As a result in the Sunni world six major collections of Hadith became assembled such as those of Bukhari and Muslim and soon gained complete authority in the orthodox com-munity. In Shi'ism a similar process took place except that in addition to the sayings of the Prophet those of the Imams, whose teachings expound the meaning of the prophetic message, form a part of the Hadith collection. There too, volumes of these sayings were assembled of which the most important is the Usui al-kafi of Kulaini.

Ideals and realities of Islam On page 84 Saturday, January 5, 2013 @ 4:45pm