Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani (d.1999) is considered one of the founding fathers of Salafism in the modern period, and one of his most famous but least understood pursuits is his editions of nearly all of the Sunni hadith compendia. Titled "Bringing the sunna before the people," the project was also perhaps the most near and dear to his heart, and he wrote of it that "it is the most important project of my life...to which I have dedicated my youth, with which I have spent my middle age, and with which I now complete my old age." It is also within his comments on these commentaries that Albani began using the term "manhaj" (methodology) to refer to his scholarly intervention, which would become a slogan for his followers and a claim to authenticity during a time of not only new questions of religious authority in the midst of political and pedagogical change, but also as a signal to local authorities that they are fundamentally distinct in their priorities and nature from Islamists and, later, jihadis, who, Albani's followers claim have corrupted the tradition. When Albani first began using the term "manhaj," however, it was not without controversy. Just as Albani achieved admiration by his followers for the project's ambitious scope, so too he attracted enmity from more traditional scholars who saw in his "authentic" editions of the classical works a tinge of hubris at challenging their institutions of authority. It was in the context of this project that many of his famous rivalries with Muhammad Said Ramadan al-Buti, Abd al-Fattah Abu Ghudda, and others took place. And it was also in the context of professional and political marginalization of Albani and of his Salafi movement that these works first saw the light of day. This paper examines not only Albani's driving motive behind this project, but also the ways in which he used the space of the traditional Islamic commentary to institutionalize his views on hadith within the canonical works and to provide a vehicle for his followers to gain unmediated access to these teachings at a time of political and professional hostility towards Islamic activism. Today, just as at its inception, "manhaj" and the claims to scientific rigor that the term evokes, became a kind of compass for Albani and his followers to navigate and survive the stormy seas of Islamic politics in the late twentieth century.