Abu Bakr al-Bayhaqi and Shu‘ab Al-Iman

Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn Hussein Khosrowjerdi al-Bayhaqi is one of the famous Sunni scholars in the fourth and fifth centuries AH and the golden age of Sunni hadith. He is one of the promoters and revampers of Shafi‘i school and the books “Al-Sunan Al-Kubra”, “Ma‘rifah Al-Sunan wa Al-Athar”, and “Ma‘rifah Al-Sughra” are highly credited to Sunnis. His other work is “Shu‘ab Al-Iman” which is written according to an important hadith of the Prophet expressing the number of branches of faith. This is a comprehensive book of religious and moral traditions, which was greatly influenced by the book “Al-Minhaj” by Halimi and has 77 sections. Its salient features include mentioning the documents and ways of the hadiths with reference to tolerance, criticism of documenting and content of the hadiths, identifying the forged traditions and avoiding quoting them, categorization, interpretation and explanation of the hadiths, giving odd points and quoting historical reports which distinguish this work from other similar works.