A'isha reported that a person asked Allah's Apostle (ﷺ) as to who amongst the people were the best. He said:Of the generation to which I belong, then of the second generation (generation adjacent to my generation), then of the third generation (generation adjacent to the second generation)
The chain is ordered from the source of the saying to the compiler: 1 = the speaker/first transmitter, the following links those who passed it on in turn, and at the bottom Muslim who compiled the work. Click a narrator to list every hadith in which he appears; the number in parentheses is how many hadiths across the collections on this site the narrator appears in.