Together the two Sahihs form a category of their own in Sunni thought. A tradition recorded by both al-Bukhari and Muslim is described as agreed upon, muttafaq alayh, the strongest documentary credential a report can carry, and jurists and theologians cite the pair as practically decisive. The community's reception, expressed by generations of scholars, held that the umma had accepted the contents of both books, a consensus that later hadith science treated as conferring near-certainty on their reports, even while specialists continued to examine a small number of individual chains.
Sahih Muslim generated its own line of commentaries, of which the most read is that of al-Nawawi, the thirteenth-century Syrian jurist whose exposition became the standard companion, printed in the margins and study editions used across the Sunni world; earlier commentaries such as al-Maziri's and Qadi Iyad's served the Maghrib, and modern commentaries continue the line. The book's traditions supply core texts for Muslim devotional life, including many of the short reports on intention, mercy and the remembrance of God that preachers and Sufi authors return to constantly. In the standard enumeration of the Sunni canon, the two Sahihs stand first, followed by the four Sunan works, and within that architecture Sahih Muslim has held second place, or joint first in the estimate of some western Muslim scholars, for over a thousand years.