Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl b. Ibrāhīm b. al-Mughīra b. Bardizba al-Juʿfī al-Bukhārī, a highly regarded Sunnī ḥadīth collector, was born in Bukhara, on 13 Shawwāl 194/20 July 810, and died in Khartank, near Samarqand, on 1 Shawwāl 256/1 September 870. His nisba “Juʿfī” refers to the governor of Bukhara, Yamānī al-Juʿfī, patron of al-Bukhārī’s great-grandfather al-Mughīra, the first Muslim in the family line. Al-Bukhārī studied in Khurāsān and Transoxania until the age of sixteen. In 210/825–6, he …