The Great History (Arabic: التاريخ الكبير, romanized: al-Tārīkh al-Kabīr) is a book by ninth-century Islamic scholar Muhammad ibn Ismail al-Bukhari in the field of biographical evaluation (ʿilm ar-rijāl).
While Al-Ḥākim claims that according to Abū ʿAlī al-Husayn al-Māsarjisī, the text contained roughly 40,000 biographical entries of both men and women,[2] Melchert has argued that the evidence is consisted with Bukhari having assembled the Great History roughly in the form it exists today, although having undergone some editing and rearrangement.
For example, his entry on the jurist Abu Hanifa claims that he was part of the Murji'ah, a sect al-Bukhari deemed to be heretical.
[5] Ibn Abi Hatim wrote the first response to any part of Bukhari's works, specifically by responding to his Great History, though his book was aimed at detecting errors in it.
[6] Al-Hakim al-Nishapuri used the Great History to support his contention, against other scholars, that many authentic and reliable hadith that had not yet been written down continued to exist and be passed on during his own day.