Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj al-Naysābūrī, compiler of the Ṣaḥīḥ that shares with al-Bukhārī's the summit of ḥadīth authority, died at Naṣrābādh outside Nīshāpūr on 25 Rajab 261, aged about fifty-five.
The biographers tell the manner of it as a parable of the craft: asked in a gathering about a ḥadīth he could not place, he went home, lit his lamp over his books, and told his household to let no one in. A basket of dates had been given him; he searched, and ate, date by date, until morning found the ḥadīth — and the basket empty. He sickened from it and died.
His Ṣaḥīḥ's introduction is the earliest surviving essay of ḥadīth criticism, and his arrangement — every version of a report gathered in one place — made the book the jurists' favourite of the two.