the early history of Islam, and the practices of Muhammad and his first followers, and wrote them down so that they might be preserved. These recorded oral traditions are called hadith. Muslim scholars have through the ages sifted through the hadith and evaluated the chain of narrations of each tradition, scrutinizing the trustworthiness of the narrators and judging the strength of each hadith accordingly. Kutub al-SittahKutub al-Sittah are six books containing collections of hadiths. Sunni Muslims accept the hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim as the most authentic (sahih), and while accepting all hadiths verified as authentic, grant a slightly lesser status to the collections of other recorders. Four other hadith collections are also held in particular reverence by Sunni Muslims, making a total of six: Sahih al-Bukhari of Muhammad al-Bukhari Sahih Muslim of Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj Sunan al-Sughra of Al-Nasa'i Sunan Abu Dawud of Abu Dawood Jami' at-Tirmidhi of Al-Tirmidhi Sunan Ibn Majah of Ibn Majah There are also other collections of hadith which also contain many authentic hadith and are frequently used by scholars and specialists. Examples of these collections include: Musannaf of Abd al-Razzaq of 'Abd ar-Razzaq as-San'ani Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal Mustadrak of Al Haakim Muwatta of Imam Malik Sahih Ibn Hibbaan Sahih Ibn Khuzaymah of Ibn Khuzaymah Sunan al-Darimi of Al-Darimi Sunni State institutions One of the most important teaching institutions of Sunni Islam worldwide is the Azhar in Egypt. Article 32b, paragraph 7 of the Egyptian Azhar Law of 1961 stipulates that the Azhar "follows the path of the Sunnis" (manhaǧ ahl as-sunna wa-l-jamāʿa), Umma has agreed to the foundations of the religion and applications of fiqh, with its four disciplines. Only those who stick to the paths of their science and behavior can become a ”Member of the Council of Great Scholars” (haiʾat kibār al-ʿulamāʾ), among whom the Grand Imam of al-Azhar is elected. Zitouna University in Tunisia and University of al-Qarawiyyin in Morocco are recognized. They are also mentioned, along with the Azhar, in the final document of the Sunni Conference in Grozny. Another body that claims to speak on behalf of Sunnism is the Council of Senior Religious Scholars founded in Saudi Arabia in 1971. In the past, the committee has expressed several times on fatwas about the Sunni-membership of certain Islamic groups within. In 1986 it published a fatwa excluding the Ahbāsh community from Sunnism. The Islamic World League