earliest centuries, placed great emphasis on preserving both their text and meaning. Until the third Islamic century, however, no comprehensive work was compiled with the exclusive aim of collecting only authentic (ṣaḥīḥ) narrations. Recognizing this gap, al-Bukhārī authored his renowned al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaḥīḥ, explicitly aiming to include only authentic reports, a methodology later followed by his student Muslim. While the primary motivation was the compilation of authentic hadiths, the works structure and content were also shaped by another crucial goal: deriving legal rulings (fiqh) from the hadith corpus. These two objectives fundamentally guided the composition of the Ṣaḥīḥ. Al-Bukhārīs repetition of hadiths must be understood in this dual context. Sometimes, he repeated narrations to highlight errors made by transmitters; at other times, he sought to derive distinct legal conclusions. Chapter headings (abwāb) played a pivotal role in this process. When serving the thematic or legal purpose of a chapter, narrations containing minor textual uncertainties were occasionally included. This study examines the textual variations among hadiths repeatedly transmitted in al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaḥīḥ and analyzes their significance within hadith methodology. Selected examples are limited to narrations with a shared origin, excluding those from different companions. Differences in narrations with the same origin and similar content are difficult to explain through multiplicity of narrations. Moreover, the narrations considered to contain minor textual uncertainties are not deemed weak; rather, the observed variations pertain only to parts of the text, reflecting methodological and thematic considerations.</jats:p>