The earliest extant manuscript is a fragmentary copy in two parts based on the recension of Abū Zayd al-Marwazī (d.371 AH) from al-Farabrī from al-Bukhārī. The manuscript is of Egyptian provenance where it remained for centuries until it was transferred to Britainin the early 1900s.  Based on apaleographic and chemical examination of the papyrus, it has been dated to 360–390 AH/970–1000 CE. Although it is commonly held to have been transcribed by the Andalusian Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Aṣīlī (d. 392 AH), a student of al-Marwazī, the material evidence on the manuscript and its paleography suggest that it was transcribed by the hand of an unidentified Egyptian student of al-Marwazī. After its transcription, it was actively utilized for auditions of the Ṣaḥīḥ and variant collations, gathering marginal notes along the way, in Alexandra and Cairo well into uthe ninth century AH. One of its reading notices is dated to Ramadan 464 AH in Alexandria. In 1929, Alphonse Mingana (d. 1937) discovered part of this fragment, comprising only three chapters (ṣawm, zakāh, and a part of ḥajj), which is currently held in the Mingana collection in Birmingham. Recently, a section of this manuscript four times larger comprising eighteen chapters was discovered in the British Library.

Further Reading
· Anas Wakāk, “al-Taʿrīf bi-aqdam nuskha khaṭṭiyya min Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī: QiṭʿatMinjānā wa-l-Matḥaf al-Brīṭānī,” Lisān al-muḥaddith 1, (2018) 
· Alphonse Mingana, An Important Manuscript of the Tradition of Bukhārī (Cambridge: W. Heffer and Sons, 1936). 
· Muntasir Zaman, The Textual Integrity of Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī: A Study on the Primary Recensions, Textual Variants, and Transmission of the Ṣaḥīḥ (Dallas: Qalam, 2024).

The Saʿādiyya I is a manuscript of the Ṣaḥīḥ transcribed in 492 AH by the hadith scholar of Valencia, Spain Abū ʿImrān b. Saʿāda (d. c. 522 AH) based on the recension of Abū Dharr al-Harawī (d. 434 AH) via his three teachers from al-Farabrī from al-Bukhārī. In addition to its early dating, the Saʿādiyya I stands out for the critical editorial and comparative work done on it by Abū ʿImrān. This manuscript served as the reference point for countless secondary manuscripts and commentaries in the Maghreb until recently. Its where abouts for the first three centuries are unknown, but in the ninth century, it was listed as part of the endowment of the al-Qarawiyyīn library in Fes. In 1928, the French Orientalist Évariste Lévi-Provençal (d. 1956) produced a facsimileedition of the second volume. Lévi-Provençal had borrowed the third volume, but it got lost after he died. To date, only three of the five volumes are available, which are housed in the National Library of the Kingdom of Morocco though there is a secondary copy of the entire manuscript. The earliest complete manuscript in our possession today was transcribed in al-Andalus in Shaʿbān 550AH. We can label this as the Saʿādiyya II since it was read in 555 AH under the auspices of the hadith scholar Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. Saʿāda (d. 565AH), a nephew of Abū ʿImrān. This manuscript is based on the recension of Abū Dharr. The colophon attests to the exceptional quality of the manuscript: it was compared multiple times with authoritative manuscripts like that of al-Ṣadafī (d. 514 AH) and a secondar copy of al-Bājī (474 AH). In the seventh century, it was relocated to Fes, and then in the eighth century, it made its way to Cairo. It was read and audited by multiple scholars in each of these regions. In theninth century, it was endowed to the library of the Sahn-ıSeman Medresein Istanbul. It is currently housed in the Süleymanye Yazma Eser Library underthe Murād Mullā collection where it was recently discovered. The entire manuscript is in one codex and contains 269 folios. Each folio is 27x22 cm with 49 lines. In 2018, ISAM published a facsimile edition of this manuscript.

Further Reading
· ʿArafāt Aydin,“Nuskha qadīma li-Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī bi-l-khaṭṭ al-Maghribī bi-riwāyat AbīDharr fī Turkiyā,” in al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ al-musnad al-mukhtaṣar min ḥadīth Rasūl Allāh (ṣ): Ṭibāʿa ṭibq al-aṣlʿan nuskhat maktabat Murād Mullā Istānbūl (Istanbul: ISAM, 2018). 
· Ṣalāḥ Fatḥī Halal, Nuskhat al-Bukhārī al-aṣliyyawa-riwāyātuhu al-ʿaliyya: Qirāʾa fī al-nuskha al-Murādiyya (Dubai: Jamʿiyyat Dār al-Birr, 2020).
· Muntasir Zaman, “From Khurasan to al-Andalus: Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī in the Maghreb in Light of Two Early Manuscripts,” Studies in Hadith Sciences, no. 2 (2021).

The Ṣāghāniyyais an invaluable manuscript of the Ṣaḥīḥ transcribed by Raḍī al-Dīn al-Ṣaghānī (d. 650 AH) a renowned Ḥanafī lexicographer from Lahore. His academic travels took him to Baghdad where he studied the Ṣaḥīḥ under the direct students of Abū al-Waqtal-Sijzī (d. 553 AH), a renowned transmitter of the Ṣaḥīḥ. In 617 AH, al-Ṣāghānī transcribed a manuscript of the Saḥīḥ (based on the recension ofal-Sijzī → al-Dāwūdī → al-Ḥamawī → al-Farabrī → al-Bukhārī) which he edited by collating variants from a rare manuscript that was signed by al-Farabrī himselfand contained unique additions. As such, the Ṣāghāniyya contains a relatively larger set of exclusive variants, such as prophetic and post-prophetic narrations, narrator data, commentary from al-Bukhārī. Some have questioned the extent to which we should accept the additions taken from the Farabrī-signed manuscript due to its anomalous content. The commentary tradition attests to the value of this manuscript, as Ibn Ḥajar alone cites it over one hundred time sin Fatḥ al-Bārī. A partial copy of this manuscript (hadith nos. 3776–7433) inal-Ṣāghānī’s own handwriting is housed in Kastamonu Kitaplici (item no. 3600). Al-Ṣāghānī’s script ends abruptly (on fol. 291v, hadith no. 6997) and the remaining is completed in the hand of Muḥammad b. Abī al-Qāsim al-Muqrīʿ in 689AH, a few decades after al-Ṣāghānī’s demise. There is a complete tertiary copy of the Ṣāghāniyya transcribed by Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī al-Wasṭānī in 833 AH held in Dāmād Ibrāhīm Pāshā in four parts.

Further Reading
· Taqī al-Dīn al-Nadwī, “Nuskhat al-Imām al-Ṣāghānī: Dirāsa wa-l-taḥlīl,” Majallat Buḥūth wa-Dirāsāt11 (2013): 257–290. 
· Muḥammad Khālid Kulāb, “al-Taʿrīf bi-nuskha khaṭṭiyya min Ṣaḥīḥ al-Imām al-Bukhārī quriʾat fī Bayt al-Maqdis,” Majllat al-Mirqāh (2021) no. 4. 
· Halal, Ṣalāḥ Fatḥī.“Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī bayna al-riwāya wal-nuskha.” Majallat al-Turāthal-Nabawī 4.2 (2019): 11–126. 
· Muntasir Zaman, “Translator’s Appendix II,” in An Introduction to Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī: Author's Biography, Recensions and Manuscripts (London: Turath Publishing, 2020).

In the year 670 AH in Damascus, Sharaf al-Dīn al-Yūnīnī (d. 701 AH) convened a gathering of scholars, including the famed grammarian Ibn Mālik, over 71 sessions to prepare a critically edited manuscript of the Ṣaḥīḥ. For this purpose, al-Yūnīnī obtained four valuable manuscripts of the Ṣaḥiḥ, the variants of which he included in the margins (viz. Abū Dharr and his three teachers, al-Aṣīlī, Ibn ʿAsākir, andal-Samʿānī). The base text was based on ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Maqdisī’s manuscript(via Abū al-Waqt), which was the most authoritative in Levant. After al-Yūnīnī’s death, the manuscript was relocated to Egypt and employed in the tenth century by al-Qasṭallānī in Irshād al-sārī. In the eleventh century, it was in the possession of Maghrebi scholar al-Rūdānī (d. 1094 AH), after whichit went into the hands Muḥammad Akram al-Hindī in Mecca and utilized by thefamous hadith expert ʿAbd Allāh b. Sālim al-Baṣrī (d. 1134 AH). The currentwhereabouts of the exemplar are unknown, but there are several secondary copiesof the Yūnīniyya such as those of al-Ghazūlī (d. 777 AH) and al-Biqāʿī(d. 885 AH). The most important secondary copy was transcribed by Abū al-ʿAbbāsal-Nuwayrī, who penned and sold at least eight copies, one of which iscurrently held in the Köprülü Library (item no. 362) and another in the Walīal-Dīn Effendī Library (item no. 1042). The Yūnīniyya is widely regarded as themost authoritative manuscript of the Ṣaḥīḥ, utilized by commentators andforming the basis for printed editions like the Sulṭāniyya. 

‍Further Reading 
· Abū Hāshim al-ʿUtaybī, Kitāb Jabr: wa-huwaal-tarīkh al-mukhtaṣar li-l-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīh al-musnad al-mukhtaṣar (Cairo:Dār al-Taʾṣīl, 2018); idem, Makhtut 

· “Introduction,” in the Bayt al-Sunna edition of Ṣaḥīḥal-Bukhārī (Jeddah: Bayt al-Sunna, 1442 AH), 427–618. 
‍
· Rosemarie Quiring-Zoche, “How al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ was Edited in the Middle Ages: ʿAlī al-Yūnīnī and His Rumūz,” Bulletin D’études Orientales 50 (1998). 
‍
· Musṭafā al-Aʿẓamī, An Introduction to Ṣaḥīḥal-Bukhārī: Author's Biography, Recensions and Manuscripts (London: Turath Publishing, 2020).

The hadith scholar of Samarqand Abū ʿAlī al-Kushānī (d. 391 AH) studied the Ṣaḥīḥ with al-Farabrī at a young age in 316 AH and continued to transmit it until his demise in 391 AH, making him the last direct student of al-Farabrī with an elevated chain. Recently, several manuscripts that appear to be based on al-Kushānī’s recension have been discovered. Yūsuf al-Uzbekī studied a fragmentary manuscript of sixty-four folios that contain the following transmission: al-Bazzār → al-Khallāl → al-Kushānī → al-Farabrī →al-Bukhārī. Due to the fragmentary nature of the manuscript, it lacks vital information like a colophon, the identity of the scribe, and the date of transcription. It is postulated that it is of Levantine provenance from the first half of the seventh century AH. The Turhan Sultan holding (item no. 67) contains a manuscript based on al-Kushānī’s recension as well. The manuscript was transcribed by Muḥammad al-Shāfiʿī in 749 AH in one codex comprising the entire Ṣaḥīḥ through Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Āmidī from al-Kushānī. Muḥammad Shaʿbān has expressed concerns over the ascription of this manuscript’s recension to al-Kashānī due to its broken chain of transmission, lack of critical editorial work, and the absence of certain hadith that are meant to bein al-Kushānī’s recension.

Further Reading
· Yūsuf al-Uzbekī,“al-Taʿrīf bi-riwāyat al-Bazzī ʿan al-Khallāl ʿan al-Kushānī,” Majmūʿat al-Makhṭūṭātal-Islāmiyya 27–28 1441 AH): 218–230. 

· Muḥammad Maḥmūd Shaʿbān, https://twitter.com/Mohammad_MS_19 (Published October 26, 2022)

The first lithographic edition of the Ṣaḥīḥwas produced in 1854 by Aḥmad ʿAlī al-Sahāranpūrī (d. 1880), who spent years critically editing and refining his copy of the Ṣaḥīḥ based on at leastten other manuscripts, Irshād al-sārī (which used the Yūnīniyya), and variants from the Ṣāghāniyya. Al-Sahāranpūrī began editing and annotating Ṣaḥīḥal-Bukhārī in 1844 shortly after returning from his academic sojourn in Mecca. In 1848, he printed the first 184 pages of the Ṣaḥīḥ through MaṭbaʿSayyid al-Akhbār. Three years later, he resumed work on the Ṣaḥīḥ at his own printing house, Maṭbaʿ Aḥmadī. Between 1851 and 1854, he published the lithographic print of the Ṣaḥīḥ in two volumes. His edition of the Ṣaḥīḥ was reprinted several times by Maṭbaʿ Aḥmadī and other publishers during his lifetime. In subsequent editions, Sahāranpūrī appended a list of typographical errors found in the first edition, and he added biographical information on the transmitters of the Ṣaḥīḥ. Sahāranpūrī annotated the edition with beneficial marginal and interlinear notes wherein he alludes to manuscript variants, provides commentary, and explicates the link between chapter headings and hadith.

Further Reading
· Nūr al-Ḥasanal-Kāndhlawī, “Ḥazrat Mawlānā Aḥmad ʿAlī Sahāranpūrī dawr-e taʿlimwa-talammudh.” Aḥwāl wa-Āthār (1429). 
· Muntasir Zaman, Hadith Scholarship in the Indian Subcontinent: Aḥmad ʿAlī Sahāranpūrī and the Canonical Hadith Literature (Leicester: Qurtuba Books, 2021).

In 1893, the Ottoman Sultan, ʿAbd al-ḤamīdII (d. 1918), issued an imperial decree to the Cairene publishing house al-Maṭbaʿaal-Amīriyya to print a critical edition of the Ṣaḥīḥ. Using a range of invaluable manuscripts, particularly a secondary copy of the Yūnīniyya. The project was completed by 1895 and the first edition of the work was released in nine volumes. A committee of 16 scholars from al-Azhar under the auspices of the Grand Shaykh of al-Azhar, Ḥassūna al-Nawāwī were then tasked with reviewing the work. It appears the scholars of al-Azhar had completed most of the editorial work on the Ṣaḥīḥ prior to ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd’s decree. The sultan provided much needed financial support to complete the project. In 2001, the Damascene hadith scholar Zuhayr Nāṣīr revised the Sulṭāniyya by numbering and indexing the hadith, adding marginal notes, and printing it in higher quality paper.

Further Reading
· Zuhayr Nāṣir, “Introduction,” in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Imām al-Bukhārī (Beirut: Dār Ṭaq al-Najāh, 1422 AH).
· Musṭafā al-Aʿẓamī, An Introduction to Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī: Author's Biography, Recensions and Manuscripts (London: Turath Publishing, 2020).
· ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Yūsufān, “Li-Allāh thumma li-l-tārīkh,” Majmūʿat al-Makhṭūṭāt al-Islāmiyya2 (1438 AH): 28–29