Muhammad al-Bukhari (810–870) was born in Bukhara and became one of the most revered scholars of the Islamic world. As a young man he set out on years of travel across the cities of the East, collecting and verifying the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. From hundreds of thousands of reports he kept only those that passed the strictest test of authenticity, compiling "Sahih al-Bukhari" — a collection that Muslims have regarded for centuries as among the most authoritative after the Qur'an.