Sunni Muslims view this as their most trusted collection, calling it "The most authentic book after the Holy Qur'an".

Muslims believe that al-Bukhari spent sixteen years collecting and writing down those traditions he thought trustworthy. They recount that Bukhari collected over 300,000 hadith and transmitted only 2,602 traditions that he believed to be Sahih. It is said that before he placed a hadith in his collection, he would perform ghusl (full\greater ritual ablution) and prayed two Rakah (Islamic unit for form of prayer) Nafl (voluntary prayer) to ask God for guidance.

Muslims believe that al-Bukhari finished his work in 846, and that he spent the last twenty-four years of his life visiting other cities and scholars, teaching the hadith he had collected. They say that in every city that he visited, thousands of people would gather in the main mosque to listen to him recite traditions. Regarding Western academic doubts as to the actual date and authorship of the book that bears his name, Sunni say that notable hadith scholars of that time, such as Ahmad Ibn Hanbal 855, Ibn Maīn 847, and Ibn Madīni 848, all accepted the authenticity of his book. Thus, the collection's immediate fame makes arguments regarding its being changed after the author's death highly improbable.

During this long period of twenty-four years, Bukhari made minor changes to his book, in particular its chapter headings. Each version is named by its narrator. According to Ibn Hajar Asqalani in his book Nukat, the number of hadiths in all narrations (versions) is the same. The most famous one today is the version narrated by al-Firabri (d. 932), who is a trusted student of Bukhari. Khatib al-Baghdadi in his book History of Baghdad had quoted Firabri saying: "There were about seventy thousand people who have heard Sahih Bukhari with me".

Firabri is not the only transmitter of Sahih al-Bukhari. There were many others that narrated that book to later generations, such as Ibrahim ibn Ma'qal (d. 907), Hammad ibn Shaker (d. 923), Mansur Burduzi (d. 931), and Husain Mahamili (d. 941). There are many books that noted differences between these versions; Fath al-Bari is the most famous among them.

Prominent Muslims scholars have written commentaries on this collection, most notably Fath al-Bari by Ibn Hajar Asqalani.