How many saheeh hadeeth are there in Musnad Ahmad.

All perfect praise be to Allah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allah, and that Muhammad is His slave and Messenger.

The Musnad of Imam Ahmad is one of the largest books of the Sunnah in regard to the number of Ahadeeth that it includes.

The scholars who reviewed the Musnad that was printed by Ar-Risaalah Foundation under the supervision of Shaykh Shuayb Al-Arna’oot wrote a chapter clarifying the categories of the Ahadeeth contained in the Musnad.

The Chapter reads: “This Musnad which includes around 30,000 Ahadeeth. By induction, its Ahadeeth are divided into three sections: some are Saheeh (authentic); some are Hassan (sound); some are Dha’eef (inauthentic) some of which are slightly inauthentic and others and very inauthentic to the extent that they are close to be classified as fabricated.” [End of quote with minor modifications]

They did not mention the total number of authentic Ahadeeth in the entire Musnad, but they mentioned the number of the authentic Ahadeeth in some volumes of the Musnad. For example, they stated: “The careful study of the chain of narrators of the Ahadeeth in the first volume and their wording (561 Ahadeeth), the result that we have reached through this study is that the number of authentic Ahadeeth is 359; the number of Hassan Ahadeeth is 110 Ahadeeth; the number of inauthentic Ahadeeth is 79, most of which are only slightly inauthentic, while we did not issue a ruling for the classification of 13 Ahadeeth.”

They have also stated that “The number of authentic and Hassan Ahadeeth in the second volume reached 627 Ahadeeth, and the number of inauthentic Ahadeeth in this volume is 172.”

There are some other volumes where they did not mention the number of the authentic and the inauthentic Ahadeeth.

In any case, for whoever can read Arabic, he may refer to the introduction of Al-Musnad which was reviewed by Shaykh Shu'ayb Al-Arna’oot .

Finally, it should be noted that issuing a ruling on a Hadeeth whether it is Saheeh or Dha'eef is a broad matter which is subject to the Ijtihaad of scholars. It is for this reason that the scholars of Hadeeth differed in their view about the different narrations [when classifying them].

For more benefit, please refer to Fatwa 339724.

Allah knows best.