Question: Does the silsilah of Shaykh Al-Albaani contain all saheeh hadeeth (according to Shaykh Al-Albaani)?

[Moosaa.Richardson]

The numbered hadeeths, which are the focus of each hadeeth study, in Silsilat al-Ahaadeeth as-Saheehah were considered authentic by Shaykh al-Albaanee.

At times, the shaykh was not 100% certain of the ruling and concluded that it seems authentic, or its very close to being hasan, or similar phrases were used.

Some hadeeths were re-evaluated later and he changed the ruling on them. An example of this would be #2922, where a stronger weakness in the chains was later discovered, and thus he ended up considering the hadeeth weak and unstrengthenable. Another example would be #267. Refer to: Taraaju' al-'Allaamah al-Albaanee feemaa nassa alayhe tasheehan wa tadh'eefan (The hadeeths that 'Allaamah Al-Albaanee explicitly changed his verdicts on) by Muhammad Hasan ash-Shaykh.

There are also hadeeths considered weak by the shaykh mentioned inside of his longer discussions on the numbered hadeeths. Sometimes he would mention them as a benefit of something not authentic but related to the subject. Other times, it was too show how it was not usable as a witnessing narration. So these hadeeths were never considered by him to be authentic in the first place. I have seen people make mistakes and reference this kind of hadeeth to the Saheehah, intending to say that they were considered authentic by the shaykh!

Regarding your question, "Did the shaykh consider that he had compiled all the saheeh hadeeth in existence to the best of his knowledge?" Then the answer is no, this was not the point of the Silsilah. It was just a book of discussions of some of the hadeeths he investigated. It was ongoing research published periodically, and did not seem to have an end in sight, nor a goal that would be accomplished after such and such hadeeth were studied.

It should also be known that earlier scholars who compiled Saheeh hadeeth collections (al-Bukhaaree, Muslim, Ibn Khuzaymah, Ibn Hibbaan, adh-Dhiyaa', etc., none of them considered their work complete. One might argue that the al-Haakim's al-Mustadrak had this aim, and Allaah knows best.