Ask any imam for one book to keep at home and a large number of them will say the same thing: Riyad as-Salihin.

Then you search for it and find five different versions. One is a single book. One is two thick volumes. One is in Urdu. Two are in Arabic. Nobody explains which one you are supposed to buy, so most people either give up or buy the biggest one and never open it.

Here is how the editions actually differ, and how to pick the one you will genuinely read.

What the book is, briefly

Imam an-Nawawi, who died in 676 AH, selected roughly two thousand hadith from the six major collections, Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Dawood, Tirmidhi, an-Nasa'i and Ibn Majah, and arranged them by theme rather than by narrator or source.

That arrangement is the whole point. If you want to know what the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said about anger, or about sincerity, or about how to treat a neighbour, you turn to that chapter and it is all there. It is not a technical hadith reference. It is a book about character, organised for someone trying to become a better Muslim rather than for a scholar tracing chains of narration.

This is why it is the standard recommendation for ordinary families and not just students of knowledge.

The three questions that decide your edition

1. What language will you actually read in? Not the language you wish you read in. The one you would pick up tired, after 'Isha.
2. Complete, or selected? The complete work runs well past a thousand pages. A condensed single volume covers far less but gets finished.
3. Do you want commentary? Commentary explains context and application. It also roughly doubles the length.

Answer those three honestly and only one or two editions will remain.

The editions, one by one

The two-volume Darussalam set

This is the full work, about 1,455 pages across two volumes, and it is the edition most masajid and study circles treat as the reference. If someone says "look it up in Riyad as-Salihin", this is usually what they mean.

Buy it if you want the complete collection with commentary, you have somewhere to keep two large volumes, and you intend to use it as a reference you return to for years rather than read cover to cover. See the two-volume set.

The single-volume Tughra edition

At 560 pages this is a condensed, single-volume presentation, and the practical difference is enormous: it fits in a bag, it does not require a shelf, and it is finishable.

Buy it if this is your first hadith collection, if you want something to read rather than consult, or if you are buying for a teenager or a new Muslim who would be discouraged by two thick volumes. See the Tughra edition.

The honest trade-off: condensed means selected. You are not getting everything Nawawi included. For a first read that is usually the right compromise, and you can always move up later.

The Arabic editions

Two Arabic editions are available, and they suit different readers.

The Dar Al Fayha Arabic edition is the straightforward choice for a confident Arabic reader who wants the text itself without an English apparatus. The Darussalam Arabic edition is the other option, drawn from the same roughly two thousand narrations across the six collections.

A note for parents: an Arabic edition is not a study aid for a child learning Arabic. The vocabulary of hadith is well beyond a school Arabic programme. Buy Arabic here for a fluent adult reader, not as practice material.

The Urdu two-volume set

The Urdu edition runs about 1,325 pages across two volumes and presents the Arabic text followed by Urdu translation and commentary.

For a household where Urdu is the language of religious reading, and particularly for grandparents, this is frequently the edition that gets opened daily while an English one sits untouched. Buy for the reader, not for the shelf.

There is no children's edition, and that is worth saying plainly

Parents ask for this constantly and we would rather be straight with you: there is no abridged children's version of Riyad as-Salihin in our catalogue. Every edition above is written for adult readers.

That does not mean children cannot benefit from it. Two approaches work well:

• Read it to them, one hadith at a time. Pick a chapter that matches something happening in your home that week, honesty, anger, kindness to siblings, and read a single narration at dinner. One hadith discussed properly outperforms a chapter read silently.
• Give them age-appropriate material alongside it. Character and manners written for children exists and is genuinely good. Browse Akhlaq, Morals & Manners and Islamic Stories, and see our guide to du'a books for kids for how to choose by age.

Then hand them Riyad as-Salihin properly when they are old enough to read it as adults do. It will mean more.

What it is not (three books people confuse it with)

A surprising number of orders come in for the wrong book because the names sit close together. Worth thirty seconds to get right.

• Nawawi's Forty Hadith is a different, much shorter work by the same author, around forty-two narrations chosen as foundational principles. It is an excellent first book and takes an evening to read through, but it is not a condensed Riyad as-Salihin. Different selection, different purpose. If that is what you actually want, the Forty Hadith with English translation is the standard version.
• Sahih al-Bukhari is a primary hadith collection arranged for scholarly reference. Riyad as-Salihin draws from Bukhari and five other collections and rearranges the material by theme. If you want a book to read for character, you want Nawawi's arrangement, not the source collections.
• Al-Adhkar, also by Nawawi, collects the supplications and remembrances for daily situations. It sits beside Riyad as-Salihin rather than overlapping it, and many households end up wanting both. The Arabic edition of Al-Adhkar is available.

If you are buying one book and only one, and you want the thing people mean when they recommend "a hadith book for the house", Riyad as-Salihin is the correct answer. The Forty Hadith is the right answer to a different question: where do I start.

Quick guide

If you are…	Buy
Buying your first hadith collection	The single-volume Tughra edition
Building a home reference library	The two-volume Darussalam set
A fluent Arabic reader	Dar Al Fayha or Darussalam Arabic
Reading mainly in Urdu	The Urdu two-volume set
Buying for a teenager	The single volume, every time
Buying for a child	None of these — read to them, and see the akhlaq shelf

How to actually read it

Almost nobody reads this book front to back, and it is not designed to be read that way. The two habits that work:

By chapter, when you need it. Struggling with anger this month? Read that chapter and sit with it. The thematic arrangement exists precisely so you can do this.

One narration a day. A single hadith after Fajr or at dinner, discussed for two minutes, will move a household further in a year than an ambitious reading plan abandoned in February.

If the book is for family use, keep it where people sit, not on a high shelf with the reference works. The edition that gets opened is the right edition, which is the entire argument of this article.

For the wider hadith shelf, including Nawawi's Forty Hadith and other collections, browse Hadith. If you are building a full home or weekend-school library this year, our Weekend Learning series guide covers how the graded material fits together.

Still unsure? Tell us who it is for and what they read in, and we will point you to the right edition.