Muslim is considered second only to Al-Bukhari in the science of the methodology of Hadeeth. He started the study of Hadeeth at an early age and travelled to 'Iraq, Hijaz, Ash-Sham and Egypt and studied under the scholars of Hadeeth at that time like Al-Bukhari, Ahmad bin Hanbal and Ibn Abee Shaiba. He also taught the famous Hadeeth scholars like At-Tirmidhi and Ibn Abu Haatim. Muslim compiled the Hadeeth book Al-Musnad As-Sahih, which became known as Sahih Muslim. This book, which is considered by the Muslim 'Ulama as the second most authentic Hadeeth book after Al-Bukhari, contains 9,200 Hadeeth. Imam Muslim died at his birthplace in Rajab 261 H. Saheeh al-Muslim has been translated to English.
Imam Muslim lived a couple of centuries after the Prophet's death and worked extremely hard to collect his ahadith. Each report in his collection was checked for compatibility with the Qur'an, and the veracity of the chain of reporters had to be painstakingly established. Muslim's collection is recognized by the overwhelming majority of the Muslim world to be one of the most authentic collections of the Sunnah of the Prophet (pbuh). Muslim (full name Abul Husain Muslim bin al-Hajjaj al-Nisapuri) was born in 202 A. H. and died in 261 A. H. He travelled widely to gather his collection of ahadith, including to Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Egypt. Out of 300,000 ahadith which he evaluated, only 4,000 approximately (including multiple hadith in a single one i. e. multiple quotations) were extracted for inclusion into his collection based on stringent acceptance criteria. Muslim was a student of Imam Bukhari.