International numbering of Musnad Ahmad hadiths

Question

I am searching for international numbering of Musnad Ahmad. I got the 2 books:

1. The book whose chapters names are the names of Sahaba.
2. The book whose chapters names are like "The chapter of Imaan, The book of faith and Islam, etc".

Maybe there are more published books with different chapter names strategy.
Which Musnad Ahmad book has international numbering? I searched a lot but didn't find any answer. Can someone please help me to get the right international numbering Musnad Ahmad book?

Answer 1

1. Musnad Ahmad is arranged according to the names of the Sahaba, for example it will have a chapter titled 'Musnad Ali ibn Abi Talib', in which are recorded all ahadith narrated by Ali. For further reading on the various ways of organizing ahadith see Medi1Saif's answer on Why is Musnad Ahmad not like other Sahih Books? .

2. You have given a link which pretends to have Musnad Ahmad arranged by topics. This is not the original Musnad Ahmad. Rather it is a derivative work whose actual title is Al-Fath al-Rabbani li-tartib Musnad al-Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal - compiled by Ahmad Abdur Rahman Al-Banna Al-Sa’ati (died in 1958). In it the author has rearranged the ahadith of Musnad Ahmad according to topics.

3. There is no such thing as an 'international' or 'standardized' numbering of the ahadith of Musnad Ahmad, nor many other hadith book including Bukhari and Muslim. The Imams did not number the ahadith. And those who numbered them afterwards differed because of various reasons, such as where and whether to split the longer ahadith. Hence various editions by different publishers will often assign different numbers to a hadith. For an example of how the numbering can vary see the answer to I need an exact reference for a hadith in Musnad Ahmed!

   Indeed, writings of some modern scholars (like al-Albani and Salih al-Munajjid) give citations to Musnad Ahmad by mentioning a volume and page number like 4 / 121. This again corresponds to some specific publisher such as al-Maimaniyyah (6 vols) or ar-Risalah (45 vols).

   Also refer to How is Sahih al-Bukhari arranged?

4. AFAIK there is no complete English translation of Musnad Ahmad as of right now. However Darussalam is working on it and has published a few volumes. If you intend to collect data for English then using their numbering scheme might be practical. Some of these volumes are available as pdf's online.