Carrying on the tradition : a social and intellectual history of Hadith transmission across a thousand years 9789004386938, 2020027144, 2020027145, 9789004386914

Table of contents :
‎Contents
‎Acknowledgements
‎Figures
‎Introduction
‎Chapter 1. Reimagining Hadith Transmission in the Shadow of the Canon
‎1. The Ideology of Hadith Transmission
‎2. The Social Logic of Hadith Transmission
‎3. “Nothing Gold Can Stay:” The End of the ‘Golden Age’ of Hadith Transmission
‎4. Elevation and Decline
‎5. Degrees of Separation
‎6. Supernatural Elevation
‎7. Conclusion
‎Chapter 2. The Post-canonical Evolution of Oral Hadith Transmission
‎1. The Audition Notice
‎2. The Evolving Function of Oral Transmission
‎3. The Age Structure of Oral Transmission
‎4. Hadith Speed Reading
‎5. Further Liberalization of Oral Transmission
‎6. The Ritualization of Oral Hadith Transmission
‎7. Locations of Oral Hadith Transmission
‎8. Musalsalāt: Ritual and Mimesis in Oral Hadith Transmission
‎9. A Shifting Culture of Oral Hadith Transmission
‎Chapter 3. Non-oral Transmission in the Oral Idiom: The Development and Function of the Ijāza
‎1. Confusion in the Secondary Literature
‎2. The Origins and Early Development of the Ijāza
‎3. The Earliest Attestations of the Ijāza
‎4. The Tide Begins to Turn: The Increasing Acceptance of the Ijāza in the Fourth/Tenth Century
‎5. Al-Khaṭīb and the Evolution of the Ijāza
‎6. The ijāza as a Means of Preserving the Chain of Transmission
‎7. Permission for the Unspecified
‎8. Who Can Receive an Ijāza?
‎9. The Ijāza and the Short Chain of Transmission
‎10. The Ijāza and the Unborn
‎11. Ijāzas for All: The Development and Function of the al-Ijāza al-ʿĀmma
‎12. Conclusion
‎Chapter 4. The High and the Low: Men, Women and the Social Aspect of Elevation
‎1. The Laity and the Randomness of Longevity and Elevation
‎2. A Medieval Hadith Rock Star: The Extraordinary Case of Abū ʿAbbās al-Ḥajjār
‎3. The Elevated Chain of Transmission and Women Hadith Transmitters
‎4. The Exceptional Case of Karīma al-Marwaziyya
‎5. The Question of Learning among Women Hadith Transmitters
‎6. The Case of Women Hadith Transmitters in al-Sakhāwī’s al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ
‎7. Longevity, Elevation and Women Transmitters
‎8. The View of Women’s Hadith Transmission from the Documentary Evidence
‎9. Women and Hadith Transmission beyond the Tenth/Sixteenth Century
‎10. Conclusion
‎Chapter 5. Brevity, Breadth and Elevation: The Forty-Hadith and ʿAwālī Genres
‎1. The Prophet’s Promise: The Forty-Hadith Genres and Elevation
‎2. The Forty-Hadith Genre as a Tool for the Cultivation of Elevation
‎3. The Forty-Hadith Genre and Elevation
‎4. Forty Hadith, Forty Shaykhs, Forty Towns
‎5. The ʿAwālī Genre: Compiling and Presenting Elevation
‎6. Thulāthiyyāt al-Bukhārī: al-Bukhārī’s Threes
‎7. Degrees of Separation: Link-Themed ʿAwālī Collections
‎8. Categories of Elevation: Muwāfaqāt, Abdāl, Musāwāt, and Muṣāfaḥāt
‎9. Conclusion
‎Chapter 6. Men of Books and Books of Men: The Muʿjam/Mashyakha and Fihrist/Thabat Catalog Genres
‎1. The Mashyakha and Muʿjam al-Shuyūkh Genre
‎2. The Muʿjam/Mashyakha Genre as a Vehicle for Cultivating Elevated Hadith
‎3. The Reception of Mashyakha and Muʿjam al-Shuyūkh Works
‎4. The Fihrist/Thabat Genres
‎5. The Thabat: The Development of the Catalog Genre in the Central and Eastern Islamic Lands
‎6. Conclusion
‎Chapter 7. Hadith Transmission in an Age of Transformation and Reform
‎1. The Last of the Mohicans: Al-Kattānī and the State of Hadith Transmission in the Early-Twentieth Century
‎2. Hadith Transmission and Reform
‎3. Reformers and the Irrationality of Post-Canonical Hadith Transmission
‎4. Transmitting Hadith in the Shifting Political and Cultural Terrain of the Twentieth Century
‎5. Hadith Transmission as a Feature of Late Sunni Traditionalism
‎Bibliography
‎Index

Citation preview

Carrying on the Tradition

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Islamic History and Civilization Studies and Texts

Editorial Board Hinrich Biesterfeldt Sebastian Günther

Honorary Editor Wadad Kadi

volume 160

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ihc

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Carrying on the Tradition A Social and Intellectual History of Hadith Transmission across a Thousand Years

By

Garrett A. Davidson

LEIDEN | BOSTON

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Cover illustration: A likeness of the Prophet Muḥammad’s sandal from Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Maqqarī’s (d. 1041/1632) Fatḥ al-mutaʿal fī madḥ al-naʿāl. MS Or. 2549, Leiden University Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Davidson, Garrett A., author. Title: Carrying on the tradition : a social and intellectual history of Hadith transmission across a thousand years / by Garrett A. Davidson. Description: Boston : Brill, 2020. | Series: Islamic history and civilization. Studies and texts, 0929-2403 ; 160 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020027144 (print) | LCCN 2020027145 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004386914 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004386938 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Hadith–Authorities. | Hadith–Criticism, interpretation, etc. Classification: LCC BP136.42 .D38 2020 (print) | LCC BP136.42 (ebook) | DDC 297.1/252–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020027144 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020027145

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill‑typeface. ISSN 0929-2403 ISBN 978-90-04-38691-4 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-38693-8 (e-book) Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

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For my mother Donna

∵

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Contents Acknowledgements List of Figures xii Introduction

xi

1

1 Reimagining Hadith Transmission in the Shadow of the Canon 5 1 The Ideology of Hadith Transmission 19 2 The Social Logic of Hadith Transmission 21 3 “Nothing Gold Can Stay:” The End of the ‘Golden Age’ of Hadith Transmission 21 4 Elevation and Decline 25 5 Degrees of Separation 33 6 Supernatural Elevation 36 7 Conclusion 45 2 The Post-canonical Evolution of Oral Hadith Transmission 47 1 The Audition Notice 50 2 The Evolving Function of Oral Transmission 61 3 The Age Structure of Oral Transmission 66 4 Hadith Speed Reading 75 5 Further Liberalization of Oral Transmission 79 6 The Ritualization of Oral Hadith Transmission 84 7 Locations of Oral Hadith Transmission 89 8 Musalsalāt: Ritual and Mimesis in Oral Hadith Transmission 9 A Shifting Culture of Oral Hadith Transmission 96

91

3 Non-oral Transmission in the Oral Idiom: The Development and Function of the Ijāza 108 1 Confusion in the Secondary Literature 109 2 The Origins and Early Development of the Ijāza 111 3 The Earliest Attestations of the Ijāza 113 4 The Tide Begins to Turn: The Increasing Acceptance of the Ijāza in the Fourth/Tenth Century 118 5 Al-Khaṭīb and the Expansion of the Ijāza 123 6 The ijāza as a Means of Preserving the Chain of Transmission 127 7 Permission for the Unspecified 129 8 Who Can Receive an Ijāza? 135 9 The Ijāza and the Short Chain of Transmission 138 Garrett Davidson - 978-90-04-38693-8 Downloaded from Brill.com08/04/2020 04:11:08PM via University College London

viii 10 11 12

contents

The Ijāza and the Unborn 141 Ijāzas for All: The Development and Function of the al-Ijāza al-ʿĀmma 143 Conclusion 149

4 The High and the Low: Men, Women and the Social Aspect of Elevation 152 1 The Laity and the Randomness of Longevity and Elevation 162 2 A Medieval Hadith Rock Star: The Extraordinary Case of Abū ʿAbbās al-Ḥajjār 163 3 The Elevated Chain of Transmission and Women Hadith Transmitters 166 4 The Exceptional Case of Karīma al-Marwaziyya 168 5 The Question of Learning among Women Hadith Transmission 174 6 The Case of Women Hadith Transmitters in al-Sakhāwī’s al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ 177 7 Longevity, Elevation and Women Transmitters 186 8 The View of Women’s Hadith Transmission from the Documentary Evidence 193 9 Women and Hadith Transmission beyond the Tenth/Sixteenth Century 199 10 Conclusion 201 5 Brevity, Breadth and Elevation: The Forty-Hadith and ʿAwālī Genres 203 1 The Prophet’s Promise: The Forty-Hadith Genres and Elevation 2 The Forty-Hadith Genre as a Tool for the Cultivation of Elevation 205 3 The Forty-Hadith Genre and Elevation 209 4 Forty Hadith, Forty Shaykhs, Forty Towns 214 5 The ʿAwālī Genre: Compiling and Presenting Elevation 218 6 Thulāthiyyāt al-Bukhārī: al-Bukhārī’s Threes 223 7 Degrees of Separation: Link-Themed ʿAwālī Collections 232 8 Categories of Elevation: Muwāfaqāt, Abdāl, ʿAwālī 235 9 Conclusion 239

204

6 Men of Books and Books of Men: The Muʿjam/Mashyakha and Fihrist/Thabat Catalog Genres 241 1 The Mashyakha and Muʿjam al-Shuyūkh Genre 241 2 The Muʿjam/Mashyakha Genre as s Vehicle for Cultivating Elevated Hadith 248 Garrett Davidson - 978-90-04-38693-8 Downloaded from Brill.com08/04/2020 04:11:08PM via University College London

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3 4 5 6

The Reception of Mashyakha and Muʿjam al-Shuyūkh Works 252 The Fihrist/Thabat Genres 254 The Thabat: The Development of the Catalog Genre in the Central and Eastern Islamic Lands 264 Conclusion 274

7 Hadith Transmission in an Age of Transformation and Reform 276 1 The Last of the Mohicans: Al-Kattānī and the State of Hadith Transmission in the Early-Twentieth Century 276 2 Hadith Transmission and Reform 285 3 Reformers and the Irrationality of Post-Canonical Hadith Transmission 287 4 Transmitting Hadith in the Shifting Political and Cultural Terrain of the Twentieth Century 293 5 Hadith Transmission as a Feature of Late Sunni Traditionalism 296 Bibliography Index 327

305

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Acknowledgements This book was many years in the making and has benefited from the knowledge, insight, and generous assistance of numerous teachers, colleagues, and friends. They include Rodrigo Adem, Joel Blecher, Joe Bradford, Fred Donner, Sefure Davutoglu, Mathew Ingalls, Emin Lelic, Scott Lucas, Hamza Maqbul, Jawad Qureshi, Shaykh Usāma al-Sayyid, Sabine Schmidtke, Ahmed El Shamsy, and Devin Stewart. Many colleagues and friends also took the time to read and provide input on drafts of the manuscript or parts of it. They include Sean Anthony, Jonathan Brown, Mohammad Gharaibeh, Konrad Hirschler, Christopher Melchert, and Mariam Sheibani. My partner Ranā bt. Muḥmmad Saʿīd b. Muḥmmad ʿĀrif al-Mīqātī is always my first reader and carefully reviewed and corrected multiple drafts of this book. I am forever indebted to her for the many hours she spent helping me make this a better book. I am grateful to Teddi Dolls of Brill for her patience with me as I repeatedly delayed the submission of this book. The research for this book took me to numerous libraries, archives, and centers of research. I am grateful to the staff of the al-Azhar library, Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, the Sulaymāniyya, the Topkapi Palace Library, Staatsbibliothek Zu Berlin, Leiden University Library, Yale’s Beinecke, Nadwat al-ʿUlamāʾ in Lucknow, the Royal Ḥasanī Library in Rabat, the National Library of Israel, the Khālidiyya in Jerusalem, and the American University in Beirut. Gabriel Swift of the Princeton University library’s Rare Books and Special Collections deserves special thanks for his help in expediting my research when I was a fellow there. My friend Yūsuf al-Uzbakī, director of the Masjid al-Aqsa library, very generously welcomed me there and has continued to answer questions related to the manuscripts of Jerusalem and beyond. I am grateful to Ḥamza al-Kattānī in Rabat, Bilāl al-Shāwīsh in Beirut, and Nūr al-Ḥasan Rashīd in Kandala, India for giving me access to manuscripts in their rich private libraries. I am indebted to my friend Abū Yaʿqūb ʿAbd al-ʿĀtī al-Sharqāwī of the ILM Institute in Cairo for providing me digital reproductions from his massive collection of digitized manuscripts, and for fielding my many manuscript related questions. Finally, I must mention and thank my family, without their love and support, this book would not have been possible. I extend my sincerest gratitude and affection to my wife Rana, our children Leith and Karima, my parents, Donna, Howard, and Leslie, my brother Jake, my cousins Monica, Jarred, Marissa and Tyler, and Uncle Jeff, Aunt Joanne and Aunt Jane.

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Figures 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

An example of a typical medieval audition notice 57 A late audition notice 98 Notices of silent reading 99 The remains of the Dār al-Ḥadīth al-Kāmiliyya 105 Title folio of a collection of al-Ḥajjār’s hadith with audition notices 166 Karīma al-Marwaziyya’s recension of the Ṣaḥīḥ 173 Audition notices with Zaynab bt. Al-Kamāl in 728/1328 178 Chart showing the relative length of al-Iṣbahānī’s independent isnād 237 ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī in his library 277 Niẓām al-Yaʿqūbī and Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sharqāwī 301 Hadith audition in the Haram al-Sharif 302

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Introduction For more than a century the questions of origins and authenticity have dominated the field of hadith, and studies of hadith transmission have focused almost exclusively on the first three centuries of Islam, after which point the historicity of the hadith corpus is well established and these questions irrelevant. The narrow focus of previous studies belies the fact that hadith transmission did not cease or disappear in the fourth/tenth century following the establishment of the written hadith canon. Nor did hadith transmission simply endure as an archaic tradition in a limited capacity; rather, it thrived and remained a prominent element of Sunni scholarly culture throughout the Muslim world for more than a millennium. It remained such a significant aspect of scholarly culture, in fact, that the historian Muhammad Qasim Zaman would write that hadith transmission was “a function which, more than any other, defined the ʿālim’s vocation.”1 Even today, one can turn on satellite television channels in the Muslim world and watch as clerics recite their personal chains of transmission spanning the generations back to the Prophet.2 Online too one can follow numerous blogs, message boards, as well as Twitter and Facebook accounts dedicated to serving contemporary hadith collectors and transmitters.3 While there is no doubt that hadith transmission endured as an important element of Islamic thought and culture long after canonization, it is equally certain that it did not endure unchanged. Rather, it radically evolved and the ways in which it was conceived and practiced underwent dramatic transformations. Muslim scholars originally developed the chain of transmission as an epistemological tool to establish the attribution of materials transmitted in the oral/aural mode. The establishment of a stable written hadith corpus made this original epistemological function of the chain of transmission obsolete. For many scholars, jurists in particular, the obsolescence of hadith transmission did not pose a problem, but was simply seen as the natural outcome of canonization. Some jurists, in fact, would even insist that as an obsolete tech-

1 Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Religion and Politics Under the Early Abbāsids: The Emergence of the Proto-Sunnī Elite (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 121. 2 See for example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JFnTufPifI&feature=related. Last accessed April, 13, 2014. 3 https://twitter.com/arrewayah. Last accessed April, 13, 2014; https://ar-ar.facebook.com/pag es/‫دار‬-‫الحديث‬-‫الكتانية‬/257787174272056. Last accessed April, 13, 2014; http://isnaduna.blogspot .com/. Last accessed April, 13, 2014.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004386938_002

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introduction

nology hadith transmission should be abandoned. For hadith specialists, however, hadith transmission was more than an outdated scholarly method; it was at the core of their discipline’s culture and identity and abandoning it posed an existential crisis. If they were not the transmitters of hadith, who were they? To defend the continuation of hadith transmission, hadith scholars developed a complex and multifaceted ideology that justified and gave meaning to its preservation. One of the most essential elements of this ideology was to assert that while the original function of hadith transmission had in fact fallen into obsolescence, the chain of transmission was much more than a tool for citing orally transmitted material. The chain of transmission was the tie that bound the community to the Prophet and through him to God Himself. God had chosen the chain of transmission as a means to distinguish the Muslim community from the Jews and the Christians who had received revelation before them, but did not preserve their chains of transmission and as a result had corrupted their revelation and gone astray. If the Muslim community did not maintain its chains of transmission they too would go astray. Employing this and a myriad of other strategies, scholars achieved remarkable success in the defense of hadith transmission; and not only hadith specialists, but scholars of all specialties, continued to engage in the collection and transmission of hadith in the oral/aural idiom as their forefathers had. To serve the reconceptualized functions of hadith transmission, scholars radically reworked the protocols originally developed to govern hadith transmission and developed new criteria for evaluating chains of transmission. This resulted in nothing short of a transformation of the institution and had farreaching and profound manifestations in the social, intellectual, spiritual and ritual realms that have until now remained unexplained and often misunderstood. Multiple new genres of hadith literature were born to serve the post-canonical conceptions and aims of hadith transmission. These genres enjoyed phenomenal and enduring success and eventually grew into a massive body of literature, far larger, in fact, than the literature produced before and during the process of canonization. My survey of the hadith manuscripts held in Egypt’s national library the Dār al-Kutub, one of the largest and most important collections in the world, for instance, reveals that at least a third of the total hadith manuscripts held by the library belong to the various genres of post-canonical hadith transmission. The influence of post-canonical hadith transmission was not limited to its own discipline and its genres, but was pervasive and exerted a pronounced influence on other disciplines and genres as well. This influence is perhaps most readily perceptible in the discipline of history. The post-canonical recon-

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introduction

3

ceptualization of hadith transmission led to the emergence of a unique view of temporality and history based not on the passing of days, years or months, but on the successive acts of hadith transmission, each act of transmission forming a unit of time. This view of temporality deeply colored the discipline of history and the genres of the chronicle and the biographical dictionary, leaving a pronounced mark on both their content and structure. Much of the information included in the biographical units that make up these genres is specific to the concerns of post-canonical hadith transmission. Lists of who a biographee had collected hadith from and who had taken hadith from them, evaluation of the quality of their chains of transmission, as well as dates of transmission and other data specific to hadith transmission are standard features of the genres.4 Even on a structural level many biographical dictionaries were organized chronologically, not based in years but instead according to the generations of hadith transmitters. The rihḷa is another genre that was deeply influenced by hadith transmission, with many authors focusing almost exclusively on descriptions of the hadith transmitters they met on their travels and what they had transmitted from them, as has been recently demonstrated.5 Despite its central place in Muslim scholarly culture and pervasive influence, until now the phenomenon of post-canonical hadith transmission and the vast body of literature it produced has remained terra incognita. The absence of a study on the topic has, unfortunately, resulted in widespread and often egregious confusion regarding hadith transmission in the larger field of the history of Islamic thought and society. Source materials related to post-canonical hadith transmission have consistently been misunderstood and misused, resulting in faulty conclusions on subjects ranging from education to female participation in scholarship to mysticism.6 This study fills this lacuna, providing the first detailed account of the phenomenon of post-canonical hadith transmission. In terms of scope, a longue durée approach is taken to the development of post-canonical hadith transmission in both the intellectual and social realms. This diachronic approach is well suited to a discursive tradition like that of hadith scholarship in which debates are pursued across generations and shifts unfold over the span of many

4 Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī’s (d. 463/1071) Tārīkh madīnat al-Salām, Ibn ʿAsākir’s (d. 571/1176) Tārīkh madīnat Dimashq, al-Dhahabī’s (d. 748/1348) Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ, al-Sakhawī’s (d. 906/1501) al-Dawʾ al-lāmiʿ, Najm al-Dīn al-Ghazzī’s (d. 1061/1651) al-Kawākib al-sāʾira and al-Jabartī’s (d. 1240/1825) ʿAjāʾib al-Athār are but a few examples of this phenomenon. 5 Hourari Touati, Islam and Travel in the Middle Ages, tr. Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2010). 6 See the introduction to Chapter Three, where a number of examples of this are given.

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introduction

centuries. As for geographical scope, the tradition of hadith scholarship was and remains a transnational one. The community of hadith scholars from its inception formed a vast republic of letters and this study draws on sources produced by scholars from all over the Islamic world from West Africa to the Malay archipelago. The body of this book proceeds in three parts. Part One consists of three chapters. Chapter One traces the debates that erupted over the obsolescence of hadith transmission in the late fourth/tenth century in the wake of the establishment of the canon. The development of the ideology that scholars employed to justify and give meaning to the continuation of hadith transmission is traced and examined. Further, this chapter follows the dramatic shift in the criteria used to assess the quality of chains of transmission that would ultimately change the face of the practice of hadith transmission. Chapter Two examines the radical shifts in the practice of oral/aural hadith transmission caused by the transformation of the function of the chain of transmission and the criteria used to assess it. Chapter Three traces the development of the ijāza, a non-oral/aural mode of transmission that was considered suspect by most prior to the establishment of the canon precisely because it was non-oral/aural. From the fourth/tenth century, however, it was adapted to serve the aim of preserving the chain of transmission, eventually becoming an indispensable element of the practice of post-canonical hadith transmission. Chapter Four looks at how these developments manifested themselves in the social realm, with a particular focus on the role of women in hadith transmission. Part Two of the book consists of two chapters and studies a selection of the historically most popular and significant of the genres scholars developed to serve the aims and concerns of post-canonical hadith transmission. Chapter Five studies the development of the forty-hadith genre and the constellation of genres referred to as ʿawālī. These genres focused on the presentation of an author’s most elevated chains of transmission and were both among the most popular literary expressions of the concerns of post-canonical hadith transmission. Chapter Six traces the emergence and evolution of genres in which scholars cataloged and presented the transmitters from whom they had collected as well as the materials they had taken from them, the muʿjam al-shuyūkh/mashyakha genre and the fihrist/thabat. Part Three consists of a single chapter revealing the fate of hadith transmission in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries following the rise of the various Islamic reform movements and radical changes to the social and educational institutions of the majority of the Dār al-Islām.

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chapter 1

Reimagining Hadith Transmission in the Shadow of the Canon According to the traditional narratives, hadith transmission began in the wake of the Prophet Muhammad’s death. The men and women who had known the Prophet narrated to the following generation of believers what they remembered about him and his religion from matters of ritual and theology to details as seemingly banal as how many grey hairs were found in his beard when he died. This process was a natural one; after the Prophet’s death, the men and women who had lived with him conveyed their memories of him on to the next generation of the nascent Muslim community. The second generation of Muslims preserved the memories of the Prophet they received from his companions and in turn narrated them to the next generation, and so on. Within a few generations, this informal process of person-to-person narration is said to have begun to become more formal, and the practice of citing a chain of transmitters appeared. The emergence of the practice of citing a chain of transmission is generally explained as a result of the political and sectarian turbulence that plagued the early community. The prolific transmitter and early authority Ibn Sīrīn (d. 110/729) explains that chains of transmission began to be employed in the context of civil war during which individuals involved in the conflict began to invent and falsely attribute statements to the Prophet in order to bolster their party’s position. As a counter to this problem, according to Ibn Sīrīn, people began to demand that those attributing statements to the Prophet “name their men” and produce a chain of transmission as proof of the attribution to Muḥammad. In the first half of the second/eighth century, however, the citation of a chain of transmission remained somewhat informal, and hadith were often cited through incomplete or partial chains of transmission. It was not until the late second/eighth century, in part due to the influence of the jurist al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820), who privileged hadith with full chains of transmission over all other sources of evidence besides the Quran, that scholars began to insist on the citation of full chains of transmission. Hadith specialists, by this time, were assessing the quality of a hadith primarily based on the strength of its chains of transmission. As a result, travel to seek out the most authoritative transmitters and hear hadith through their personal chains of transmission became part of the ethos of hadith scholars. Entire works would eventually be com-

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004386938_003

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posed expounding the merits of traveling to seek out hadith and lionizing those that did.1 An ambitious hadith scholar might spend a large portion of his early career on the road, traveling the trade routes that crisscrossed the empire seeking out the most esteemed transmitters of hadith. Indeed, the renowned hadith scholar al-Ṭabarānī is reported to have set out on his first journey to hear hadith when he was just fifteen years old and remained on the road for another sixteen years hearing hadith in Syria, Egypt, the Hijaz, Yemen, Iraq, and Iran.2 In order to facilitate this itinerant lifestyle, it would even be advised for the collector of hadith (ṭālib al-ḥadīth) to “wear sandals fashioned from iron.”3 It is not surprising then that the sources contain accounts of itinerant collectors who spent fortunes traveling across the empire to hear hadith.4 By the middle of the third/ninth century, these efforts to collect, preserve, and analyze hadith had grown into a full-fledged movement that has been termed the “ṣaḥīḥ/sunan movement.”5 In the latter half of the third/ninth century, this movement would define the discipline of hadith and create the body of hadith literature that became the canon. Over the course of the fourth/tenth century, as the process of canonization took hold and the stature of the collections that were becoming canon grew, the culture of hadith scholars remained primarily focused on collecting and transmitting in the oral/aural mode. The transmission and collection of hadith at this point included both acquiring chains of transmission to the canonical and extracanonical collections as well as smaller individual collections of particular transmitters’ hadith. Sometime in the fifth/eleventh century, the tension between the growing authority of the written hadith canon, and the practice of collecting and transmitting hadith in the oral/aural mode were arriving at loggerheads. Jurists interested in the hadith as evidence in legislation wanted to harness the authority of the canon as evidence in their work by citing the canon directly without the burden of investing time in the oral/aural transmission of each work of the canon as well as the inconvenience of citing a personal chain of transmission. This desire to cite the canon directly was, how1 Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Riḥla fīt ṭalab al-ḥadīth, ed. Nūr al-Dīn ‘Itr (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub alʿIlmiyya, 1395/1975). 2 Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 16:119; Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn al-Maqdisī, Juzʾ fī al-Dhabb ʿan al-imām al-Ṭabarānī, ed. Niẓām b. Muḥammad al-Yaʿqūbī (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 1430/2009), 3. 3 Al-Ḥākim, Kitāb Maʿrifat ʿulūm al-ḥadīth, ed. al-Sayyid Muʿaẓẓam Ḥusayn (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Tijārī li-l-Ṭibāʿa, n.d.), 9. 4 Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Hādī, Ṭabaqāt ʿulamāʾ al-ḥadīth, ed. Akram al-Būshī and Abrāhīm al-Zayq (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1435/2014), 4:102. 5 Jonathan Brown, Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World (Oxford: One World Publications, 2009), 31.

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ever, in conflict with the transmission-based culture of the hadith scholars, who held that a hadith text only became legally compelling when transmitted through an unbroken personal chain of transmission. For these scholars, books of hadith possessed no inherent authority; the authority of a book could only be activated through reference to an unbroken chain of transmission back to its author or compiler. The influential Persian Shāfiʿī jurist Imām al-Ḥarmayn al-Juwaynī (d. 478/ 1085) was one of the first voices to address the tension between the increasingly independent authority of the hadith canon and the culture of hadith transmission. In his work of hermeneutics and epistemology al-Burhān, he writes, “in my opinion … an independent jurist’s (mujtahid) use of a hadith does not depend on his possessing a personal chain of transmission.”6 He goes on to explain that if a scholar were to say, “I saw this [hadith] in the Ṣaḥīḥ of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī and I am sure that it is part of the text, then whoever hears him say this is obliged to accept this from him.”7 Al-Juwaynī was, of course, aware that this position would be unacceptable to hadith specialists and he preemptively discounts their hypothetical objection, remarking disparagingly, “If, however, what I have said here were to be presented to the hadith specialists they would reject it, because this opinion nullifies the need for [personal] transmission [of the text], when the reliability and authenticity of transmission is established, but the hadith specialists are a party that has no concern with the realities of jurisprudence.”8 On the opposite end of the empire in Spain at roughly the same time al-Juwaynī was working, the Mālikī jurist Abū al-Walīd al-Bājī (d. 474/1081) expresses a similar, if less provocative, view on this problem. He frames his opinion on the issue as a response to the question: if a book is attributed to one of the authorities, such as the Muwaṭṭaʾ of Mālik, or Jāmiʿ al-Thawrī or Kitāb al-Awzāʿī or Kitāb al-Shāfiʿī, can one cite these works and attribute the contents to their authors by saying, for example, Mālik said, without possessing a personal chain of transmission for the work?9 To which al-Juwaynī responds: One must consider the case, if the book is of the books that have become widely-known, such as Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ or the Jāmʿi of al-Thawrī or the

6 Abū Maʿālī al-Juwaynī, al-Burhān fī uṣūl al-fiqh, ed. Ṣalāḥ b. Muḥammad ʿUwayda (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya), 1:249. 7 Ibid., 1:249. 8 Al-Juwaynī, al-Burhān, 1:249. 9 Abū al-Walīd al-Bājī, Kitāb al-Ishāra fī uṣūl al-fiqh, ed. ʿĀdil Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Mawjūd and ʿAlī Muḥammad ʿAwwād (Riyadh: Makatabat Nizār Muṣṭafā al-Bāz, 1418/1997), 161–162.

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books of Rabīʿ, then he may cite them and attribute their contents to the authorities to whom they are attributed as long as the copy is verified and has been read and collated against the copies of scholars. If, however, the book is not widely-distributed nor well-known, then that is not permitted [for him to cite the book] until he acquires a chain of transmission for the book from someone who can reliably attribute the book through a chain of trustworthy transmitters.10 The next generation of jurists, including the highly influential al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111), upheld and advanced their predecessors’ position.11 In fact, this position seems to have become so widely accepted among jurists of this generation that the Baghdadi jurist Ibn Barhān (d. 518/1124) could claim that there was a consensus among jurists that is was permissible to cite a reliable copy without a personal chain of transmission. He is reported to have stated, “All jurists have adopted the position that to use a hadith it is not necessary for one to have heard the hadith through an unbroken chain of transmission. Rather, if one holds a copy of, for example, the Saḥiḥayn, then it is permitted for him to use it even if he has never heard it from an authority.”12 Later scholars would imagine a consensus on this issue having formed even earlier. Al-Suyūṭī, for example, reports that the fifth/eleventh-century Shāfiʿī jurist Abū Isḥāq al-Isfarāyinī (d. 418/1027) already claimed a consensus on this issue.13 We can only speculate whether there was in fact already a consensus among jurists on this issue in the early or late fifth/eleventh or early sixth/twelfth century, as some scholars claimed. There is no doubt, however, that the majority of jurists would ultimately adopt this position. From our modern perspective, deeming the citation of a personal chain of transmission obsolete and unnecessary may seem to be the logical outcome of canonization. With the establishment of a stable written canon, what was the purpose of continued oral/aural transmission? From the perspective of the medieval hadith scholar, however, this defied the established logic of their culture and moreover posed something of an existential threat to their discipline and its norms. The transmission of hadith texts and the maintenance of chains of transmission had been at the core of their discipline from its genesis. The founders and heroes of their

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Al-Bājī, Kitāb al-Ishāra, 162–163. Al-Ghazālī, al-Mankhūl min taʿlīqāt al-uṣūl, ed. Muḥammad Ḥasan Ḥitu (Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, 1400/1970), 269. Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī, Tadrīb al-rāwī fī sharḥ taqrīb al-Nawāwī, ed. ʿIzzat ʿAlī ʿAṭiyya and Mūsā Muḥammad ʿAlī (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub al-Ḥadīthiyya, nd), 1:186. Al-Suyūṭī, Tadrīb al-rāwī, 1:186.

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community were hadith collectors and transmitters as much as scholars. It was central to their ethos as a scholarly culture and community. To allow the use of hadith without the citation of a chain of transmission was essentially to relegate this core element of their scholarly culture to obsolescence. If they were not the collectors and transmitters of hadith, who were they? On the other hand, it was their heroes who had produced the canon, and they above all other groups of scholars revered it and could not deny its authority. The negotiation of these opposing tendencies would take hadith scholars generations to reconcile. Eventually, though, they would develop a complex of concepts that allowed them to both recognize the independent authority of the canon as well as justify and give meaning to continued hadith transmission. This negotiation first begins to emerge in the writings of hadith scholars in the sixth/twelfth century. Perhaps the most audacious and well-known sixth/twelfth-century attempt to address the problem of citing hadith without a personal chain of transmission was proposed by the Andalusian hadith scholar Ibn Khayr al-Ishbīlī (d. 575/1179). Ibn Khayr frames his argument as a response to what he says was a growing trend of scholars, preachers, and laymen referencing hadith without citing their own chains of transmission. To address this perceived problem and compel his contemporaries to cite chains of transmission, Ibn Khayr makes the bold claim that citing a hadith without a chain of transmission was forbidden by scholarly consensus. He writes, “the scholars of religion are in consensus that it is impermissible for a Muslim to say, ‘the Prophet said’ unless he has an unbroken chain of transmission connecting him to that saying.”14 Ibn Khayr thereby accuses anyone who cites a hadith without a chain of transmission of transgressing the sacred law. In spite of his brash claim that citing a hadith without a chain of transmission was a transgression of God’s law, Ibn Khayr recognized that the sheer volume of hadith texts made it impractical, if not impossible, for everyone to sit for an audition of each of them in order to establish the chain of transmission that would allow one to cite their contents. As a solution to this dilemma, Ibn Khayr suggested the use of the license to transmit (ijāza) a non-oral mode of transmission, which is discussed in detail in Chapter Three. The ijāza essentially allowed a scholar to license a person to transmit every text for which they possessed a chain of transmission, thus greatly easing the burden of transmission and making it far more realistic to demand the citation of a chain of transmission. In practice, Ibn Khayr’s suggestion of the ijāza as a solution to the problem was

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Ibn Khayr al-Ishbīlī, Fihrist mā rawāhu ʿan shuyūkhih, eds. Franciscus Codera and J. Ribera Tarrago (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khānjī, 1417/1997), 41.

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widely adopted. His attempt to level a supposed ijmāʿ as a means of coercing his opponents into obtaining and citing chains of transmission, was, however, too radical, abrasive and removed from the scholarly community’s current realities to ever gain much traction and was never adopted by more than a small minority of conservative hadith scholars.15 Rather than attempt to offer a solution to this problem, some sixth/twelfthcentury hadith scholars, including the Syrian hadith scholar and historian Ibn al-Athīr (d. 606/1209), simply accepted an impasse on the issue. In response to the question of whether a hadith one finds in a collection, such as Bukhārī and Muslim, for which he does not have a valid chain of transmission was legally compelling, Ibn al-Athīr writes that if the person who finds the hadith is not qualified to formulate an independent opinion on matters (muqallid) than he must differ to an independent scholar (mujtahid) about the application of the hadith. If he is a qualified independent scholar, then there is a difference of opinion. One party of scholars holds that the hadith is only legally compelling if he has an unbroken chain of transmission for the text. Another party of scholars holds that if a trustworthy person informs one that the copy of the text is reliable, then the text is legally compelling and he may use and apply it.16 While Ibn al-Athīr seems to have seen little possibility for negotiating a solution to this stalemate over the chain of transmission, within half a century of his death Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ would articulate one of the historically most successful strategies for reconciling the conflict between the culture of transmission and the independent authority of the canon. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ begins his treatment of the question of whether a hadith one finds in a reliable copy of a collection is compelling without a personal chain of transmission by noting that many scholars held that such a hadith was not legally compelling.17 For these conservative scholars without a personal chain of transmission connecting one to the compiler of the collection, a hadith simply had no authority. He notes, however, that this is not the only opinion on the issue according to some; al-Shāfiʿī

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Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī, Fahras al-fahāris wa-al-athbāt wa-muʿjam al-maʿājim wa-al-mashyakhāt wa-al-musalsalāt, ed. Iḥsān ʿAbbās (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1402/1982), 1:82; Aḥmad b. ʿAlī b. ʿUmar b. Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAdawī, al-Qawl al-sadīd fī ittiṣāl alasānīd, Qawwala MS 5, Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, Cairo, 8a; al-Kattānī, Fahras al-fahāris, 82; Ismāʿīl al-ʿAjlūnī, Ḥilyat ahl al-faḍl wa-al-kamāl bi-ittiṣāl al-asānīd bi-kumal al-rijāl, ed. Ibrāhīm al-Ḥusayn (Amman: Dār al-Fatḥ, 2009/1430), 37; Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. Ḥajar al-Haytamī, al-Fatāwā al-ḥadīthiyya (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, nd), 63. Ibn al-Athīr, Jāmiʿ al-uṣūl fī aḥādīth al-Rasūl, 11 vols., ed. ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Arnāʾūṭ (Beirut: Maktabat Dār al-Bayān, 1389/1969–1392/1972), 1:88. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ al-Shahrazūrī, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, ed. Nūr al-Dīn ʿItr (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1425/ 2004), 180.

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himself held that such a hadith was legally compelling. Further, a number of the prominent scholars of Shāfiʿī legal theory, including al-Juwaynī, held that as long as one is confident in the reliability of the copy of the text, then it is compelling.18 This, Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ writes, “is the only opinion that can be taken in these latter days for if the chain of transmission were a condition for applying the hadith, then it would be impossible to use the hadith, as it has become infeasible to meet the conditions for transmission in these times.”19 Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, then, accepted that this position was a departure from that of the early hadith scholars, but argues that their position was simply too impractical to be applied in the age of the hadith canon. Further, insisting on maintaining the early hadith scholars’ position was tantamount to preventing large portions of the community from following the Prophet’s example simply because they did not possess personal chains of transmission. Ceding that it was no longer necessary for a scholar to have a personal chain of transmission to be able to cite and act upon a hadith did not mean, however, that Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ was ready to abandon the institution of hadith transmission. Far from it, Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ had developed a justification for the preservation of the chain of transmission that could withstand the admission of its obsolescence. Accepting that times had changed, Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ shifts the terms of the argument, positing that the chain of transmission must be preserved, not because it remained a useful scholarly tool, but because it was a unique trait of the Muslim community through which God had distinguished it from previous communities. This conception of the chain of transmission as a distinguishing feature of the Muslim community was not Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s invention but had been in circulation for at least three centuries. The fourth/tenth-century Sufi scholar Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī (d. 386/996) seems to be the first to count the chain of transmission as one of the things that God had distinguished Muslims from previous religious communities.20 After al-Makkī this idea circulates widely. The renowned Andalusian scholar Ibn Ḥazm (d. 456/1064), for example, refers to this idea as does the influential Persian hadith scholar Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥākim (d. 405/1014).21

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19 20 21

Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ only identifies al-Juwaynī as “one of the realized scholars of al-Shāfiʿī’s legal theory.” He, however, quotes part of the passage from al-Juwaynī cited above in which he preemptively dismisses the opinion of the hadith scholars, suggesting that “If what I have said here were to be presented to the hadith specialists they would reject it.” Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 180. Al-Juwaynī, al-Burhān, 1:249. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 180–181. Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī, Qūt al-qulūb (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Maymaniyya, 1310/1892), 137. Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥākim, al-Mustadrak ʿalā al-Ṣaḥīḥayn, ed. Muṣṭafā ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1990/1411), 1:41.

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The Spanish Mālikī scholar Al-Qāḍī Abū Bakr Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 543/1148), likewise, considered the chain of transmission a unique blessing bestowed on the Muslim community, proclaiming it one of the primary distinctions between Muslims and Christians and Jews. He exhorted his readers of the dangers of leaving the chain of transmission: Beware of following the path of the Jews and Christians and speaking without a chain of transmission, for you will strip yourselves of the blessing God has bestowed upon you, bring blame upon yourselves, and lower your rank, you will be joining a people whom God has cursed and upon whom is His anger. You will be following in their tradition (sunna).22 Roughly a century later, Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ built on this idea, arguing that it was in order to preserve this unique trait of the Muslim community that scholars must continue to transmit hadith. It is to preserve this distinct trait of the community, not for the sake of preserving the hadith itself, that hadith must continue to be transmitted. For, he explains, citing Abū Bakr al-Bayhaqī (d. 458/1065), no one today can transmit a hadith that has not already been preserved, and if one did find a hadith that was not already preserved, it would be rejected, for it is not possible for all of the previous masters to have failed to collect it. Instead, the aim of hadith transmission in this time is “for the chain of transmitters saying ‘he informed us’ and ‘he said to us’ to continue in order that the nobility of this distinct trait of the Muslim community be preserved.”23 The conception of the chain of transmission as a distinct trait of the Muslim community transformed hadith transmission from an artifact of an obsolete scholarly culture into a ritual and act of devotion. By continuing to engage in hadith transmission scholars performed the pious deed of maintaining their connection to the Prophet and an essential distinction between the Muslim community and the Jews and Christians who had not preserved their connections to their Prophets and gone astray as a result. As Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ reiterates throughout his book that the preservation of this divine gift God had bestowed upon the Muslim community was the reason why scholars must continue to transmit hadith.24 The collection and transmission of hadith was thus trans-

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Al-Kattānī, Fahras al-fahāris, 1:80. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 121. The passage that Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ cites from Abū Bakr alBayhaqī can be found in his Manāqib al-Shāfiʿī, ed. Sayyid Ahmad Saqr (Cairo: Dār alTurāth, 1390/1970), 2:321. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 17, 120, 121, 160, 255.

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formed into the noble and pious deed of preserving a distinguishing trait of the community and of “honoring the Prophet.”25 This reconceptualization of the function of hadith transmission was highly successful. After Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, hadith specialists who wrote on the topic would consistently reiterate this idea that the aim of continued hadith transmission was to preserve a defining trait of the Muslim community.26 The concept retained currency as late as the nineteenth century. In British India the scholar and prince consort of Bhopal, Ṣadiq Ḥasan Khān (d. 1307/1890), for instance, invoked the concept and attributed the discord and lack of unity in the community to its failure to maintain its chains of transmission. He writes, “All that can be seen and heard of quarreling, disputation and the excess of gossip among the people of this time who call themselves scholars is a result of the fatal disease of not having a chain of transmission connecting them to the people of hadith.”27 Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s conception of the chain of transmission as an essential trait of the Muslim community was historically one of the most popular concepts developed to support the preservation of hadith transmission, but it was far from the only means scholars developed to justify continued hadith transmis25 26

27

Ibid., 121. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s contemporary, the seventh/thirteenth-century jurist and hadith scholar al-Nawāwī (d. 676/1278), seems to be one of the first to cite Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s position in his reworking of Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s seminal work al-Taqrīb. Al-Nawawī, al-Taqrīb wa taysīr limaʿrifat sunan al-Bashīr al-Nadhīr fī uṣūl al-ḥadīth (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿArabī, 1985/ 1405), 1:52. After al-Nawāwī, this idea is picked up by almost every author who writes in the uṣūḷ al-ḥadīth genre, citing almost the same phraseology with minor variations. For a few examples of this see the work of the eighth century Ibn Jamāʿa (d. 733/1333), alManhal al-rāwī fī mukhtaṣar ʿulūm al-ḥadīth al-nabawī, ed. Muḥyī al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ramaḍān (Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, 1406/1986); the prominent Egyptian ʿUmar b. ʿAlī Ibn al-Mulaqqin (d. 804/1401), al-Muqniʿ fī ʿulūm al-ḥadīth, ed. ʿAbd Allāh b. Yūsuf al-Judayʿ (Riyadh: Dār al-Fawwāz, 1413/1992), 281; al-Ḥāfiẓ al-ʿIraqī’s, al-Taqyīd wa al-īḍāḥ ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Muḥammad ʿUthmān (Medina: al-Maktaba al-salafiyya, 1389/1969), 25; the ninth/fifteenth century Anatolian Hanafī scholar Muḥammad b. Sulaymān al-Kāfiyajī’s alMukhtaṣar fī ʿulūm ahl al-athar, ed. ʿAlī Zuwayn (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Rushd, 1407/1986), 155; al-Sakhāwī’s, al-Ghāya fī sharḥ al-hidāya fī ʿulūm al-riwāya, ed. Abū ʿĀʾish ʿAbd alMunʿim Ibrāhīm (Cairo: Maktabat Awlād al-Shaykh li-l-turāth, 1421/2001), 132; Jalāl alDīn al-Suyuṭī, Tadrīb al-rāwī sharḥ taqrīb al-Nawāwī, ed. Abū Qutayba Naẓr al-Fāriyābī (Riyadh: Dār al-Ṭayba, n.d.), 403; Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī’s (d. 926/1520), Fatḥ al-Bāqī bi-sharḥ Alfiyyat al-ʿIrāqī, ed. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf Humaym (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1422/2002), 128; ʿAbd Allāh b. Sālim al-Baṣrī (d. 1134/1721), al-Imdād fī maʿrifat ʿuluw al-isnād, ed. AlʿArabī al-Dāʾiz al-Firyaṭī (Riyadh: Dār al-Tawḥīd, 1427/2006), 51. Ṣadīq Ḥasan Khān, Silsilat al-ʿasjad fī dhikr mashāyakh al-sanad, tr. Layth Muḥammad Lāl Muḥammad al-ʿUmarī al-Makkī, ed. Muḥammad Ziyād b. ʿUmar al-Takla (Beirut: Dār alBashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 1435/2014), 267.

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sion. The invocation of the precedent of the authorities who founded the discipline was another historically popular means of explaining post-canonical hadith transmission. The statements attributed to the early authorities of the discipline provided a rich mine of material to further justify and give meaning to the preservation of the chain of transmission. In their original context of the late second/eighth and third/ninth centuries, these statements had been used to support the citation of chains of transmission as a scholarly tool—as means of establishing the veracity of a hadith’s attribution to the Prophet. In the post-canonical context, however, scholars invoked the authority of these statements as polyvalent proof-texts unbound by time or context to support the now reconceptualized practice of hadith transmission. The statement attributed to the second/eighth-century authority ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Mubārak, “The chain of transmission is a part of the religion (al-isnād min al-dīn),” is one of the most pervasive examples of this. Muslim originally cited this report in the introductory chapter of his Ṣaḥīḥ. His aim in citing this report was clearly to establish the norms of the discipline underpinning his book. This discipline, its methods and moreover the very conception of the chain of transmission had, of course, radically changed since Muslim described them in his Ṣaḥīḥ in the third/ninth century. Centuries later hadith scholars, however, continued to regularly cite ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Mubārak’s statement as a justification for continued hadith transmission.28 The fact that the chain of transmission no longer served the same function it had when Ibn al-Mubārak declared it “part of the religion,” and Muslim cited him in the introduction of his Ṣaḥīḥ, was irrelevant to these later scholars. The truth of Ibn al-Mubārak’s words was not affected by changes in context. The religion was timeless, and therefore if the chain of transmission had been part of the religion for the founding generations, like Ibn al-Mubārak and Muslim, it must always be so. Ibn al-Mubārak’s statement is but one of a multitude of statements attributed to early authorities later scholars employed as proof-texts to justify continued hadith transmission. Another example of this is the statement attributed to al-Shāfiʿī, “he who collects hadith without a chain of transmission is like the one who collects firewood in the darkness of night, he picks up a viper but does not realize it.”29 Scholars also often cited the statement attributed to Sufyān al-Thawrī (d. 161/778) “the chain of transmission is the weapon of the believer, if he does not have his weapon with him, with what then will 28 29

Al-Qāsim b. Yūsuf al-Tujībī, Barnāmaj al-Tujībī, ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥafīẓ Manṣūr (Tunis: al-Dār al-ʿArabiyya li-l-Kitāb, 1981), 12. Al-Sakhāwī, Fatḥ al-Mughīth, ed. ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Khuḍayr and Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh Āl-Fuhayd (Riyadh: Dār al-Minhāj, 1426/2005), 3:345.

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he fight?”30 The scholars who adduced these proof-texts, of course, recognized that the function and nature of the chain of transmission had changed radically since they were first uttered. The truth of these statements, however, was not affected by the passage of time nor changes in context, they remained valid proof-texts establishing the norms of the tradition. The conception and function of the chain of transmission may have shifted dramatically, but the statements of these early authorities on the chain of transmission continued to ring true for later hadith scholars committed to preserving their scholarly culture. Invoking the authority of communal tradition was another way scholars justified continued hadith transmission. Ibn al-Ṣalāh seems to be one of the first to appeal to this conception of the chain of transmission as a tradition of the scholarly community. He describes the chain of transmission as “a major tradition among the most well established of traditions (sunna bāligha min al-sunan al-muʾakkada).”31 This idea too had considerable currency among later scholars. The prominent Iraqi hadith expert al-Qazwīnī (d. 750/1349), for instance, writes about the chain of transmission, “It is the tradition (sunna) of the imāms of hadith in the ancient as well as modern times.”32 He goes on to write that whoever transmits hadith without chains of transmission, “has deviated from the customs and norms … whoever follows this path is saved and whoever abandons it has deviated, as the pious predecessors have made clear in the books on the nobility of the people of hadith and the traditions (sunan) of hadith collecting and transmission.”33 This appeal to the authority of communal tradition would remain common in later centuries. Four centuries after al-Qazwīnī, the prominent Damascene scholar Ismāʿīl al-ʿAjlūnī (d. 1162/1749) justified writing a compilation of his own chains of transmission stating that it was, “the custom of the people of hadith in ancient times and modern.”34 The famous twelfth/eighteenth-century polymath Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī (d. 1205/ 1790) would add a sectarian nuance to this idea by making the chain of transmission not only “a tradition among the most well established of traditions,” but more specifically a tradition of the “the saved and blessed sect.”35 Here 30

31 32 33 34 35

Ibid., 3:345; al-ʿAjlūnī, Ḥilyat ahl al-faḍl, 38; Ibn Khayr al-Ishbīlī, Fihrist, 14; Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar al-Kattānī, Fihrist Jaʿfar b. Idrīs al-Kattānī, ed. Ḥamza al-Kattānī (Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 1420/2004), 156. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 255. ʿUmar b. ʿAlī al-Qazwīnī, Mashyakhat al-Qazwīnī, ed. ʿĀmir Ḥasan Ṣabrī (Beirut: Dār alBashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 1426/2005), 80. Al-Qazwīnī, Mashyakhat al-Qazwīnī, 80. Al-ʿAjlūnī, Ḥilyat ahl al-faḍl, 37. Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī, al-Murabbā al-Kābulī fī-man rawā ʿan al-Shams al-Bābilī with Tha-

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al-Zabīdī refers to the well known hadith in which the Prophet foresees the Muslim community splitting into seventy-three sects, only one of which will attain salvation, thus associating hadith transmission with the prophesized saved sect. The hadith, of course, wielded more authority than any other source besides the Quran and scholars also interpreted the Prophet’s words to support continued hadith transmission, thereby investing the tradition with a further layer of sacrality. The hadith “May God brighten the face of the one who hears my words and preserves them until he transmits them to those who did not hear them” is a particularly prominent example of this use of a hadith. From as early as the fifth/eleventh century, scholars like al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī counted this prophetic supplication for hadith transmitters among the special merits of the “people of hadith (aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth).”36 From as early as the sixth/twelfth century, scholars regularly cited their desire to be blessed through inclusion in the Prophet’s supplication as motivation for engaging in hadith transmission. The eighth/fourteenth-century Valencian hadith scholar al-Tujībī (d. 730/1329) illustrates this application of the hadith well; after citing this hadith as the reason he compiled his personal chains of transmission he writes, “all people of transmission and the chain of transmission hope to be included in this blessed supplication, may God include us in it through our sincerity and pure intentions.”37 This hadith, then, added a further layer of meaning to the understanding of hadith transmission, transforming it into an act of pious hope for the Prophet’s supplication and blessing. It meant that those who engaged in hadith transmission could imagine themselves not only preserving a unique trait of the Muslim community and upholding the tradition of the revered forefathers of their discipline, but through the lens of this hadith they could imagine themselves entering the blessed ranks of those for whom the Prophet had supplicated.38 The Prophet’s supplication to brighten the faces of those who transmitted his words was understood, of course, to be far more profound and enduring than its literal meaning.39 For some, like the prominent hadith commentator Mullā ʿAlī al-Qārī (d. 1014/1605), though the merits of hadith col-

36 37 38 39

bat Shams al-Dīn al-Bābilī, ed. Muḥammad b. Nāṣir al-ʿAjmī (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir alIslāmiyya, 1425/2004), 176. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Sharaf aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth, ed. Muḥammad Saʿīd Khaṭṭī Ughlī (Ankara: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Sunna al-Nabawiyya, n.d.), 1:17. Al-Tujībī, Barnamāj al-Tujībī, 12–14. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Khalīl al-ʿAlāʾī, Ithārat al-fawāʾid, ed. Marzūq b. Hayyās Al-Marzūqī (Medina: Maktabat al-ʿUlūm wa al-Ḥikam, 1425/2004), 76–79. Al-Suyūṭī, Miṣbāh al-zujāja sharḥ Sunan Ibn Mājah in Sharḥ Sunan Ibn Mājah majmūʿ min thalāthat shurūḥ (Karachi: Qadīmī Kutub Khāna, n.d.), 1:21.

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lection and transmission were many, to be included in this supplication of the Prophet and receive its blessings was the only reason one needed to transmit hadith.40 The hadith, “O God be merciful to my successors (khulafāʾī). It was said, ‘who are your successors o Messenger of God?’ Those who come after me and transmit my hadith and my sunna and teach it to people” is another hadith commonly cited as justification for the continued practice of hadith transmission.41 Scholars regularly cited the pious wish for inclusion in the Prophet’s invocation of mercy for the transmitters of hadith as their motivation for transmitting hadith.42 The equation of the transmitters of hadith with the caliphs of the Prophet, moreover suggests that, unlike the political leadership of the caliphate that was widely perceived to have become corrupt following the idealized period of the rightly guided caliphs, the caliphate of the collectors and transmitters of hadith lives on. The transmitters of hadith were the true heirs and representatives of the Prophet. His words that they carried and transmitted were the proof of their inheritance. According to al-Suyūṭī, this is why hadith scholars have historically given the greatest scholars among them the title “commander of the faithful (amīr al-muʾminīn),” the same title, of course, given to the caliph.43 Understandings of hadith transmission continued to evolve and later generations added yet further elements to the already complex kaleidoscope of ideas through which hadith transmission was seen and understood. One of the most significant of these was the conception of the chain of transmission as a conduit for the spiritual charisma (baraka) of the Prophet and the other great men of the chains of transmission. Much in the same way that Sufis viewed the initiatic chain of Sufi masters, connecting oneself to the end of a chain of transmission put one in contact with this baraka, and from at least as early as the eighth/ fourteenth century we find numerous hadith scholars explaining their engagement in hadith transmission “for the sake of baraka (tabarrukan).”44

40 41 42 43 44

Mullā ʿAlī b. Ṣulṭān al-Qārī, Marqāt al-mafātịh sharḥ Mishkāt al-maṣābīh (Beirut: Dār alFikr, 1422/2002), 1:308. Al-Tujībī, Barnāmaj al-Tujībī, 12. Al-Tujībī, Barnāmaj al-Tujībī, 12. Al-Qāsimī, Qawāʿid al-taḥdīth min funūn muṣṭalaḥ alḥadīth, ed. Muḥammad Bahjat al-Bayṭār (Cairo: ʿĪsā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1961), 48. Al-Suyūṭī, Tadrīb al-rāwī, 2:566. Ibn al-Najjār, Dhayl Tārīkh Baghdād, in Tarīkh Baghdād wa dhuyūlihi, ed. Muṣṭafā ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya), 15:291; ʿAbd al-Khāliq b. ʿAli al-Mizjājī, Nuzhat riyāḍ al-ijāza, ed. Muṣṭafā ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Khaṭīb and ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad al-Ḥabashī al-Yamanī (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1418/1997), 82, 120; al-Sakhāwī, Fatḥ al-Mughīth, 1:35; ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī, Fahras al-fahāris, 2:765; Mashyakhat Shuhda, 154; Al-Safadī,

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Another understanding of the chain of transmission drew inspiration from the Arab and Islamicate interest in genealogy. Some scholars would draw a parallel between the chain of transmission and one’s physical lineage, explaining, “A person’s masters are his fathers in religion, and a connection between him and the Master of the universe.”45 One’s ancestral lineage established his legitimacy and belonging in a particular human community, connecting him to the founder of his family or tribe. The chain of transmission, on the other hand, established one’s religious legitimacy, establishing one’s place in a chain of masters and the community of scholars and transmitters of sacred knowledge. Moreover, through this chain of masters, one was connected to the Prophet and through him to God. In this vein, the ninth/fifteenth-century hadith master Ibn Ḥajar is reported to have said, “chains of transmission are the lineages of books.”46 Building on this genealogical analogy, the famous early nineteenthcentury West African scholar and activist ʿUthmān b. Fūdī (Usman dan Fodio) wrote that through a chain of transmission “an individual who lacked descent from the Prophet could establish a kind of paternity, which was closer and even more dignified than the nobility provided by birth.”47 For while one’s physical ancestors bore them into the life of bodies and blood, one’s ancestors through transmission bore one into the world of knowledge and religion.48

45 46 47

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ʿAyān al-ʿaṣr, ed. ʿAli Abū Zayd, Maḥmūd Sālim Muḥammad (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr al-Muʿāṣir, 1418/1998), 5:212; Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Zarkashī, al-Nukat ʿalā Muqaddimat Ibn alṢalāḥ, ed. Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn b. Muḥammad Balā Furayj (Riyadh: Aḍwāʾ al-Salaf 1419/1998), 3:514; Ibn Kathīr, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyīn, ed. Aḥmad ʿUmar Hāshim (Cairo: al-Maktaba alThaqāfiyya al-Dīniyya, 1413/1993), 1:692; Muḥammd b. Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Dimashqī, al-Radd al-wāfir, ed. Zuhayr al-Shāwīsh (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1393/1973) 1:120; Aḥmad b. Ibrāhīm Sibṭ Ibn al-ʿAjamī, Kunūz al-dhahab fi tārīkh Ḥalab, ed. Shawqī Shughath Fāliḥ al-Bakūr, (Aleppo: Dār al-Qalam, 1417/1996), 1:236; Ibn ʿAqīla, al-Fawāʾid al-jalīla ilā musalsalāt Ibn ʿAqīla, ed. Muḥammad Riḍā (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 1421/200), 142; Muḥammad b. Jābir al-Wādī Āshī, Barnāmaj al-Wādī Āshī, ed. Muḥamad Maḥfūẓ (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1400/1980), 99. Al-Baṣrī, al-Imdād, 52; al-Sakhāwī, Fatḥ al-Mughīth, 3:258; al-ʿAjlūnī, Ḥilyat ahl al-faḍl, 38. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Mubārakfūrī, (Beirut: Dār Iḥyā al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, n.d.) 1:1. Stefan Reichmuth, “Murtaḍa al-Zabīdī (1732–91) and the Africans: Islamic Discourse and Scholarly Networks in the Late Eighteenth Century,” in The Transmission of Learning in Islamic Africa, ed. Scott S. Reese (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 121–153. Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar al-Kattānī, Fihrist Jaʿfar al-Kattānī, 157.

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The Ideology of Hadith Transmission

In his masterful study of orality in Palestinian Judaism, Martin Jaffee posits a theory of oral tradition that is helpful in understanding post-canonical hadith transmission.49 Jaffee posits that any tradition of orally transmitted literature has three analytically distinct aspects. The first of these is the textual body itself, that is the texts that a given society has preserved and chosen for continued transmission, which in this case is the hadith corpus. The second necessary aspect of an oral-literary tradition is the complex of social practices that are instituted to govern the transmission of texts, in our case, this corresponds to the protocols of hadith transmission that are discussed in Chapters Two and Three. The third aspect of oral tradition is the ideology that undergirds the tradition. This aspect differs from the first two in that it is not necessary to the existence of an oral tradition. This ideology of orality emerges only in settings in which the oral transmission of texts has become crucial to “some sort of social undertaking that distinguishes the bearers of tradition from those who do not bear it.”50 These ideological formations, Jaffee writes, “will constitute part of the rationale for sustaining the particular life of the community, even as they explain and defend the distinctive orality of the tradition.”51 The various manifestations of the above outlined conceptions and justifications of continued hadith transmission formed precisely this kind of ideology of orality. Deployed by hadith scholars in defense of hadith transmission and the chain of transmission this complex of ideas can be referred to as the ideology of the chain of transmission. This ideology was not an entirely coherent whole but was a composite made up of a variety of elements and layers. The emphasis and alignment of these different elements could vary from individual to individual. Over time new layers were added to the composite, but in its various manifestations and alignments, this material formed an ideology through which the chain of transmission became something much more profound than a scholarly tool that had fallen into obsolescence. This ideology transformed hadith transmission and the chain of transmission into a sacred and transcendent institution. Hadith transmission became an elaborate, multifaceted act of pious devotion, which guarded the community against falling into error. The Prophet’s timeless words encouraged hadith transmission and promised the Prophet’s prayers for those who engaged in it. There was no better reason 49 50 51

Martin Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism 200 BCE–400 CE (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). Ibid., 10. Ibid., 10.

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to engage in hadith transmission than to piously follow the Prophet’s recommendation and hope to be included in his supplications for the transmitters of hadith. This ideology posited that the chain of transmission was a unique blessing that God had bestowed upon the Muslim community. No other community that had received revelation before could still claim to have an unbroken connection to their Prophets. This singular blessing God had bestowed on the Muslim community must be preserved, lest they fall into corruption like those communities that came before them. Conceiving of the chain of transmission in these terms made the preservation of this distinct trait of the Muslim community a sacred duty. Indeed, according to some it was a communal obligation ( farḍ kifāya), that is to say, that some elements of the community are obligated to engage in hadith transmission in order for the obligation to be lifted from the entire community.52 It was the noble duty of the hadith collectors and transmitters to uphold this communal obligation; if it were not for their performing this sacred duty, the entire community would fall into the sin of failing to meet a communal obligation. The upholding of tradition comprised another element of this ideology. The chain of transmission was a part of the tradition of the people of hadith and was established by numerous statements of the righteous founders of the community. These texts were not understood to be limited to a particular context, but were timeless and were as applicable to later members of the hadith community as they were to those who originally received them. Following the timeless words of the early masters and upholding the tradition that they encouraged was an act of piety. The righteous founders of the hadith tradition were to be emulated even if the utility of hadith transmission was no longer apparent. A mystic understanding of the chain of transmission added a further layer to this ideology. Centuries after the Prophet’s death, the chain of transmission gave the hadith collector the opportunity to come into contact with his mystical charisma. It functioned as a kind of sacred relic that allowed one to span the centuries that separated him or her from the Prophetic era and connect with its spiritual power. Further layers of understanding could and would continue to be added, giving the ideology further depth and complexity, but all of these layers offered a rationale for the continuation of hadith transmission and the preservation of the chain of transmission. Together they formed an ideology that sustained the life of the chain of transmission and the community of transmitters. 52

ʿAli al-Qārī, Sharḥ Nukhbat al-fikr, ed. Muḥammad Nizār Tamīm and Hushaym Nizār Tamīm (Beirut: Dār al-Arqam, 1415/1995), 617; Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar al-Kattānī, Fihrist Jaʿfar al-Kattānī, 57.

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The Social Logic of Hadith Transmission

Underneath the spiritual and intellectual justifications scholars put forward to justify and explain the continuation of hadith transmission, there was an underlying social logic that fuelled its continuation. Transmission was no longer about access to information as it had originally been; the creation of a widely accessible canon had made this aspect of hadith collection and transmission obsolete, but the hierarchal aspect of hadith transmission that had been central to the discipline since its inception persevered. Hadith collection and transmission remained a means through which scholars competed against each other and established their places in the hierarchy of their field. It was a means scholars used to distinguish themselves from their peers and inferiors. The quality and breadth of their chains of transmission functioned as a species of social capital and was central to the established social hierarchy of their discipline. A scholar who possessed elevated chains of transmission was considered superior to and had an advantage over one who did not. A hadith collector who possessed a valuable and broad network of chains of transmission gained the respect of his peers and would be sought out by students and collectors of hadith. Conversely, possessing inferior chains of transmission could be grounds for criticism and was a “boil on the face of a hadith scholar.”53

3

“Nothing Gold Can Stay:” The End of the ‘Golden Age’ of Hadith Transmission

The reconceptualization of hadith transmission resulted in significant shifts in the protocols that governed it, as well as dramatic changes in the criteria used to assess the quality of chains of transmission. The protocols that came to govern hadith transmission first began to be articulated in the third/ninth century. Scholars began to analyze and state in the form of protocols the methods of hadith transmission and criticism they determined were first employed by the great collectors of hadith. The aim of these protocols was to provide rules for the uniform and accurate citation of hadith as well as to provide guidelines for the criticism of hadith and their transmitters. These protocols outlined a wide array of issues, reflecting the ideals and concerns of hadith scholarship

53

Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Jāmiʿ li-akhlāq al-rāwī wa ādāb al-sāmiʿ, ed. Maḥmūd al-Ṭaḥḥān (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Maʿārif, 1403/1989), 123.

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of the second/eighth and third/ninth centuries, namely the accurate preservation, transmission and authentication of hadith. The formation of a corpus of hadith widely geographically distributed and considered dependable had, however, rendered the protocols related to accurate transmission antiquated and essentially obsolete. Continued hadith transmission was not intended to act as a guard against corruption of hadith, as it once had. Later scholars would estimate that this shift took place sometime between the end of the third/ninth century and the turn of the fifth/eleventh century. This was a dividing point after which transmitter criticism was no longer useful for establishing the accuracy of hadith, because no transmitter after this point would stand up to the methods employed by the early critics. Commenting on transmitters after the third/ninth century, al-Dhahabī writes: If I had indulged in criticizing these types, very few would be deemed without flaw, because the majority of these transmitters do not know what they transmit and do not understand the discipline of hadith.54 Al-Dhahabī’s contemporary Abū ʿAmr Ibn al-Murābiṭ (d. 752/1355) had a slightly more optimistic view of the history of hadith and considered the turn of the fifth/eleventh century as the end of meaningful transmission.55 Ibn alMurābiṭ’s view seems to conform more to historical reality, considering that scholars like al-Ṭabarānī (d. 360/970) continued to compile hadith collections that were important for later scholars well into the middle of the fourth/tenth century. There can be no doubt though that the nature of hadith transmission was already changing by the turn of the fourth/tenth century. Writing from the perspective of several centuries, scholars like al-Dhahabī and alMurābit differed on when exactly this change took place, but they agreed that the emergence of the hadith canon brought about a fundamental shift in the nature of hadith transmission, creating two distinct periods in the history of hadith transmission. Later scholars would refer to the period of early meaningful hadith transmission and transmitter criticism as “the age of transmission (ʿaṣr al-riwāya).”56 This “age of transmission” was the golden age of hadith, the

54 55 56

Al-Dhahabī, Mizān al-Iʿtidāl fī naqd al-rijāl, ed. ʿAli Muḥammad al-Bajāwī (Beirut: Dār alMaʿrifa, 1382/1963), 1:4. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Iʿlān bi-al-tawbīkh li-man dhamm al-tārīkh, ed. Franz Rosenthal (Beirut: n.d.), 92. Muḥammad b. ʿUthmān b. Maṭar Āl Maṭar, ʿIlm al-rijāl nashʾatuhu wa taṭawwuruhu min al-qarn al-āwwal ilā nihāyat al-qarn al-tāsiʿ (Riyadh: Dār al-Hijra, 1417/1996), 46.

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age of the titans that had produced the canon. Upon the close of this golden age, application of the rigorous transmitter criticism that it had produced was pointless. As with so many issues in the history of hadith, it seems that Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ first gave clear voice to how this shift in the nature of hadith transmission affected the protocols that governed it. After describing in depth the many conditions a transmitter must meet for his transmission to be acceptable, as well as the various flaws that could render a transmitter unacceptable, he remarks, “In these latter times people have abandoned all of the conditions for transmitters and shaykhs of hadith we have elucidated above.”57 He explains that scholars have abandoned attempting to apply the early conditions for transmitters due to the impossibility of any moderns fulfilling them.58 The deterioration of successive generations of transmitters to the point where it had become impossible to apply the early hadith scholars’ standards of criticism, however, is not bemoaned by Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, because the function of hadith transmission had changed. Referring again to the idea of the chain of transmission as a unique trait of the Muslim community he comments on the degeneration of transmitters: The aim of hadith transmission through unbroken chains of transmission, in our time and for a long time before this time, is not to preserve that which is transmitted. Indeed, for these chains of transmission are not free from transmitters who are incompetent and lack accuracy and precision, rather in this age, the aim of hadith transmission is the preservation of the chain of transmission.59 Because the aim of hadith transmission was no longer the preservation of hadith, which was thought to be guaranteed by the canon, but instead to preserve the chain of transmission for its own sake, there was no longer a need for the rigorous conditions that early hadith scholars developed for hadith transmitters. The only conditions that should be applied to transmitters in latter time are those conditions that help preserve the chain of transmission.60

57 58 59

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Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-Ḥadīth, 120. Ibid., 120. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, Ṣiyānat Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim min al-ikhlāl wa al-ghalaṭ wa ḥimāyatuhu min alisqāṭ wa al-saqaṭ, ed. Muwaffaq ʿAbd Allāh ʿAbd al-Qādir (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1408/1987), 117. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, Maʿrifat ʿulūm al-Ḥadīth, 120. In his translation of Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s book Eerik Dickinson mistranslates this passage, translating “rāwī” as teacher. The word “rāwī” can be

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Towards this aim, he writes, it is enough for a transmitter to be a sane adult Muslim who is not a known dissolute or idiot.61 Regarding the various protocols and guidelines concerned with the accuracy of transmitters, Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ writes, “As for the accuracy of the transmitter, it is enough that his audition of the text (samāʿ) is documented in the handwriting of a reliable person and that his copy of the text conforms to that of the transmitter from whom he heard it.”62 The audition notice Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ mentions here will be discussed in detail in Chapter Two, but what Ibn alṢalāḥ is referring to here is the practice of having a registrar record the names of the attendees present at a reading of a hadith text. It was the existence of such an audition notice, not the individual auditor’s trustworthiness and reliability that established them as a reputable transmitter of the text being audited. This was essentially a declaration of the end of rigorous transmitter criticism. The numerous conditions for transmitters that were developed by earlier generations of hadith scholars and critics had been reduced to just four: 1) that he or she be a Muslim, 2) adult of sound mind, 3) that he or she not be an open profligate, and 4) that a reliable audition notice establishes his or her having heard the text from a transmitter. Although Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ was, no doubt, articulating an existing reality—he appears to be the first to do so—marking a shift in the writings of hadith scholars on the issue. After Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ the majority of scholars who commented on the conditions of transmitters and their criticism would agree that meaningful hadith criticism had ended in the fourth/tenth century. A century and a half after Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, al-Suyūṭī would explain the end of transmitter criticism this way: Transmitter criticism was only made permissible in the first era when hadith was taken from the breasts of scholars not from the pages of books. This was necessary to defend the hadith and to know which reports and hadith are acceptable and which reports are rejected. As for in this time, the reliance is on the books of hadith.63

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translated as narrator or transmitter, but not teacher. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, An Introduction to the Science of Hadith, trans. Eerik Dickinson (Reading: Garnet Publishing, 2006), 91. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 120. Ibid., 120. ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Laknawī, al-Rafʿ wa al-takmīl fī al-jarḥ wa al-taʿdīl, ed. ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Abū Ghudda (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 1425/2004), 65.

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Here al-Suyūṭī is alluding to the idea that transmitter criticism is a kind of backbiting that is unlawful without justification. He explains that as a form of backbiting, it was only made permissible by the dire need to use it as a tool to establish the reliability of hadith. The early hadith critics had indeed spent considerable energy arguing for the permissibility of criticizing transmitters for this very reason. According to al-Suyūṭī, however, in latter times scholars no longer rely on transmitters but on the written hadith corpus, therefore since the need that originally made transmitter criticism lawful was no longer present, it was no longer permissible for a scholar to engage in rigorous transmitter criticism. The only criticism of transmitters that is permissible after the turn of the fourth/tenth century is to say without going into detail that a person is flawed or that there is a problem with their chain of transmission.64 To go beyond this, he writes, is to engage in the unlawful slander of a Muslim.65 Just because scholars theoretically held that transmitter criticism was no longer useful does not mean that they did not occasionally engage in it. Generally speaking, however, scholars observed the theoretical end of meaningful hadith transmission. The end of meaningful transmitter criticism seems to have had the effect Ibn alṢalāḥ intended it to: it opened the way for a variety of people to engage in hadith transmission who would never have stood up to the old rigorous criticism developed in the third/ninth century, this topic is explored in Chapter Four.

4

Elevation and Decline

One of the most important developments related to the shift in the conceptualization of hadith transmission and the emergence of the ideology employed to sustain it was a radical shift in how the quality and desirability of a chain of transmission was assessed. Since the earliest days of hadith transmission, hadith collectors considered the short chain of transmission, referred to in the nomenclature of the hadith scholars as an elevated (ʿālī) chain, a mark of quality. The fewer links in the chain were generally thought to allow for fewer possibilities for errors in transmission. The early hadith critics recognized that the shortest chain was not, of course, always stronger or more accurate than 64 65

Al-Laknawī, al-Rafʿ wa al-takmīl, 65. ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Laknawī notes that for this reason Ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd (d. 702/1303) censured Ibn al-Samʿānī (d. 562/1166) for criticizing certain poets in detail for their immoral behavior in his biographical dictionary because they were not transmitters and thus criticizing them served no purpose and was prohibited. Al-Laknawī, al-Rafʿ wa al-takmīl, 65.

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a longer one.66 Nevertheless, the rarity of circumstances and luck that were involved in the creation of a short chain of transmission gave it an allure that could cause a collector to prefer it to a longer, but stronger chain of transmission. For a truly short chain of transmission to be created fate had to conspire for one to receive a hadith from a transmitter at a relatively young age and then survive long enough to outlive the majority of his or her peers. At the height of the third/ninth-century movement of intense hadith analysis and criticism that produced the hadith canon the desire for a short chain of transmission to outweigh concerns for accuracy and authenticity seems to have been rare; but even during this golden age of hadith the desirability of the short chain of transmission could prove too powerful to resist. In his letter to the people of Mecca describing the methodology he employed in his canonical hadith collection al-Sunan, Abū Dawūd al-Sijistānī (d. 275/889) notes that in roughly ten cases when he had two chains of transmission for a hadith, one stronger and the other shorter, he cited the hadith through the shorter chain of transmission.67 Over the course of the fourth/tenth century, as the processes of canonization took hold and scholars’ confidence in the stability of the hadith corpus grew, desires for short chains of transmission were increasingly indulged. Growing faith in the canon resulted in a waning of concern for preservation and authenticity that had characterized third/ninth-century hadith scholarship. Increasingly, scholars felt confident that the hadith corpus was collected and preserved, and as such they could relax the application of the rigorous methods developed to ensure accurate preservation. While the rigors previously applied to hadith transmission were being relaxed, interest in short chains of transmission and their rarity persisted, and hadith collectors and transmitters increasingly gave in to their interest in short chains of transmission. This shift gradually led to the short chain of transmission becoming the primary measure by which the quality of chains of transmission was judged. More and more, scholars and collectors of hadith vied to collect the rarest and shortest chains of transmission. One of the more tangible results of this shift in concerns was the emergence of new genres of hadith literature reflective of scholars’ increased emphasis on short chains of transmission. Just as

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ʿUbayd Allāh b. ʿAmr (101/720–181/797), for example, is reported to have said, “A hadith with a long but sound isnād is better than a hadith with a short but weak isnād.” Ibn Abī Hātim al-Rāzī, Kitāb al-Jarḥ wa al-taʿdīl, ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Yaḥyā al-Muʿallimī alYamānī (Hyderabad: Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif al-ʿUthmāniyya, 1371/1952–1373/1953), 1:24. Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī, Risālat Abī Dawūd ilā ahl Makka, ed. Muḥammad al-Ṣabbāgh (Beirut: al-Dār al-ʿArabiyya, 1405/1984), 23.

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in the third/ninth century, scholars’ interest in accurate preservation of hadith produced the Saḥīḥ and Sunan genres to present the hadith they considered the most authentic and well preserved, in the fourth/tenth-century, scholars began to produce works reflective of their growing interest in short chains of transmission. By the middle of the fourth/tenth century, scholars had produced several distinct genres in order to present their short chains of transmission as will be discussed in detail in Chapter Five. Simultaneously scholars were beginning to justify their increasing focus on short chains of transmission in theoretical terms. Abū Muḥammad al-Rāmhurmuzī’s (d. 360/975) seminal manual outlining the norms and standards of the discipline of hadith, al-Muḥaddith al-fāṣil bayn al-rāwī wa al-sāmiʿ, contains one of the earliest extended discussions of the increased focus on elevation.68 This discussion reveals that there was significant tension among scholars over the increasing centrality of the short chains of transmission. Al-Rāmhurmuzī opens his discussion by citing a number of reports demonstrating that early hadith authorities appreciated short chains of transmission and that they traveled in order to acquire them. In spite of the clear precedent of the early authorities, al-Rāmhurmuzī notes that some of his contemporaries questioned the continued virtue of seeking out short chains of transmission. Some of these scholars, he explains, held that the longer chain of transmission was actually more virtuous because it required more effort for the scholar to identify and assess its more numerous transmitters and therefore earned the scholar a greater reward with God.69 Other of al-Rāmhurmuzī’s contemporaries had a more fundamental problem with the continued focus on short chains of transmission and denounced it as a waste of time and energy. He quotes “one of the later jurists” attacking contemporary scholars’ focus on short chains of transmission arguing that they had “turned the mandatory seeking of knowledge into wandering and roaming through the land in order to collect reports of no benefit and narrations that are of no use.”70 This unnamed critic here points out the fact that by the mid-fourth/tenth century, hadith collectors were no longer collecting hadith to preserve them like their predecessors had, because by this time there were no hadith that had not already been collected and widely-circulated, instead collectors traveled in order to hear hadith through short and prestigious chains of transmission. According to this critic’s opinion, such travel served no valid purpose and had no justification in the sacred law. Not only did it have no virtue, but by traveling 68 69 70

Al-Rāmhurmuzī, al-Muḥaddith al-fāṣil bayna al-rāwī wa al-wāʿī, ed. Muḥammad ʿAjjāj alKhaṭīb (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1404/1983), 216. Ibid., 216. Ibid., 217.

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and leaving their families for no clear benefit, hadith collectors committed the grave sin of neglecting their families and dependents. … [by travelling to collect hadith with short chains of transmission] they rush into sin by failing to uphold the rights their dependents have upon them and by being undutiful to their parents. They thereby forbid themselves the pleasure of the company of their children and families, but they are pleased with this state and are thus deprived of the pleasure of this life and ensure that they will be punished in the hereafter. They are in a state of confusion like that of cattle.71 To respond to this scathing critique of the pursuit of elevation al-Rāmhurmuzī cites a lengthy passage attributed to an anonymous “opponent of this opinion.” This unnamed proponent of elevation, who was perhaps al-Rāmhurmuzī himself, accuses the opponents of continued hadith collection of objecting to the pursuit of elevation because they “feared the fatigue caused by the seeking of knowledge.”72 They criticized the hadith scholars’ interest in elevation because they were “perplexed by and incapable of understanding prophetic reports, had no knowledge of transmitters, and were confused by the subtilties in chains of transmission and transmitter criticism.”73 Moreover, he claims that their opposition was due to their “preference for inactivity and love of leisure” and further because they have “become accustomed to indulging their desires and competing in sin and the vanities of this world.”74 This unnamed proponent goes on to characterize the opponents of hadith collection as worldly, of currying the favors of the rulers, and total dependence on the scholars of hadith for knowledge of the sunna. If they have any knowledge of hadith at all it is from books that others compiled and they simply purchased. He closes by likening them to donkeys going in circles around the mill.75 This unnamed hadith scholar’s vitriolic response to the criticism of his discipline’s focus on elevated chains of transmission may be amusing in its original rhymed prose, but it does not address the fundamental criticism leveled against it, namely that it was antiquated and served no useful purpose. Although it does not address the content of the criticism, the impassioned nature of this reaction reflects how central the short chain of transmission had become to 71 72 73 74 75

Al-Rāmhurmuzī, al-Muḥaddith al-fāṣil, 217. Ibid., 217. Ibid., 217. Ibid., 217. Ibid., 217.

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the culture of hadith scholars. Not only was it central to many of its cultural practices and products, but it was also fundamental to the social logic of the culture of hadith collectors and transmitters. The short chain of transmission was a means for scholars to distinguish themselves from their peers, nullifying its value would upset this social logic and economy. A more reasoned justification of the focus on short chains of transmission was advanced a generation after al-Rāmhurmuzī by the Persian hadith scholar al-Hākim al-Naysābūrī (d. 405/1014) in his work Maʿrifat ʿulūm al-ḥadīth (Knowing the Disciplines of Hadith). The short chain of transmission is the first of fifty topics al-Ḥākim addresses, which provides some indication of how important the subject was for him and his contemporaries.76 His main strategy in this justification is revealed by the chapter title “The first subject of these disciplines is knowledge of the short chain of transmission and that the seeking out of short chains of transmission is established by an authentic sunna.”77 To support his claim that the seeking out of short chains of transmission was supported by prophetic precedent he cites a hadith in which a bedouin had heard something attributed to the Prophet, but rather than accept the report secondhand he travels to hear it directly from the Prophet. Al-Ḥākim comments on the hadith: This hadith is found in Muslim’s Ṣaḥīḥ and is clear evidence for the permissibility of seeking out a short chain of transmission and not resigning oneself to a short chain, even if one already has the hadith through a reliable chain … for if the seeking out of short chains of transmission was not of virtue, then the Prophet would have refused to repeat to the bedouin what he had already heard.78 Al-Ḥākim goes on to cite several other reports demonstrating that after the Prophet’s death his companions went to great lengths to seek out the shortest chains of transmission for hadith transmitted by other companions rather than accept them through reliable, but longer chains of transmission. Following a report describing a companion who traveled to hear a hadith through the most direct chain of transmission, he comments, “this traveler only traveled seeking out a short chain of transmission, if he were content with a low chain of transmission, he would have found it in his place of residence and had no 76 77 78

Al-Ḥākim, Kitāb Maʿrifat ʿulūm al-ḥadīth, ed. al-Sayyid Muʿaẓẓam Ḥusayn (Beirut: alMaktab al-Tijārī li-l-Ṭibāʿa, n.d.), 5. Ibid., 5. Ibid., 6.

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need to travel.”79 The doctrine of the collective probity of the Prophet’s companions ʿadālat al-ṣahāba, seems to be core to Al-Ḥākim’s use of these reports of the companions seeking out shorter chains of transmission. This widely held doctrine posited essentially that the Prophet’s companions could not lie about him. They might commit other sins, but in order to preserve the religion, God had protected them against falsely attributing reports to the Prophet. Al-Ḥākim then seems to be suggesting that since a companion would have no epistemological need to verify a hadith he heard from another companion, as they were all reliable transmitters, they only sought out shorter chains of transmission because it was in itself a virtuous act. The implication was that this also applied to the current reality of hadith transmission, in which the cultivation of short chains of transmission likewise served no epistemological function, but just as the companions had, without necessity, piously sought out short chains of transmission so too should moderns. The hadith establishing that the Prophet at least tolerated, if not encouraged the pursuit of elevation, were polyvalent and not limited to their original context. The Prophet’s endorsement of his companions’ seeking out short chains of transmission was thus an endorsement for all of those who came after to follow in their footsteps and seek the most elevated and direct chains of transmission. This argument for the pursuit of elevation by prophetic precedent, however fragile, allowed the proponents of elevation to claim that the seeking out of short chains of transmission was sunna, thus anyone who criticized it would be commiting the blasphemy of opposing the sunna and the precedent of the companions. In the following centuries, scholars would consistently reiterate this justification for seeking out short chains of transmission by prophetic precedent. From at least as early as the fifth/eleventh century, some scholars would further justify the pursuit of elevation using a more general conception of sunna, not just as the Prophet’s precedent, but as the precedent and tradition of the forefathers of the learned community. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī seems to be the first to invoke this conception of sunna as scholarly tradition citing a text he attributes to the revered third/ninth century authority Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal: “the seeking of short chains of transmission is a sunna of those who came before us (ṭalab al-isnād al-ʿālī sunna ʿan man salaf ).”80 In other words, seeking out the most elevated chain of transmission was the way of the revered salaf and as such all who come after them should piously emulate their example.

79 80

Al-Ḥākim, Maʿrifat ʿulūm al-ḥadīth, 7. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Jāmiʿ li-akhlāq al-rāwī, 1:123.

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Imagining the chain of transmission in mystical terms infused it with further meanings. From the fifth/eleventh century, some scholars began conceiving of the chain of transmission as a mystical conduit providing a connection to the Prophet and through him to God Himself; the shorter the chain of transmission was the more direct and powerful the connection to God. This conception of the short chain of transmission as a means of establishing a more direct mystical connection to God seems to first appear in al-Khaṭīb’s work. As proof for this he cites a statement attributed to Muḥammad b. Aslām al-Ṭūsī’s (d. 242/856) “proximity in chain of transmission is proximity to God (qurb al-isnād qurb ilā Allāh).”81 Unfortunately, al-Khaṭīb does not elaborate on this conception of the short chain of transmission, but he was not alone in referencing it. Roughly a century later the influential Damascene hadith scholar Ibn ʿAsākir (d. 571/1175) would use this concept to justify citing short chains of transmission in his book, although they clearly did not fit in the theme or organizational principal he had laid out for the work.82 This mystical understanding of the short chain of transmission retained currency among hadith scholars for centuries and the maxim “proximity in chain of transmission is proximity to God” would come to be one of the most commonly cited explanations for the pursuit of elevation.83 The well-known hadith, “the best of mankind is my generation and then those who come after them and then those who come after them” was a further lens through which scholars saw the cultivation of short chains of transmission. These scholars understood the term generation (qarn) not as a group of people having been born during some period of years, as most understood it,84 but instead as a group of people with the same number of links of transmission between them and the Prophet. In this understanding of a generation, the Prophet’s generation is the first generation, and each act of transmission creates a new generation, each generation consisting of all those people who had

81 82 83

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Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Jāmiʿ li-akhlāq al-rāwī, 1:123. Ibn ʿAsākir, al-Arbaʿūn al-buldāniyya, ed. Muṣṭafā ʿĀshūr (Cairo: Maktabat al-Qurʾān, 1998/ 1418), 19. ʿAbd al-Raḥīm b. al-Ḥusayn al-ʿIrāqī, al-Arbʿūn al-ʿushāriyya, ed. Badr ʿAbd Allāh al-Badr (Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 1413/1992), 124; Abū Bakr al-Marāghī, Mashyakhat Abī Bakr alMarāghī, ed. Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Murād (Mecca: Jāmiʿat Umm al-Qurā, 1422/2011), 54; Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, Naẓm al-laʾālī bi-l-miʿa al-ʿawālī (Beirut: Dār alKutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1990/1410), 26; Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 257; Jamāl al-Dīn al-Qāsimī, Qawāʿid al-taḥdīth min funūn muṣṭalaḥ al-ḥadīth ed. Muḥammad Bahjat al-Bayṭar (Beirut: Dār al-Nafāʾis, 1427/2006), 210. Al-Zabīdī, Tāj al-ʿarūs, q-r-n. Opinions vary on the exact amount of years a generation consists of, ranging from ten to one hundred and ten. Al-Sakhāwī claims that the most common definition of a generation is a hundred years. Al-Sakhāwī, Fatḥ al-Mughīth, 3:333.

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the same number of links of transmission separating them from the Prophet. In this degenerative model of time, the Prophet’s generation is, of course, the best of all generations and each successive generation is of less merit than the one before it. Thus, acquiring a short chain of transmission brought “one closer to the generations of merit.” Through this understanding of the Generation hadith one could belong to a generation superior to the one he would belong to in a conception of generation based on years.85 According to the ninth/fifteenth century hadith scholar al-ʿIrāqī, this idea was already in circulation in the late fourth/tenth century. He notes that the Baghdadi hadith scholar Abū Ḥafṣ Ibn Shāhīn (d. 385/995) cited the Generation hadith as his motivation for compiling a collection of his short chains of transmission, explaining “it is our hope that through compiling this collection of short chains of transmission we will be counted among those about whom the Prophet said, ‘the best of mankind is my generation and then those who come after them and then those who come after them’”86 Scholars of later centuries would continue to cite the Generation hadith to justify their interest in short chains of transmission. Indeed, the tenth/sixteenth century Meccan scholar al-Nahrawālī (d. 990/1582) would explain that it was because of this hadith that, “the scholars of hadith, may God be well pleased with them, have continued seeking out the elevated chain of transmission and left their homes in its pursuit traveling through the countries of the world.”87 This understanding of the Generation hadith still resonated with scholars three centuries later when Ṣadīq Ḥasan Khān would mention it while expounding on the merits of the elevated chain of transmission.88 The proponents of the short chain of transmission thus created, much as they had done for the chain of transmission itself, a complex of ideas that gave it meaning and justification. This proved more compelling than their opponents’ argument that the seeking out of short chains was an anachronism and a waste of time. After the fifth/eleventh century, the seeking out of elevation would rarely be seriously questioned or criticized. Hadith scholars would continue to mention in their manuals that a rigorously authenticated long chain of transmission was superior to a short chain of transmission that had doubtful links.89 They would also continue to reference early scholars’ advice against putting

85 86 87

88 89

Al-Sakhāwī, Fatḥ al-Mugīth, 3:333. Ibid., 3:333. Al-Quṭb al-Nahrawālī, Thabat al-Quṭb al-Nahrawālī, ed. Al-ʿArabī al-Dāʾiz al-Fariyāṭī in Liqāʾ al-ʿashr al-awākhir bi-al-Masjid al-Ḥarām vol. 107 (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 1428/2007), 22. Ṣadīq Ḥasan Khān, Silsilat al-ʿasjad, 270. See for example, al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Jāmiʿ li-akhlāq al-rāwī, 1:124–126.

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the short chain of transmission above other concerns.90 In practice, however, hadith collectors and scholars from the fifth/eleventh century onwards would, for the most part, put the short chain of transmission above all other concerns and as will be seen, they would go to remarkable lengths to establish the shortest chain of transmission possible. Some scholars would criticize the many excesses that scholars would take in the name of the short chain of transmission, but these were criticisms of the excesses; the institution of seeking out short chains of transmission itself had moved beyond criticism.

5

Degrees of Separation

As the short chain of transmission gained significance hadith scholars developed an elaborate system and nomenclature for evaluating and describing the short chains of transmission they had striven so hard to cultivate. The most general category of elevation was referred to as “unqualified elevation (al-ʿulūw al-muṭlaq).” This referred to any chain that could be considered short in comparison to those of one’s peers. Each link in the chain of transmission was conceived of as a degree of separation (daraja) and the degrees were counted and compared. So, if, for example, most collectors of the fifth/eleventh century considered a chain of transmission with six degrees to be short, a chain this short or shorter would fall under the category of unqualified elevation. From as early as the fifth/eleventh century, hadith scholars began using the hadith canon as a benchmark to judge the elevation of their own chains of transmission. This use of the canon as a measure came to be known as “relative elevation (ʿulūw nisbī).” Essentially, relative elevation was a favorable comparison of a hadith taken from the canon with a transmitter’s own chain of transmission for the same hadith. The shortest chain found in the canon consists of three links and the longest consists of ten. Scholars searched out other independent chains of transmission for the hadith found in the canon. If a collector could transmit a hadith found in the canon, but bypass the canon with an alternate chain of transmission that compared favorably to one of the authors of the canon, this was relative elevation. This allowed transmitters to imagine themselves, at least for a particular hadith, inhabiting a rank comparable to the revered authors of the canon. Scholars developed a variety of categories to distinguish different types of relative elevation, including agreement (muwāfaqa), substitution (badal), equivalence (musāwa) and handhaking (muṣāfaḥa). In

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Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Jāmiʿ li-akhlāq al-rāwī, 1:124–126.

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essence, these categories describe chains of transmission that arrive at one of the transmitters from whom an author of the canon, such as al-Bukhārī, took a hadith but with fewer links than if one were to transmit the hadith through al-Bukhārī. The category of handshaking (muṣāfaḥa) illustrates well the way scholars used the categories of relative elevation to present their relationship to the canon. In essence, a chain of transmission qualifies as muṣāfaḥa when it is only one link longer than one found for the same hadith in the canon. Such a chain of transmission was termed handshaking because in terms of degrees of separation it was as if the transmitter in question could have met and shook hands with the author of the canonical work.91 To illustrate, in his Muʿjam shuyūkh, the prominent fourth/tenth-century hadith scholar Abū Bakr al-Ismāʿīlī (d. 371/981) presents a hadith with a chain of transmission just one link longer than the one Muslim cites for the same hadith in his Ṣaḥīḥ although he died more than a century after him.92 Al-Ismāʿīlī was able to establish such an elevated chain of transmission due to his having taken the hadith from a long-lived shaykh who had taken the hadith from Muslim’s shaykh. Thus, despite the fact that Muslim had already been dead for ten years before alIsmāʿīlī was even born, his chain of transmission was so short, he is able to position himself just one generation below Muslim—as if he were his shaykh and he had ‘shaken his hand.’ It was, of course, impossible for al-Ismāʿīlī to shake the hand of a man who had already been dead for a decade before he was even born. Nevertheless, in a view of time based not in years, but in generations of transmitters, by presenting this chain of transmission he demonstrated that, at least for this hadith, he was of the same temporal rank and virtue as those collectors who did actually meet and shake Muslim’s hand. This, despite the fact that in terms of years those men were almost all a century his senior. Similarly, a chain of transmission that had a number of links equal to one cited in the hadith canon fell in the category of “equivalence (musāwa).” The category muwāfaqa was applied to a chain of transmission that reached the transmitter from whom one of the authors of the canon took their hadith, but with a fewer number of links than if one transmitted it through the author of the canon. The category badal referred to for a hadith found in a canonical collection, but which intersected with the shaykh of the shaykh from whom the compiler of that collection took it and with fewer links.

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Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 259. Al-Ismāʿīlī, Muʿjam shuyūkh, 95. Compare to Muslim’s Ṣaḥīḥ, Kitāb al-Zakāt; bāb faḍl alnafaqa ʿalā al-ʿiyāl wa al-mamlūk wa ithm man ḍayʿahum aw ḥabasa nafaqatahum ʿanhum.

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Establishing chains of transmission that compared favorably to those of a transmitter who lived centuries earlier was a feat that depended as much on the early transmitter’s chain being long as it did on the later collector’s chain being short. To this effect Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ writes that once while reading a hadith collection with his teacher ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-Samaʿānī (d. 617/1220) they came across a comment by the compiler boasting that for a particular hadith his chain was so elevated that it was as if he had heard it from al-Bukhārī. To this, alSamaʿānī replied, “it is not that your chain of transmission is elevated, but that al-Bukhārī’s chain [for this hadith] was low.”93 Hadith scholars, of course, were aware of this reality and recognized that it was a departure from the interests of the founders of their discipline, and dutifully note that establishing short chains of transmission to the founders of the canon and early imams of hadith was of less virtue than establishing short chains of transmission to the Prophet. While theoretically it may have been considered of less virtue, it was nonetheless seen by most as an impressive statement of the quality of a collector’s chains of transmission. The considerable and prolonged interest scholars took in identifying and presenting chains of transmission in these categories is attested to by the significant mark it left on post-canonical hadith literature. As is discussed in detail in Chapter Five, ultimately, scholars would produce hundreds of works in these genres. In the ninth/fifteenth century, the Egyptian hadith scholar al-Sakhāwī would comment on the long term popularity of these genres, “countless of the previous masters of the discipline have composed compilations of this type.”94 Already in the seventh/thirteenth century, Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ had observed, “latterday hadith scholars’ interest in these categories is extraordinary.”95 The interest in these categories was not limited to hadith works, but also left a considerable mark on other genres of literature, including the genre of biographical dictionaries. Authors of biographical dictionaries including al-Mizzī, al-Dhahabī, and Ibn Ḥajar, to name a few, regularly reference these categories in their biographical works.96 93 94 95 96

Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 260. Al-Sakhāwī, Fatḥ al-Mughīth, 3:345. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 258. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 1:70, 1:125, 2:176, 2:196, 4:220, 5:96, 5:389, 6:268, 6:322, 7:103, 7:219, 7:434, 8:118, 8:230, 8:340, 9:105, 9:32, 9:175, 9:299, 9:387, 9:531, 9:582, 10:364, 10:365, 10:573, 10:589, 11:22, 11:44, 11:126, 11:393, 11:458, 11:482, 12:230, 12:298, 13:296, 14:405, 14:561, 15:13, 15:233, 15:466, 16:43, 16:367, 16:549, 18:443, 20:137; Al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām, 8:299, 8:244, 8:299, 9:110, 10:296, 11:36, 11:199, 12:438, 13:326, 19:359, 28:125, 23:333, 45:323, 15:130, 15:421, 19:318, 20:454, 20:467, 33:175, 33:233, 40:202, 44:483; Al-Mizzī, Tahdhīb al-Kamāl fī asmāʾ al-rijāl, ed. Bashshār ʿAwwād Maʿrūf (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1400/1980), 1:158, 1:160, 1:184,

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Supernatural Elevation

At the same time their concern for elevation was leading scholars to the rationalization and categorization discussed in the previous section, it was also leading them in other markedly less rational directions. The phenomenon of muʿammarūn, supernaturally long-lived companions of the Prophet, who had supposedly lived for hundreds of years after the Prophet’s death, is one of the most fascinating manifestations of the power the concept of elevation exerted on the imaginations of hadith scholars. These supernaturally long-lived transmitters seem to begin appearing in the sources in the fourth/tenth century and remain a feature of the culture thereafter. While these supernatural transmitters were accepted by many, they were an extreme manifestation of the culture’s focus on elevation and also created considerable controversy. The mysterious figure known as Ratan al-Hindī is perhaps the most wellknown example of such a supernaturally long-lived companion. Ratan supposedly met the Prophet in the first/seventh century and then miraculously survived for six centuries to be discovered living in India in the seventh/thirteenth century and begin transmitting hadith. The sources preserve numerous divergent accounts explaining Ratan’s meeting with the Prophet and his subsequent extreme longevity. Fortunately, Ibn Ḥajar compiled the majority of these accounts in Ratan’s entry in his biographical dictionary of the companions of the Prophet. In essence, these accounts tell his story as follows: while still a young man Ratan traveled from his home in India to Arabia.97 Some accounts explain that Ratan was motivated to travel to Arabia after he witnessed the miraculous splitting of the moon and was informed that it was a sign of a prophet who had emerged in Arabia.98 In other accounts, he traveled to Arabia for trade, or due to a dream in which God told him to seek out the true religion. In any case, Ratan meets the Prophet, accepts Islam and lives as his disciple for some time. At some point during this time, the Prophet put his hand on Ratan’s head and prayed for him to be blessed with long life and, of course, it was so.99

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1:217, 1:273, 1:353, 2:265, 2:345, 3:82, 3:337, 3:380, 4:135, 5;166, 5:416, 5:429, 5:439, 5:539, 6:51, 6:142, 6:228, 6:239, 7:143, 7:162, 7:205, 7;214, 7:216, 7:391, 7:414, 7:418, 8:50, 8:78, 8:131, 8:183, 8:191, 8:230, 8:312, 8:347, 8:470, 9:244, 9:241, 10:474, 11:217, 12:160, 13:494, 14:291, 15:232, 15:253, 16:379, 17:205, 17:257, 17:320, 19:9, 19:22, 19:143, 21:295, 22:26, 26:544, 26:575, 28:22. 28:33, 28:77, 28:206, 28:336, 31:260, 32:307. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Iṣāba fī tamyīz al-ṣaḥāba, ʿĀdil Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Mawjūd and ʿAli Aḥmad Muʿawwaḍ (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1415/1994), 2:434–443. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Iṣāba, 2:439. Ibid., 2:441–442.

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The Ratan accounts seem to have begun circulating sometime in the seventh/thirteenth century, but he does not appear in the extant sources until the eighth/fourteenth century in the works of scholars including al-Dhahabī, Ṣalāh al-Dīn al-Ṣafadī (d. 764/1362),100 al-ʿAlāʾī (d. 761/1359)101 and al-Kutubī (d. 764/ 1362).102 Al-Dhahabī was one of the most outspoken of Ratan’s critics, and wrote a refutation of his supposed status as a companion. Al-Dhahabī seems to have doubted that Ratan, whether a liar or not, even existed, arguing that he was likely the invention of one Abū Mūsā al-Mujallī, whom he believed was the common link and disseminator of the Ratan reports. He also suggested, however, that if Ratan was not al-Mujallī’s invention then perhaps Ratan was a devil who appeared to al-Mujallī in human form and deceived him.103 Ibn Ḥajar, however, was able to establish that a number of people in addition to al-Mujallī claimed to have transmitted from Ratan, including two men who claimed to be Ratan’s sons, Maḥmūd and ʿAbd Allāh.104 Ratan’s critics offered an abundance of reasons for rejecting him. They argued that Ratan’s existence contradicted a hadith in which the Prophet is reported to have said, “no one alive on the face of the earth this night will still be living in a hundred years” precluded the possibility of any of his companions living for centuries after his death.105 They also argued that there was a scholarly consensus that Abū Ṭufayl (d. 107/725) was the last of the companions of the Prophet to die.106 Further, they raised the question of where Ratan had been for the six centuries between the Prophet’s death and his emergence in the seventh/thirteenth century? How could the great early hadith collectors have missed Ratan, when they traveled far and wide in search of the shortest chains of transmission?107 Others simply rejected Ratan as an invention of the uneducated riffraff. Al-Birzalī, for instance, is reported to have dismissed the Ratan hadith, saying “these are the hadith of the rabble.”108 For some, however, the allure of the extreme proximity to the Prophet Ratan could offer proved to be more compelling than the arguments of his detractors. At best, a transmitter of the eighth/fourteenth century was removed from 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108

Al-Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī, 14:68–70. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-ʿAlāʾī, Taḥqīq munīf li-man thabat lahu sharīf al-ṣuḥba, ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Muḥammad al-Qashqarī (Riyadh: Dār al-ʿĀṣima, 1410/1989), 59. Ibn Shākir al-Kutubī, Fawāt al-wafāyāt, ed. Iḥsān ʿAbbās (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1392/1973), 2:21. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Iṣāba, 2:437. Ibid., 2:434. Ibid., 2:438. Ibid., 2:437. Al-Sakhāwī, Fatḥ al-Mugīth, 4:131. Al-Kutubī, Fawāt al-wafāyāt, 2:23.

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the Prophet by nine degrees, most by more; through Ratan such a collector could come within two or three degrees and thereby achieve the distinction of belonging to the second or third generation of Muslims. Some were willing to put their doubts aside in order to obtain this status.109 Al-ʿAlāʾī disapprovingly commented on his contemporaries’ interest in Ratan, “many of the people this age have been consumed by the hadith of Ratan the Indian.”110 This interest is substantiated by the manuscript record, with numerous manuscripts of Ratan’s hadith surviving.111 These collections known as the Rataniyyāt ranged in length from three hundred hadith to forty hadith112 and according to the narrative sources they were transmitted widely across the centers of the Muslim world, from Granada in the west113 to Khawarizm in the east.114 It was not only the poorly educated riffraff, as al-Birzālī’s suggested, that took interest in the elevation that the Ratan hadith offered, scholars too transmitted the Ratan hadith and some argued for their validity.115 The prominent eighth/fourteenth-century scholar and historian Ṣalāh al-Dīn al-Ṣafadī, for instance, is reported to have transmitted the Ratan hadith and moreover wrote a response to al-Dhahabī’s refutation of Ratan.116 Majd al-Dīn al-Fayrūzabādī (d. 817/1415), the author of the famous dictionary al-Qāmūs, is likewise reported to have written an argument for Ratan’s existence.117 The Sufī scholar ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla al-Samnānī (d. 736/1336) is also reported to have believed in Ratan’s status as a companion and wrote a response to al-Dhahabī’s refutation.118 According to the sources, Ratan’s death was as shrouded in mystery as his life. His biographers report death dates for him ranging from 632/1234 to

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Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-kāmina, 3:231; Ibn Ḥajar, Inbā’ al-ghumr, 3:49, ʿAbd al-Ḥayy b. Fakhr al-Dīn al-Ḥasanī, Nuzhat al-Khawāṭir wa buhjat al-masāmiʿ wa al-nawāẓir (Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 1420/1999), 1:95. Al-ʿAlāʾī, Taḥqīq munīf, 59; Ibn Ḥajar, al-Iṣāba, 2:445. Anonymous, Rataniyyāt, mss 1468, 1387, 1388, Berlin State Library, Berlin, Germany; Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Baladīyat al-Iskandarīya, MS 3:98; Alexandria, Egypt, Or. MS 1771; Leiden. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Iṣāba, 2:434, 2:439. Ibid., 2:436, 2:440. Ibid., 2:437. ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Ḥasanī, Nuzhat al-khawāṭir, 1:95. ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Ḥasanī, Nuzhat al-khawāṭir, 1:98; Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān al-Mizān, 2:450; AlSuyūṭī, al-Ḥāwī li-l-Fatāwī (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1424/2004), 2:118. Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Maqqarī, Azhār al-riyāḍ fī akhbār ʿIyāḍ (Rabat: Al-Lajna li-Nashr al-Turāth al-Islāmī, n.d.), 3:51; Ibn Ḥajar, al-Iṣāba, 2:445; al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 10:85. ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Ḥasanī, Nuzhat al-khawāṭir, 1:95.

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709/1309.119 While Ratan is the most well-known case of a supposedly miraculously long-lived companion of the Prophet, he was not alone. The sources preserve accounts of many others who claimed to be miraculously long-lived companions of the Prophet stil transmitting hadith hundreds of years after his death. Other supposed companions of the Prophet found in the sources include Qays b. Tamīn al-Ṭāʾī,120 Maʿmar b. Burayk,121 Jaʿfar b. Nastūr,122 and Rabīʿ b. Maḥmūd al-Mardīnī.123 Miraculously long-lived humans were not the only creatures some hadith collectors believed could bridge the centuries between them and the Prophet. Classical Islamic cosmology holds that alongside man, God created beings known as the jinn. While man was created from clay, the jinn were created from fire and were generally invisible to man. Significantly the jinn were believed to have lifespans many times longer than those of humans. Some even held that the jinn were semi-immortal, having been given respite from death until the Day of Judgement.124 In other ways though the jinn were much like humans; they ate, married, reproduced and belonged to different communities and religions. The Prophet was believed to be the first prophet sent to jinn as well as man, and the Quran mentions jinn who accepted the Prophet’s message.125 Crucially, a number of hadith report that the Prophet met with his jinn followers and taught them their new faith.126 There could thus be jinnī companions

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Al-Taghrī Birdī, al-Manhal al-ṣāfī, ed. Muḥammad Muḥammad Amīn (Cairo: al-Hayʾa alMiṣriyya al-ʿĀmma li-l-Kitāb, 1404/1984), 5:343. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Iṣāba, 5:416. Ibid., 6:290. Ibid., 1:648. Al-Sakhāwī, Fatḥ al-Mughīth, 3:354. Al-Suyūṭī, Laqṭ al-marjān fī aḥkām al-jān (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1986/1406), 123; ʿAlāwī b. Aḥmad al-Saqqāf, al-Kawkab al-Ajwaj fī aḥkām al-malāʾika wa al-jinn wa al-shayāṭīn wa yājūj wa māʾjūj (Cairo: Maktaba wa Maṭbaʿ Muṣtafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī wa awlāduhu, n.d.), 164. Quran, al-Ahqāf: 29; Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Shiblī al-Ḥanafī, Ākām al-marjān fī Aḥkām al-jān (Cairo: Matbaʿat al-Saʿāda, 1326/1908), 35–37. Hadith found in the collections of Muslim, Abū Dāwūd, al-Tirmidhī, and Ibn Mājah report that on a night that came to be known as laylat al-jinn a number of jinn came to the Prophet in order that he teach them some verses of the Quran and inquire about certain matters relating to jinni dietary law. Ibn Majah, Sunan Ibn Mājah, Kitāb al-Ṭahāra: Bāb alwuḍūʾ bi-l-nabīdh; Abū ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī, Sunan al-Tirmidhī, Kitāb al-Ṭahāra: Bāb karāhiyat mā yustanjā bihi; Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī, Sunan Abī Dāwūd, Kitāb al-Ṭahāra: Bāb al-wuḍūʾ bi-l-nabīdh; Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Kitāb al-ṣalāt: Bāb al-jahar bi-l-qirāʾ fī alsubḥ wa al-qirāʾa ʿalā al-jinn. The companions Ibn Masʿūd and Ibn ʿAbbas are reported to have disagreed as to whether the Prophet saw his jinn companions or whether he simply spoke to them. Ibn Masʿud who transmits the hadith of laylat al-jinn held that the

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of the Prophet who would still be alive long after all the human companions of the Prophet were dead. The Muslims of the first two centuries, however, seem to have claimed little contact with these surviving jinnī companions of the Prophet, although there is at least one report of the pious Umayyad caliph ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz having met with a jinnī companion.127 It is not until around the turn of the fourth/tenth century that the potential to establish an extraordinary degree of proximity to the Prophet through these jinnī companions began to be realized. It is perhaps not surprising to those readers familiar with the hadith collector and scholar al-Ṭabarānī (d. 360/970) and the oftenunusual content of his hadith collections that he is one of the first to cite a hadith transmitted through a jinnī companion. Al-Ṭabarānī notes that he took this hadith from the third/ninth-century transmitter ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Ḥusayn alMaṣṣīṣī. He recounted that upon entering the Anatolian frontier town of Tarsūs he was informed that there was a woman in the town who claimed to have met one of the jinnī companions of the Prophet.128 Intrigued al-Maṣṣīsī requested to meet her and was taken to an elderly bed-ridden woman. Al-Maṣṣīsī asked the woman her name, and she replied that her name was Manūsa. He then asked her if she had ever seen a jinnī companion of the Prophet. Manūsa replied, yes I met a jinnī named Samhaj, though he also goes by name ʿAbd Allāh. He told me, “I asked the Prophet, ‘where was God before he created the Heavens and Earth?’ and The Prophet answered, ‘He was on a fish (or whale) of light that was splashing around in a sea of light.’”129 This jinnī companion Samhaj had existed in the community’s memory of the Prophet since at least the third/ninth century and is mentioned by al-Fākahī (d. 277/890) in his history of Mecca.130 Drawing on this memory and reinventing Samhaj as a transmitter of hadith allowed al-Ṭabarānī in the fourth/tenth century to cite a chain of transmission with only three links between him and the Prophet! A chain of transmission this short was already rare a century earlier. In comparisona al-Bukhārī, who died more than a century before al-Ṭabarānī, was only able to cite twenty-two chains of transmission this short in his Ṣaḥīḥ, the major-

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Prophet saw them, while Ibn ʿAbbas held that the wording of the verse that references the jinnī believers seems to indicate that he did not see them. Whether the jinn companions were visible to the Prophet or not, there seems to be a consensus about the existence of a community of jinnī companions of the Prophet dating to the early years of the Prophet’s mission. Al-Saqqāf, al-Kawkab, 160; al-Suyūṭī, Laqṭ al-murjān, 83, 110. Al-Suyūṭī, Laqṭ al-murjān, 113. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Iṣāba, 3:148. Al-Fākahī, Akhbār Makka, ed. ʿAbd al-Malik b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Duhaysh (Beirut: Dār Khiḍr, 1414/1993), 3:387.

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ity being significantly longer. Muslim, who died a century before al-Ṭabarānī, cites no chains of transmission this short. The allure of the extreme proximity to the Prophet offered by a jinnī companion like Samhaj meant that al-Ṭabarānī was not the only fourth/tenth century scholar to cite this hadith. His contemporaries Abū Bakr b. Bazzāz al-Shāfiʿī (d. 354/965)131 and the hadith scholar and critic al-Dāraquṭnī (d. 385/995) also cite this and other hadith through Samhaj.132 Centuries later, scholars would use this short chain of transmission created by Samhaj and al-Ṭabarānī to create their own unusually short chains of transmission. In the tenth/sixteenth century, al-Suyūṭī, for example, would boast that through Samhaj and al-Ṭabarānī he was only ten degrees removed from the Prophet.133 The citation of hadith through jinnī companions of the Prophet, although it became widespread, was not without its critics and was hotly debated. Many scholars criticized the practice on much the same basis that they criticized the fantastically long-lived human Companions like Ratan. As proof for their criticism they cited the hadith mentioned above, in which the Prophet is reported to have said “no one on the face of the earth this night will be alive in a hundred years,”134 arguing that it precluded the possibility of several hundred year old jinnī companions.135 Proponents of the jinnī companions and their longevity, such as Ibn Ḥajar and al-Suyūṭī, responded to this objection arguing that this hadith is only applicable to those in the visible world and did not apply to angels or jinn.136 Still others would argue that the phraseology of the hadith “none on the face of the earth” excluded the jinnī companions who were flying in the air at the time of the Prophet’s utterance of these words.137 Other critics objected to the ciation of hadith through jinn on the grounds that while the Quran clearly establishes that there were jinnī companions and it is possible that they are still alive, jinn are invisible and therefore it is not pos-

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Abū Bakr al-Shāfiʿī, Al-Fawāʾid al-shahīr bi-l-Ghaylāniyyāt, ed. Ḥilmī Kāmil (Riyadh: Dār Ibn al-Jawzī, 1417/1997), 543. Ibn Kathīr, Jāmiʿ al-masānid wa al-sunan, ed. ʿAbd al-Malik b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Duhaysh (Beirut: Dār Khiḍr, 1419/1998), 3:638. Al-Suyūṭī, Laqṭ al-Murjān, 114. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī, Mawāhib al-Raḥmān fi Suḥbat Abī ʿAbd al-Rahman Shamharūsh qāḍī al-jān, manuscript from the private collection of Ḥamza b. ʿAli alKattānī, Rabat, Morocco, 31b. Al-Kattānī, Mawāhib al-Raḥmān, 31b; Ismāʿīl al-ʿAjlūnī, Kashf al-khafāʾ wa muzīl al-iltibās, ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd b. Aḥmad al-Hindāwī (Beirut: al-Maktaba al-ʿAṣriyya, 1420/2000), 2:512, Ibn Ḥajar, al-Iṣāba, 2:255. Al-Kattānī, Mawāhib al-Raḥmān, 33b; Ibn Ḥajar, al-Iṣāba, 2:480, 4:504. Al-Kattānī, Mawāhib al-Raḥmān, 33b.

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sible for humans to establish their probity (ʿadāla), which is essential to establish reliable transmission. To this ojection the proponents of jinnī companions would reply that while it is more difficult to establish the ʿadāla of a jinnī companion, in the case of certain well-known companions so many authorities of hadith have transmitted from them that there is consensus (tawātur) that they exist.138 The debate over the existence of jinnī companions and the permissibility of transmitting hadith through them was never definitively settled, and criticism persisted, but many scholars accepted hadith transmitted through jinn as long as they had no legal implications and were in agreement with establsihed Islamic law and theology.139 The eleventh/seventeenth-century Moroccan scholar al-ʿAyyāshī (d. 1040/1630) summed up this position well. “These are strange isnāds, and some scholars have condemned this, however, it is customary for scholars to transmit them in spite of this for the benefit of baraka, as their intention is not to cite these hadith as legal evidence.”140 After the fourth/tenth century, scholars continued to make claims of enounters with jinnī companions supposedly still alive centuries after the Prophet’s death, and Samhaj was joined by a host of others. By the ninth/fifteenth century, Ibn Ḥajar knew of more than twenty.141 Although the sources reference numerous jinnī companions, only a few were widely cited. The jinnī companion known as Shamharūsh or Shamhūrish ʿAbd al-Raḥmān became, by far, the most well-known.142 Shamharūsh emerges in the sources quite late, first appearing in chains of transmission in the tenth/sixteenth century.143 As was the case with Ratan, Shamharūsh’s appearance so long after the Prophet’s 138 139 140 141

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Al-Kattānī, Mawāhib al-Raḥmān, 4a. Al-Kattānī, Munyat al-sāʾil, 172. Al-ʿAyyāshī, Iqtifāʾ al-Athar, ed. Nafīsa al-Dhahabī (Rabat: Jāmiʿat Muḥammad al-Khāmis, 1996), 130. Muḥammad Ibn ʿAqīla, al-Fawāʾid, 84. The sixth/twelfth-century scholar Ibn al-Athīr seems to have been one of the first to include them in a biographical dictionary. He makes it clear, however, that he found the practice questionable and would not have included jinnī companions in his biographical dictionary, but explains that he only did so following the precedent of earlier scholars who had transmitted from them, such as al-Daraquṭnī and al-Ṭabarānī. Ibn al-Athīr, Usd alghāba (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1409/1989), 2:301, 2:115, 2:301, 3:702, 3:706, 3:740, 4:271, 4:668; In his Tadrīb al-rāwī, al-Suyūṭī responds to Ibn al-Athīr’s objection. Al-Suyūtī, Tadrīb al-rāwī, 2:669. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Iṣāba, 1:117, 1:192, 1:198, 2:4, 2:58, 2:192, 2:368, 2:468, 2:479, 2:480, 3:137, 3:282, 4:319, 4:383, 4:402, 4:503, 4:537, 4:581, 5:506, 5:553, 5:557, 5:565, 6:138, 6:174, 6:474. It would seem the name Shamhūrish was used for other supernatural beings as well. In a Persian manuscript produced in roughly mid-thirteenth century Anatolia, the author references and includes an illustration of a dragon slaying angel named Shamhūrish. Daqāʾiq al-ḥaqāʾiq, Pers.MS 174, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, fol. 83. Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar al-Kattānī, Risālat al-musalsalāt (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1424/2003), 61.

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death raised considerable scepticism. Critics noted that earlier scholars who had compiled lists of jinnī companions of the Prophet such as Ibn al-Athīr and Ibn Ḥajār made no reference to Shamharūsh. Other critics suggested that those who claimed to have met Shamharūsh had in fact been deceived by a devil.144 Other scholars, however, perhaps the majority, seemingly motivated by the fantasticly short connection to the Prophet that Shamharūsh offered, were willing to overlook or excuse the fact early scholars who wrote about jinnī companions made no reference to him. The Moroccan scholar and historian alYafarnī (d. 1155/1742) responded to the question of Shamharūsh’s whereabouts before the ninth/fifteenth century, arguing that while Shamharūsh is not mentioned in earlier biographical dictionaries, since his emergence a consensus (tawātur) had been established regarding his existence. He states, “the fact that many scholars of insight have met with him is well known and their acceptance of him is well documented. They are our guides and role models and therefore the fact that earlier scholars did not mention him among the Prophet’s companions does not affect his status.”145 Later proponents continued to put forward arguments for Shamharūsh’s status as a companion. Indeed, in the thirteenth/nineteenth century ʿAbd al-Sallām al-Fāsī (d. 1248/1832) wrote an entire monograph arguing for Shamharūsh’s status as a companion,146 as did the Moroccan hadith scholar and Sufi ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī in the twentieth century.147 In spite of the controversy over Shamharūsh, by the eleventh/seventeenth century, he was appearing in chains of transmission over a wide geographic spread from Morocco to Syria to India.148 By the twelfth/eighteenth century, Shamharūsh had become not only a companion of the Prophet Muḥammad, but according to ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nablusī (d. 1143/1730), he was also a student of the famous hadith compiler Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī.149 One source reports that Shamharūsh granted ijāzas and wrote them in “his jinnī handwriting.”150 Then, after a life of more than a thousand years and having transmitted hadith for more than two centuries, in the year 1129/1716 ʿAbd al-Ghanī 144 145 146 147 148 149 150

Ibid., 61. Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar al-Kattānī, Risālat al-musalsalāt, 58. Al-Kattanī, Fahras al-fahāris, 2:848. Al-Kattānī, Mawāhib al-Raḥmān. Al-Kattanī, Fahras al-fahāris, 2:848; al-Laknawī, Ẓafr al-amānī, 310; Al-ʿAjḷūnī, Ḥilyat ahl al-faḍl, 103. Al-Shawkānī, al-Badr al-ṭālʿi fī maḥāsin man baʿd al-qarn al-sābiʿ ed. Muḥammad Ḥasan al-Ḥallāq (Damascus: Dār Ibn Kathīr, 1429/2008), 1:407. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī, Munyat al-sāʾil khulāṣat al-Shamāʾil, ed. ʿAbd alMajīd Khayālī (Casablanca: Markaz al-Turāth al-Thaqafī, 1426/2005), 170.

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al-Nāblusī reported that Shamharūsh had died.151 Al-Nāblusī does not explain how he learned of Shamharūsh’s death. He claimed to have taken a number of hadith and the Ṣaḥīh of al-Bukhārī from Shamharūsh and his death certainly made hadith cited through him more rare and desirable. Indeed, al-Nāblusī came to be an important link to Shamharūsh for later generations. In any case, al-Nāblusī’s report of Shamharūsh’s demise was accepted by most of his contemporaries and later scholars and claims to have encountered him are rare after this. Nevertheless, there are rare reports of encounters with Shamharūsh after this. The famous nineteenth-century dean of al-Azhar Ibrāḥīm al-Bājūrī (d. 1277/1860), for example, is said to have associate with him.152 While there are very few claims of encounters with Shamharūsh after in 1129/1716, the hadith that he and other supposed jinnī companions transmitted remained in circulation into the twentieth century, when as will be discussed in Chapter Seven, they became the target of the then nascent reform movement’s criticism.153 The mysterious semi-immortal figure Khiḍr provided hadith scholars with another oppurtunity for fantastically short chains of transmission. Khiḍr is sometimes associated with the biblical Elijah and like Elijah he was widely considered to be semi-immortal.154 According to some accounts Khiḍr was the son of the first man Adam, who had prayed that whoever buried him would be granted eternal life, and it was Khiḍr who buried his father.155 The reports vary, but essentially at some point during Muḥammad’s life Khiḍr comes to Arabia, 151 152 153

154 155

Muḥammad Khalīl b. ʿAli Al-Murādī, Silk al-durar fī āʿyān al-qarn al-thānī ʿashar (Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 1408/1998), 134. Rashīd Riḍā, “Shamhūrish Qāḍī al-jinn,” al-Manār vol. 6 (Rabīʿ al-Thānī 1321/ June 1903): 266. The celebrated Indian scholar Shah Walī Allāh, for example, compiled a collection of the hadith he transmitted through jinnī chains of transmission. Shah Walī Allāh, “Nawādir min ḥadīth Sayyid al-awāʾil wa-al-awākhir,” in al-Rasāʾil al-Thalāth, ed. Muḥammad ʿĀshiq Ilāhi al-Burnī (Deoband: Dār al-Kutub Dayuband, n.d.), 161–197; The renkowned Moroccan hadith scholar Aḥmad b. Ṣadīq al-Ghumārī (d. 1961) also compiled a collection of jinnī chains of transmission titled Sanad al-jinn. Yūsuf al-Marʿashlī, Muʿjam al-Maʿājim wa almashyakhāt (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Rushd, 2002/1423), 2:517. For other examples see: ʿAbd al-Razzāq b. Ḥasan al-Bayṭār, Ḥilyat al-bashar fī tārīkh al-qarn al-thālith ʿashar, ed. Bahjat al-Bayṭār (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1413/1993), 1607; Muḥammad Yāsīn al-Fadānī, al-ʿUjāla fī al-aḥādīth al-musalsala (Damascus: Dār al-Baṣāʾir, 1405/1985), 120. Muḥammad b. Sulaymān al-Jazūlī, Musabbaʿāt sīdī al-Khaḍir, Taṣawwūf Khalīl Aghā ʿArabī MS 39, Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, Cairo; Ibn Ḥajar, al-Iṣāba, 1:261, 2:251. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Iṣāba, 2:250. In other accounts, he is said to have discovered the fountain of youth. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Iṣāba, 2:253, 2:257. There is a difference of opinion among scholars about Khiḍr’s semi-immortality, according to al-Nawawī, though the majority of scholars hold that he is indeed semi-immortal. Al-Nawawī, Tahdhīb al-Asmāʾ wa al-lughāt, ed. Muṣtafā ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1397/1977), 1:177.

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meets the Prophet and becomes his companion.156 Although according to Ibn Ḥajar he was the first to include him in a biographical dictionary of companions of the Prophet.157 Still it would seem that the the idea that Khiḍr was a companion of the Prophet goes as far back as the third/ninth century, when the Sufī ḥadīth scholar al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī (d. 295–300/907–912) reported to have met and taken hadith from him.158 Even so, it does not seem to have become common to transmit hadith through Khiḍr until the sixth/twelfth century, when a collection of the hadith attributed to him began to circulate.159 After the sixth/twelfth century, however, hadith transmitted through Khiḍr circulated fairly widely and continued to do so into the twentieth century.160

7

Conclusion

This chapter lays the foundation on which the remainder of this book is built. It is difficult to overemphasize how transformative an effect the reconceptualization of the function of hadith transmission had on the institutions and practice of hadith transmission. The twin concerns of post-canonical hadith culture, namely the pious preservation of the chain of transmission, and the establishment and demonstration of proximity to the Prophet through elevation had altogether different requirements and needs than pre-canonical hadith transmission. To serve these needs the theoretical protocols governing hadith transmission as well as its actual practice would undergo a radical

156 157 158 159

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Ibn Ḥajar, al-Iṣāba, 2:253, 2:262; al-Laknawī, Ẓafr al-amāni, 533. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Iṣāba, 2:252. Al-ʿAjlūnī, Kashf al-khafāʾ, 2:512. Al-Wādī Āshī, Barnāmaj al-Wādī Āshī, 260. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Khayyām alSamarqandī, Aḥādīth al-Khiḍr wa Iliyās, MSS Fā 1–0111, fā, 0233, Markaz al-Malik Fayṣal, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Muḥammad al-Fawrānī, Aḥādīth al-Khiḍr wa Iliyās, MS 4/6862, al-Jāmiʿa al-Islāmiyya, Medina, Saudi Arabia; Unknown, Sanad muṣāfaḥat al-Khiḍr, MS 376975, Markaz Jumʿa al-Mājid, Dubai, U.A.E. Aḥmad b. ʿAli al-Wādī Āshī, Thabat al-Wādī Āshī, ed. ʿAbd Allāh al-ʿImrānī (Beirut: Dār alGharb al-Islāmī, 1403/1983), 403, 405; Ibn al-Ghāzī, Fahras ibn al-Ghāzī, ed. Muḥammad al-Zāhī (Casablanca: Dār al-Maghrib, 1399/1979), 91; Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad al-Majārī, Barnāmaj al-Majārī, ed. Muḥammad Abū al-Ajfān (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1982), 56; Muḥammad b. Sulaymān al-Rawdānī, Ṣilat al-khalaf bi-mawṣūl al-salaf, ed. Muḥammad Hajjī (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1408/1988), 472. Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar al-Kattānī, Risālat al-musalsalāt, 56; al-Ḥasan b. Aḥmad alṢanāʿnī, Fatḥ al-Ghaffār li-aḥkām nabiyunā al-mukhtār, ed. ʿAli al-ʿImrān (Mecca: Dār ʿĀlam al-Fawāʾid, 1427/2006), 4:2238; Ibn ʿAqīla, Al-Fawāʾid al-jalīla, 66; Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī, al-Muʿjam al-mukhtaṣṣ, 572.

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transformation. As will be shown in Chapter Two, scholars would dramatically rework both the theory and practice of oral/aural transmission to cater to these concerns. The changes in the conception of the chain of transmission traced in this chapter would also pave the way for the emergence of the ijāza, a mode of non-oral hadith transmission treated in detail in Chapter Three that would help change the face of hadith transmission. The reconceptualization of the function of the chain of transmission not only transformed the practice and theory of hadith transmission, but gave birth to a number of new and influential genres of hadith literature developed to serve the concerns of postcanonical hadith culture, as will be explored in Chapters Five and Six. These developments were enduring, and the complex of understandings outlined in this chapter sustained hadith transmission into the twentieth century.

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chapter 2

The Post-canonical Evolution of Oral Hadith Transmission This chapter traces the evolution and development of oral/aural hadith transmission in the wake of the emergence of the hadith canon in the third/ninth century. The history and nature of oral transmission prior to the emergence of the hadith canon has been the subject of a number of studies and considerable debate in the field.1 In spite of this debate, there is a general consensus that oral/aural hadith transmission had never been, in the terms of Ong, a tradition of primary orality.2 From its inception, writing was employed in the preservation and transmission of hadith although its use seems to have been initially limited, gradually becoming more common over time.3 Purely written transmission, meaning verbatim copying and production of books without a process of oral/aural verification, however, for the most part was viewed with extreme suspicion by most early hadith scholars and was generally not accepted.4 Writing was used to record, compile and copy hadith, but according to the norms of their scholarly culture, only the oral/aural mode was considered a valid and reliable means of transmission of this material. The act of orally transmitting and aurally receiving written material was considered to be the sole means to remedy the problems that were seen to be associated with the transmission of the written word. It was only through this process that it was validated and imbued with authority. Oral/aural transmission could take a number of forms. It could consist of a transmitter reading his written material aloud to collectors, or a collector reading aloud to him; the transmitter might also recite selections of his corpus of hadith from memory (amālī).5 In contrast to the history of oral/aural transmission of hadith prior to the emergence of the hadith canon, developments

1 For a summary of these debates see Jonathan Brown’s Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World (Oxford: One World, 2009), 197–239. 2 Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy (New York: Routledge, 1982). 3 For more on orality and writing in the first three centuries of Islam see Gregor Schoeler, The Oral and the Written in Early Islam (New York: Routledge, 2006). 4 Schoeler, The Oral and the Written, 41. 5 For more on the Amālī genre M., lsehail, Ḥadīth-Amālī Sessions: Historical Study of a Forgotten Tradition in Classical Islam, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Leeds, 2014.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004386938_004

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in the oral/aural transmission of hadith following the emergence of the canon have received very little attention. The little attention oral/aural hadith transmission has received belies the fact that it remained a central feature of Muslim scholarly culture in the centuries after the emergence of the canon. This chapter provides an account of both its social and intellectual evolution and development. By the middle of the fourth/tenth century, following the movement of collecting and sorting hadith, out of which the canon emerged, the written hadith corpus had achieved considerable stability and oral/aural hadith transmission primarily consisted of reading aloud and auditing manuscripts of the various collections and compilations of hadith. The range of material transmitted in this way varied greatly, it included the large and carefully compiled canonical collections, other extra-canonical collections of various sizes, as well as numerous selections and personal collections of hadith, about which more will be said in Chapter Five. Oral/aural transmission of these hadith texts took three main modes that were seen as distinct in this culture. The first was hearing a transmitter recite or read hadith aloud. The second mode was reading a hadith text aloud to a transmitter. For scholars of the fourth/tenth century and earlier there was considerable difference of opinion as to whether reading a text to a transmitter was as reliable a mode of transmission as hearing the transmitter read the text himself. The contention revolved around whether the transmitter was less likely to catch errors in the manuscript while passively listening to the text read aloud. Eventually, however, the vast majority of scholars accepted both modes as equally valid. By the fifth/eleventh century, the Iraqi hadith authority alKhaṭīb would write on the topic, “the vast majority of jurists and all scholars of hadith hold that reading hadith to a transmitter has the same ruling as hearing hadith from him.”6 The third and most common mode of oral/aural transmission was listening while a text was read aloud to a transmitter. It is important to note that the aim of reading a hadith text to a transmitter or hearing a text read aloud was not education, although it no doubt could be and perhaps was in most cases, instead the aim of transmission was the preservation of the text. In the terms of the hadith scholars, oral/aural transmission was ‘carrying’ the hadith and preserving it unadulterated to the next generation. These three modes of oral/aural transmission were the primary means scholars of the fourth/tenth century acquired the authority to use and later transmit a hadith manuscript to others. According to their terms, these modes of

6 Al-Khaṭīb, al-Kifaya, 296.

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oral/aural transmission transformed a manuscript of a hadith text from mere paper and ink into an active and useable “source copy (aṣl).” For the vast majority of early hadith scholars, it was only this audition manuscript that one was permitted to transmit. Even if one was sure that he had attended an audition of a certain text, and other manuscript copies of that same text were available to him, he could not transmit these copies but could only transmit a manuscript present during his audition of the text. The reason for this restriction is rooted in medieval Islamic manuscript culture. The process of copying and transmitting, could and often did introduce significant divergence within the manuscripts of a particular hadith collection. The manuscript tradition of the most iconic of hadith texts, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, for example, is highly divergent, consisting of at least a dozen distinct recensions that contain significant differences in both content and organization.7 The other canonical hadith works also branched into multiple recensions exhibiting various degrees of divergence. As a result of the existence of significant textual divergence in the manuscript tradition, hadith scholars ruled that upon auditing a text, it was only the manuscript one had read or heard in an audition that had been established to be in complete agreement with the mother copy of the transmitter overseeing the audition. Other manuscripts of the same text might claim to be an exact representation of the same text, but in fact represent a different recension than one’s audition copy. It was therefore only the audition copy that one had, through the process of audition, verified was in agreement with the shaykh’s manuscript that could be further transmitted. Many of the collections being transmitted were quite unique and personal selections of the hadith an individual collector had audited over the course of his career and were as a result not widely available if a collector lost access to his audition copy. In the case of other collections, such as the canonical collections and other popular collections, however, a transmitter might be tempted to obtain another copy, if his audition copy was lost, but transmitting from a manuscript other than that used in the audition session one had attended was condemned as “transmitting without a source (min ghayr aṣl)” and was grounds for serious criticism and could tarnish the reputation of all parties involved.8 Indeed, al-Daqqāq is reported to have said about al-Rawwās (d. 503/1109), who was accused of trans-

7 Remarkably there has yet to be an in-depth study of the recensions of the Ṣaḥīḥ. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm b. ʿUbayd’s dissertation, however, provides a good introduction and overview of the manuscript tradition. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm b. ʿUbayd, Riwāyāt wa nusakh aljāmiʿ al-Ṣaḥīḥ: Dirāsa wa taḥlīl (Mecca: Dār Imām al-Daʿwa, 1428/2008). 8 Ibn Nuqṭa, Ikmāl al-Ikmāl, 3:283; Al-Dhahabī, al-Mughnī fī al-Ḍuʿafāʾ, ed. Nūr al-Dīn ʿItr (Doha: Idārat Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-Islāmī, 1407/1987), 2:500, 2:545.

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mitting Muslim’s Ṣaḥīḥ from a manuscript other than the one in which he had his audition, “this is the most ugly thing according to the scholars of hadith.”9

1

The Audition Notice

Because it was essential to establish that a manuscript had undergone a process of audition following an audition session a notice was composed to document the event. These notices of audition, which emerge at least as early as the fourth/tenth century, were referred to as samāʿ (pl. samāʿāt) and ṭabaqa (pl. ṭibāq). Notices of audition are quite common within hadith manuscripts and are a rich and largely unutilized source for the social history of oral hadith transmission. Unfortunately, because they remain understudied, there exists considerable confusion in the secondary literature regarding the nature and function of audition notices. The terminology often used to refer to audition notices in the secondary literature reflects this confusion. Since at least as early as 1955 with Salāḥ al-Dīn al-Munajid’s article “ijāzāt al-samāʿ fī al-makhṭūtāt al-qadīma” the term ijāzat al-samāʿ or sometimes just ijāza has been used in some Western and Arab secondary sources to refer to audition notices.10 This term is problematic for a number of reasons. To begin with, it introduces an unnecessary term not commonly used in the primary sources, when two standard indigenous terms already exit.11 The term ijāzat al-samaʿ is so extremely rare in the sources that an al-Makataba al-Shāmila search of some 7,180 books, consisting of many times that many volumes, yields only two instances of this term being used. Beyond this, the term ijāza, which generally has the meaning of permission or license, has the further disadvantage of already being used as a technical term. In the technical terminology of hadith scholarship, ijāza refers to a mode of non-oral hadith transmission that will be discussed in detail in

9 10 11

Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Hādī, Ṭabaqāt ʿulamāʾ al-ḥadīth, ed. Akram al-Būshī, Ibrāhīm al-Zayq (Damascus: Muʾassisat al-Risāla, 1435/2014), 4:10. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Munajid, “Ijāzāt al-samāʿ fī al-makhṭūtāt al-qadīma,” Majalat maʿhad almakhṭūṭāt al-ʿarabiyya, November 1955, 232–251. One use of the term occurs in al-Wakīʿ al-Ḍabī’s Akhbār al-quḍāt, 2:341. Another occurs in al-Bayhaqī’s Dalāʾil al-nubuwa, 1:130. The latter case seems likely to be the editor’s interpolation, as it occurs in a phrase that appears to be inserted in the text by the editor to introduce the colophon, but is not identified as such. The manuscripts will need to be consulted to know for sure. al-Wakīʿ al-Ḍabī’s Akhbār al-quḍāt, ed. ʿAbd al-ʿAziz Muṣtafā al-Murāghī (Cairo: al-Makataba al-Tijāriyya al-Kubrā, 1366/1947); al-Bayhaqī’s Dalāʾil alnubuwa (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1405/1984).

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Chapter Three. In other contexts the term ijāza can refer to a license to teach (ijāzat al-tadrīs) or issue fatwas (ijāzat al-iftā).12 In modern standard Arabic the term ijāza can also refer to an academic degree.13 Al-Munajjid seems to draw on this later meaning in his application of the term ijāza to the notice of audition based on a mistaken understanding of its function, suggesting that the audition notice is the equivalent of “the academic diplomas granted today.”14 The difference between the two, he says, is that the audition notice is an attestation of the auditor having learned and mastered a single text while a modern diploma attests to the recipient’s mastery of a curriculum.15 This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of the notice of audition in the manuscript culture of medieval hadith scholars. Moreover, it conflates reading for the purpose of textual transmission with education. The function of an audition notice was not to attest to the auditor’s knowledge of the text, but rather simply to document that they had heard that manuscript read aloud. This was important because according to the norms of their scholarly culture a manuscript could not be transmitted without first being audited. Indeed, as was noted above, even a scholar who had thoroughly studied and mastered another copy of a text could, according to their norms, only orally transmit a copy they had audited. Scholars who transgressed this norm and transmitted a copy of a text they had not audited were subject to serious censure. Conversely, a layperson who had audited a manuscript and had his name recorded in the audition register could then later transmit that manuscript although he had no knowledge of its contents. Lay transmitters, even illiterates, were, in fact, common, as will be demonstrated below. Children as young as a few days old who could not possibly understand, yet alone master the text they were hearing, were also regularly recorded in audition notices. Such auditors could later transmit texts, because the notice of audition attested that they had audited those manuscripts, not that they had learned or understood them. Only audition and a notice to prove it was required to later transmit the manuscript; comprehension or mastery of the text were not required. In fact, as will be seen below, one need not even understand a word of Arabic to be recorded as an auditor. This was possible because the aim of the notice of audition was 12

13 14 15

Devin Stewart, “The Doctorate of Islamic Law in Mamluk Egypt and Syria” in Law and Education in Medieval Islam: Studies in Memory of Professor George Makdisi, eds. Joseph Lowry, Devin J. Stewart and Shawkat M. Toorawa (Cambridge: E.J.W. Gibb Memorial Trust, 2004), 45–91. Rohi Baalbaki, al-Mawrid: A Modern English Arabic Dictionary (Beirut: Dār al-ʿIlm l-almilāyīn, 1988), 36. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Munajid, “Ijāzāt al-samāʿ fī al-makhṭūtāt al-qadīma,” 232. Ibid.

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to establish a kind of chain of custody of a manuscript and thereby its provenance. According to the culture of hadith scholars, without a living link who had heard the manuscript from another human, who had, in turn, heard the manuscript from another human, back to the compiler and then to the Prophet, the provenance of the manuscript and its contents could not be verified and therefore the manuscript could not be further transmitted and the connection to the Prophet and his words the manuscript represented was broken. As was discussed in Chapter One, the preservation of this connection to the Prophet as well as the luminaries of the community of transmitters of his tradition had become the primary aim of hadith transmission following the emergence of the hadith canon. The notice of audition attested that those mentioned therein were, by virtue of having heard the text read aloud, part of that community of transmitters and could carry the manuscript on to the next generation. It was evidence that their ears had received the words of the Prophet embodied in the manuscript from the mouth of one who, in turn, had heard those words and so on back to the author of the manuscript and then back to the original act of transmission, when the Prophet had spoken and his companions heard his words. This was the primary aim of the type of reading and oral transmission that produced audition notices. To be clear, this is not to say that reading hadith with the aim of education did not exist. As will be pointed out below, there were multiple modes of reading that served different purposes. Notices of audition, however, document reading for the purpose of oral/aural transmission and were intended to bear witness that the auditors it names had become part of an unbroken chain of ears and mouths that had carried the manuscript across time to the compiler or author of the text. For this reason, although some cases indicate that a minority of hadith collectors were willing to take a transmitter’s word that he had audited a text, unsubstantiated claims to audition were generally not accepted. Those who chose to take a transmitter’s word without a written notice could be subject to harsh criticism by the larger community of hadith scholars.16 Practical guidelines on how an audition notice should be composed, including what information should be included and where it should be composed within the manuscript, seem to first begin to appear in the mid-fifth/eleventh century with al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī’s guide for the proper conduct of hadith

16

The case of Ibn Nabhān (d. 543/1148) demonstrates this point well. See Ibn Nuqṭa, Ikmāl alIkmāl, 1:478; Ibn Abī Ḥātim ʿIlal al-ḥadīth li-Ibn Abī Ḥātim, ed. Saʿd b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥamīd (Riyadh: Maṭābiʿ al-Ḥumayḍī, 1427/2006) 1:130.

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collectors and transmitters al-Jāmiʿ li-akhlāq al-rāwī.17 These guidelines were then further elaborated on in Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth and its commentaries, as well as other works on the protocols of hadith collection and transmission.18 Audition notices can vary somewhat in structure, but they are generally quite uniform and formulaic. Considering that they document oral/aural transmission, it is not surprising that the first word one usually encounters in audition notices is the verb samiʿ (he/they heard). Although some notices begin with a basmalla and brief praise of God and blessings on the Prophet. In most cases the verb samiʿ is followed by the title of the book, or more commonly “this book,” or “all of this book,” or “all of this juzʾ.” Generally, the name of the transmitter is then given, more often than not preceded by a series of honorifics. In cases where the audition statement was composed by the transmitting authority, he would generally instead here note that the auditors had heard the text, “from my mouth (min lafẓī),” then give his full name as the composer of the document in its final lines. Following mention of the transmitter, the names of the auditors are listed. In some cases the order of those names in the list seems to have even reflected the actual sitting arrangements of the audition.19 It was not uncommon, however, for the person composing the audition notice to not record the names of all the individuals present at the audition, but instead, after noting the names of a few, likely the more prominent attendees, simply allude to the presence of other unnamed auditors with a phrase like “and others (wa ākhirūn),” or “and a group of others” (wa jamāʿ minhum). In some cases, this was because there were simply too many people too record. For example, the author of a notice composed in in al-Aqsā mosque in Jerusalem writes, “the auditors were innumerable, so we recorded the elite (aʿyān) of them from the people of Damascus, and Aleppo and Jerusalem.” This case, however, is somewhat unique as this audition was part of the celebration of a child having successfully recited from memory a primer on tajwīd. As part of this celebration a selection of hadith were read, after which the audition notice mentioned was composed to record the names of those who had heard the hadith. Adding to the festive context in which this notice was recorded is the fact that it was also during the last ten days of Ramadan in the Masjid al-Aqsā, all of these factors, no doubt, meant that far more people were present than there would be at most auditions.20 17 18 19 20

Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Jāmiʿ li-akhlāq al-rāwī, 1:268. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 206; al-Sīyūṭī, Tadrīb al-rāwī fī sharḥ Taqrīb al-Nawāwī, ed. Muḥammad ʿAwwāma, (Jeddah: Dār al-Minhāj, 1437/2016), 4:403. Hirschler, The Written Word, 46–51. ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad al-Harawī, Juzʾ fīhi muntaqaā min Dhamm al-kalām li-l-Harawī wa-huwa mā waqaʿa fīhi min al-Jāmiʿ lil-ḥāfiẓ Abī ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī, Garrett MS 1357y, Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections. Garrett Davidson - 978-90-04-38693-8 Downloaded from Brill.com08/04/2020 04:11:08PM via University College London

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In some, maybe even most, cases where some auditors were not mentioned in the audition notice, it was likely not because they were too numerous to feasibly record, but because it was simply inconvenient to do so. Indeed, Ibn al-Masdī (d. 663/1264) reports that his teacher, al-Silafī was in the practice of only recording the names of the prominent auditors. He then simply noted the presence of others with the phrase “and others.”21 Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ notes, however, that excluding auditors from the audition notice is unacceptable and warns that one should be wary of not recording the names of all the auditors.22 In other cases, some auditors seem to have been excluded from the notice because there were multiple manuscripts present at the audition and as a result more than one audition notice was composed at the close of the session. All of the auditors were recorded in only one of these notices, while others notices were more personal. In a notice composed in Cairo in the year 838/1434, for example, the author records the names of a few auditors and then says, “and others, who were recorded in the manuscript that was read from.”23 So, there were at least two manuscripts present, the one this notice was recorded in, and another that was being used to read aloud from. All of the auditors present at the audition were recorded in the latter manuscript, and it would seem that complete notice was intended to function as a sort of public audition notice, while the shorter notice was intended to be a more personal notice for a smaller group of friends and relatives consisting of Burhān al-Dīn al-Biqaʿī, who is referred to as “our friend (ṣāhibuna)” by Abū Faḍḹ ʿAbd al-Raḥman al-Qalqashandī, who composed the notice, his brother ʿAlā al-Dīn, and Najm al-Dīn Ibn Fahd al-Makkī.24 Following the list of auditors’ names, most notices of audition then provide the date of the audition. Some dates are very exact and in addition to noting the year also give the exact day of the month and even the time of day. Others simply mention the month and what day of the week without specifying the exact date. For example, “at the beginning of Dhū Qaʿda in the year 629.”25 A small minority of notices omit the date, a notice composed by Yusūf Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, for instance, simply notes, “my son ʿAbd al-Hādī heard this from me.”26 In some rare cases the notice does not record the date because

21 22 23 24 25 26

Al-Sakhāwī, Fatḥ al-Mugīth, 3:94. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 206. Garrett MS 1357y, Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections. Ibid. ʿAbd al-Ghanī b. Abī Bakr Ibn Nuqṭah, al-Juzʾ al-thālith min Kitāb Takmilat al-Ikmāl, Garrett MS 198b, Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections. Yūsūf b. Ḥasan b. ʿAbd al-Hādī, al-Muʿjam, Garrett MS 273h, Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections.

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it was composed as an afterthought long after the actual audition. A notice composed by Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Ghanī b. Nuqta in the year 629/1231, for instance, states, “my son Abū Mūsā ʿAbd al-Ghanī also heard this from me long before this audition.”27 While short hadith collections could be read in a single session, auditions of longer texts took place over many sessions and some notices make note of this. For example, an audition notice recorded in a copy of al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s al-Shifāʾ states that the manuscript was read “… in multiple sessions, the last of which was on Thursday, the thirteenth of Jumāda al-ulā of the year 884.”28 Following the date, the location of the audition is given in some notices, as will be discussed further below. In some cases, notices of audition were recorded not only once upon the final session of the audition, but after each session of the reading. A system of symbols was sometimes employed to indicate which auditors had missed parts of sessions or whole sessions or in some cases even a few pages.29 In some cases, as has been shown by Konrad Hirschler, we can establish to an extent which days of the week had the highest average attendance for a reading of a specific text.30 Make up sessions were sometimes held for those who had missed sections and recorded in the notice of audition, in some cases through marking symbols and abbreviations above or next to the auditors names.31 While such elaborate notices exist, they are fairly rare and most notices are relatively short and informal documents for small groups of auditors, rarely more than ten and most have five or less, and many record only one auditor.32 In most cases following the date, or sometimes before, the scholar who composed the notice identifies himself, writing something like, “and this was written by (was katabahu) …”, or, “and the composer of this notice of audition is (wa kātib al-samāʿ),” or “and the composer of this notice is (wa kātib al-ṭabaqa) …” followed by his name, and often a pious statement of some kind. The individual responsible for composing the audition notice was known in the sources most commonly as the “composer of the audition register (kātib al-ṭibāq and kātib al-samāʿ).” In some cases, the composer of the notice would then have the transmitting authority sign below the notice to

27 28 29 30 31 32

MS Garrett 198b, Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections. Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, al-Shifāʾ, Garrett MS 382yq, Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections. For more on this system of symbols, see Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Dimashqī, al-Intiṣār li-samāʿ al-Ḥajjār, 403–408. Hirschler, The Written Word, 53–57. Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Dimashqī, al-Intiṣār li-samāʿ al-Ḥajjār, 403–408. This is based on a survey of 223 audition notices found in the hadith manuscripts of Princeton University Library’s Garrett Collection; 21 notices have just one auditor.

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confirm its accuracy. This most often entailed writing something to the extent of “this is accurate (saḥḥa dhālika)” followed by his signature.33 As the essential guarantor of the validity of an audition, the composer of the audition notice was generally one of the most recognized and respected scholars present at an audition. As such, it was a position of some prestige and the mark of a serious scholar of hadith to have served as a registrar, and from the sixth/twelfth century onwards biographers regularly list having performed the function among a biographee’s virtues. The significance of this position is further evidenced by the fact that various educational institutions, including the prestigious Ẓāhiriyya in Damascus, provided for the employment of a paid registrar to compose audition notices following readings of hadith texts.34 The authority invested in the audition register and the person of the registrar essentially relieved the individual auditor of the responsibility to insure the accuracy of the texts they transmitted. While a transmitter once needed to have a reputation for reliability, accuracy and honesty it was now the reliability and accuracy of the audition register and the registrar who composed it that established the reliability of one’s claim to have audited a manuscript and subsequent ability to transmit that text. This was essentially recognition that the reliability of a hadith or collection of hadith was no longer dependent on any individual transmitter or act of transmission. By the close of the fourth/tenth century, oral/aural hadith collection and transmission depended on the presence of a copy of a hadith collection, hearing that copy read aloud by or in the presence of a transmitter through an unbroken chain of transmission, and finally a written attestation of this. The concern for carefully documenting the provenance and transmission of hadith manuscripts and the rigor it required posed a number of practical difficulties. For one, an active and successful hadith collector might hear hundreds of texts over the course of his career, but copies of books were expensive to buy and time consuming to produce, and a hadith collector could not always acquire a copy of every hadith collection he heard. As a result, several auditors would often share a book during audition sessions. Two brothers,35 a father and his

33 34 35

For examples, see the following manuscript: Garrett MSS 2573y, 2213y, 164b, 1357y, Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections. Jonathan Berkey, The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo: A Social History of Islamic Education (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 215. Al-Samʿānī, al-Ansāb, ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Yaḥyā al-Muʿallimī al-Yamānī (Hyderabad: Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif al-ʿUthmāniyya, 1382/1962), 7:158; al-Dhahabī, Mīzān al-Iʿtidāl, 3:148, 4:246; idem, Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ, ed. Shuʿayb al-Arnāʾūṭ, 25 vols. (Beirut: Muʾassasat alRisāla, 1412–1419/1992–1998), 17:649; al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh Baghdād, ed. Bashshār

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figure 1

An example of an audition notice from the ninth/fifteenth century (Kitāb alArbaʿīn al-Mukharraja min Masmūʿāt Shaykh al-Islām Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. ʿAbd al-Kāfī al-Subkī, Taymūr Ḥadīth MS 426, Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, Cairo, Egypt, fol. 1)

young sons,36 or a group of friends, acquaintances or even strangers might share a copy of the text being read and have their audition notices recorded together.37 Having one’s audition notice in someone else’s possession, even

36 37

ʿAwwād Maʿrūf (Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1422/2002), 7:310; Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān al-Mīzān, 4:246, 6:2. Al-Dhahabī, Mīzān al-iʿtidāl, 2:498, Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān al-Mīzān, 1:217, 3:353. Al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām, 29:56, Abū al-Shaykh al-Iṣbahānī, Ṭabaqāt al-Muḥadithīn bi-

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if a friend, posed the problem of access and use. The fourth/tenth-century hadith scholar al-Rāmhurmuzī even reports a court case from the city of Kufa over access to an audition notice. In this case a man had attended an audition of a book with an acquaintance and had his audition notice recorded in this acquaintance’s copy of the book. Years later, when he wanted to transmit the book based on that audition, this acquaintance refused him access to the audition copy, thereby making it impossible for him to transmit. Frustrated, he raised the case to the Qāḍī of Kufa, who ruled that if the attestation was written in the owner’s hand, then he must give access to the copy, as his having written the attestation in the copy was proof that he recorded it willingly and of his own volition. If the attestation, however, was written in the complainant’s hand then the owner’s volition was questionable and he was not required to give the complainant access to the copy.38 Later scholars also discuss this issue at some length and preserve other similar cases.39 The problem of access to audition manuscripts even led some scholars to decline to audit them in the first place. Al-samʿānī relates that in Naysābūr he knew an avid collector of hadith manuscripts. When he acquired a manuscript with the audition notice of a living authority, he would come to al-Samʿānī and invite him to go with him and audit the text, “in order that your name might be included in the audition notice.” Al-samʿānī, however, remarked that he often refused the invitations, saying, “If I do not own the copy, I will not read it.”40 The considerable gap that usually existed between one’s audition and subsequent transmission posed a further practical challenge to this system. Generally speaking, in order for one’s chain of transmission to be valuable and sought after, a significant amount of time needed to pass between one’s audition and subsequent transmission. Decades might pass between the time one had heard a collection and when his chain of transmission had become elevated enough that he was then sought out to transmit it. Manuscripts were, of course, subject to loss and destruction, and in the lengthy gap of time between audition and transmission they often were. The sources provide us with vivid accounts of scholars tragically losing their audition manuscripts through various calamities

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Iṣbahān wa al-wāridīn ʿalayhā (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1412/1992), 4:71; ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Aḥmad al-Kattānī, Dhayl Tārīkh al-ʿulamāʾ wa wafāyātihim, ed. ʿAbd Allāh Aḥmad Sulaymān al-Ḥamd (Riyadh: Dār al-ʿĀṣima, 1409/1988), 74; Abū Isḥāq al-Ṣariyfīnī, al-Muntakhab min Kitāb al-Siyāq li-Tārīkh Naysābūr, ed. Khālid Ḥaydar (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1414/1993), 1:207. Al-Rāmhurmuzī, al-Muḥaddith al-fāṣil, 589. Al-Sīyūṭī, Tadrib al-rāwī, 4:409; Al-Sakhāwī, Fatḥ al-Mugīth, 3:98. Al-Samʿānī, al-Muntakhab min Muʿjam shuȳukh al Samʿānī, ed. Muwaffaq b. ʿAbd Allāh ʿAbd al-Qādir, (Riyadh: Dār ʿĀlim al-Kutub, 1417/1996), 1264.

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including fire, theft and poverty.41 The fact that many collectors traveled widely subjected their audition copies to further risk of loss. The Andalusian scholar ʿAbd Allāh b. Sulaymān, known as Ibn Ḥawṭ Allāh (d. 612/1215), is an example of a collector that spent much time traveling to hear hadith only to have most of his audition manuscripts lost and dispersed on the road.42 The loss of audition copies was a true tribulation for hadith collectors, these were unique documents that could not be replaced. Losing them left them with nothing to show for the years they had spent collecting. Somewhat paradoxically, given the culture’s concern with written documentation of provenance, early scholars seem to have accepted that a scholar could transmit from memory without his audition copy, and some accounts are preserved of early scholars who, upon being separated from their audition copies, transmit from memory. The early fourth/tenth-century Baghdadi scholar al-Khuttulī is reported to have arrived in Basra before his books and transmitted hadith from memory for months before they arrived.43 Most scholars, however, did not have such prodigious memories. The prominent fourth/tenth-century scholar al-Aṣam (d. 346/957) was cut off from his books, not through their physical loss, but through the tribulation of first losing his hearing and then losing his sight. It is reported that when students wanted to hear hadith from him, they would place a pen in his hand and he would then recite from memory the fourteen hadith he had memorized.44 For most upon suffering the loss of their audition copies their only recourse was to attempt to track down some of their lost manuscripts or those that they had shared during auditions and were now in others’ possession. The sources preserve numerous accounts of scholars going to great lengths to recover audition copies. As a young man, Ibn Hinzāba (d. 391/1001) heard a juzʾ from the revered scholar Abū Qāsīm al-Baghawī (d. 317/929), but had somehow lost it. Ibn Hinzāba was fortunate to have been quite wealthy, his father had served as a vizier to the caliph and he served as a vizier to the governor of Egypt, and as a result he was able to offer up a generous reward to whoever found the juzʾ, promising “I will make whomsoever brings it to me

41

42 43 44

Ibn Ḥajar, Lisan al-Mīzān, 5:80; Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 16:389, 20:60, 24:86; Al-Dhahabī, Mīzān al-iʿtidāl, 3:484; Al-Samʿānī, al-Taḥbīr, 2:331; Ibn ʿAsākir, Tārīkh Dimashq (Damascus: Dār alFikr, 1415/1995), 5:438; Muḥammad Ashraf al-ʿAẓīm Ābādī, ʿAwn al-Maʿbūd Sharḥ Sunan Abī Dāwūd (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1415/1995), 2:309; al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh Baghdād, 2:388, 4:42, 5:491, 8:682; Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Hādī, Ṭabaqāt ʿulamāʾ al-ḥadīth, 3:210, 3:415, 4:135, 4:243. Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Hādī, Ṭabaqāt ʿulamāʾ al-ḥadīth, 4:178. Ibid., 3:63. Ibid., 3:54.

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rich.”45 Ibn ʿAsākir narrates an account well illustrating the desperation created by losing one’s audition manuscripts. He reports that after losing more than five hundred audition copies through an unspecified calamity, one fourth/tenthcentury hadith scholar was able to track down a copy of a hadith collection that contained a notice of his audition. Upon asking to borrow the collection, however, he is told that in order to gain access to the manuscript he must pay the owner of the copy an exorbitant fee of five gold dinars, much more than he had. Desperate to regain something to show for the years he spent collecting hadith, the scholar resorts to selling part of his house in order to gain access to this audition copy.46 While hardly enviable, this transmitter was still fortunate enough to find an audition copy he could transmit from during his lifetime. The sources tell us of other less fortunate transmitters whose surviving audition copies were only discovered after their death.47 By the turn of the fifth/eleventh century, the hardships created by the rigor of the protocols of oral/aural transmission as well as the shifting nature and function of hadith transmission were leading some to begin to explore dispensations and alternatives. Hadith scholars began to increasingly accept that an attendee of an audition was authorized not only to transmit from his own audition manuscript but from any copy that had, through the same process of audition, been verified to be in agreement with the source of his audition manuscript. In other words, he could transmit from other than his audition manuscript, if it was established that this manuscript was identical to the manuscript of the authority with whom he had audited the text. The argument was that since such a manuscript had undergone the same process of oral/aural transmission as his now unavailable audition copy and the shared provenance was therefore established, it was acceptable for him to transmit that manuscript as it had the same chain of transmission. The conservative opponents of this position still held that only one’s own verification of a copy through the process of reading and audition provided the certainty of provenance necessary to reliably further transmit the text. According to these scholars, depending on others’ efforts (taqlīd) to verify the accuracy of a manuscript was not permissible, because there might be variants in the manuscript that another auditor did not catch, or was aware of but did not point out in his audition copy.48 Accepting the permissibility of transmitting manuscripts with 45 46 47 48

Ibid., 3:219. Ibn ʿAsākir, Tārīkh Dimashq, 5:438. Al-Ṣafadī, Aʿyān al-ʿaṣr, 5:322. Burhān al-Dīn al-Biqāʿī, al-Nukat al-wafiyyā bi-mā fī sharḥ al-Alfiyya (Riyadh: Maktabat alRushd, 1428/2007), 2:202.

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a shared origin, however, had the benefit of increasing the number of copies that an auditor could potentially transmit from and improved the odds that a copy might survive the years in between audition and transmission. This was an important development as copies of texts, especially more voluminous texts, were still rare and many auditors might not have access to a copy of the text to use during an audition. This was particularly true for more voluminous texts. While one might easily procure a copy of a short collection of hadith consisting of a quire or two, or forty or a hundred hadith, to obtain a copy of a large collection such as al-Bukhārī’s or Muslim’s Ṣaḥīhs, for example, was beyond the means of many auditors. Moreover, manuscripts were fragile and subject not only to loss but also destruction. A young auditor might attend an audition and then decades later be one of the few people surviving who had attended the audition of the text, but his copy had since been lost or destroyed. Ruling that such auditors were only permitted to transmit from their audition manuscript could potentially endanger the continued oral/aural transmission of that text. This is, reportedly, exactly what happened to the oral chain of transmission for Muslim’s Ṣaḥīh. According to al-Ḥākim, al-Jalūdī (d. 368/971) was the last transmitter to possess a valid chain of purely oral transmission for Muslim’s collection.49 Al-Jalūdī had heard Muslim’s Ṣaḥīḥ from Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad b. Sufyān (d. 308/920), who was the last-living transmitter to have heard the Ṣaḥīḥ directly from Muslim. Unfortunately for al-Jalūdī, however, his audition copy of the Ṣaḥīḥ was destroyed and as a result he was no longer able to transmit the text. Worse still, according to al-Ḥākim and others, he was the only reliable transmitter to have heard Muslim from Ibn Sufyān.50 Thus, according to the conservative view of oral/aural transmission, the oral/aural chain of transmission for the second most important work of the hadith canon was broken. Muslim’s Ṣaḥīḥ continued to be transmitted, of course, but according to al-Ḥākim’s view, truly reliable oral/aural transmission of the work ended with al-Jalūdī.51

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The Evolving Function of Oral Transmission

By the middle of the fifth/eleventh century, scholars of hadith were adopting the view that the hadith canon was now far too widely distributed and wellknown to be fundamentally corrupted through transmission. And although the 49 50 51

Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 16:302; James Robinson, “The transmission of Muslim’s Ṣaḥīḥ”, JRAS, 1, (1949), 49–60. Al-Samʿānī, al-Ansāb, 3:309; Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān al-Mīzān, 5:26. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 16:302.

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manuscripts of the canonical works were somewhat divergent in places, on the whole the hadith corpus had achieved a high degree of stability and uniformity that made it immune to fundamental corruption through isolated acts of transmission. The divergence in the manuscript tradition was not seen as a fundamental threat to the hadith corpus; rather most seem to have viewed this divergence in the corpus as superficial. Commenting on the state of oral/aural transmission in the fifth/eleventh century, the jurist and hadith scholar alBayhaqī (d. 458/1065) wrote, “today, if one brings a hadith that is not already known to the community of hadith scholars, it is rejected. Likewise, today if one brings a hadith that is known to them, its veracity is not dependent on him [the individual transmitter], for he is not the sole transmitter of that hadith, its veracity is dependent on others.” He explains further, “The hadith, whether they are authentic or otherwise, have been recorded in the collections compiled by the great scholars of hadith. It is impossible that any of the hadith escaped them all, even if some of them might have escaped some of them.”52 The preservation of the hadith was no longer then dependent on the individual transmitters who were involved in the transmission of the manuscripts of the hadith corpus and recorded in the audition notices. These manuscripts were part of a corpus that was now too well-established to be corrupted by individual transmitters. Recognition of this reality, of course, raised the question of why one should bother to transmit and record notices attesting audition at all? To this al-Bayhaqī states, “The point of transmitting and hearing hadith [today] is so that the phrases, ‘he informed us’ and ‘he reported’ continue, and further to preserve the chain of transmission that is a unique trait of the Muslim community.”53 According to this view, the function of continued hadith transmission and the audition notices documenting the individual acts of transmission was no longer to trace the transmission of hadith texts and establish their provenance, as it had been originally; the stability of the hadith corpus made this unnecessary. The institution of the audition notice simply served to ensure that the chain of oral/aural transmission continue to reflect a reality. In other words, its function was to document that a text had, in fact, been audited by an individual, who could then later transmit it, thus keeping the chain of transmission alive. While early hadith scholars stipulated a long list of qualifications that a reliable transmitter should possess, from the fifth/eleventh century, scholars were more and more in agreement that regardless of an individual transmit-

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Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 121. Ibid., 121.

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ter’s qualifications, or lack thereof, to keep the oral/aural chain of transmission alive, it was enough that he or she had been recorded in the audition notice. By the seventh/thirteenth century, Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ would remark, after listing all of the various conditions stipulated for transmitters by the early generations of scholars, “As for the accuracy of the transmitter, [in our times] it is enough that his audition notice for the text is documented in the handwriting of a reliable person.”54 The understanding that the aim of continued oral/aural transmission was to preserve the chain of oral transmission and that the audition notice was a means to this aim led to a profound liberalization of oral/aural hadith transmission. To defend loosening the protocols of audition, more than one authority would remark, “it is enough that one catch the scent of the audition.”55 As will be seen, the “scent of audition” was increasingly often very faint. The increasing canonical culture surrounding the hadith corpus and the idea that the aim of continued hadith transmission was simply to preserve the chain of transmission would ultimately lead to a liberalization of attitudes regarding the transmission of non-audition manuscripts. This shift would occur over the course of several centuries. As was shown above, early hadith scholars considered it reprehensible to transmit from a non-source copy, but from the sixth/twelfth century onwards, this position would slowly erode. By the eighth/fourteenth century, this taboo had all but disappeared. In eighth/ fourteenth-century Damascus, al-Dhahabī would lament this development, “Today, transmitting hadith without a source copy has become prevalent and widespread.”56 Indeed, his contemporaries, the prominent respected hadith authorities Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328), al-Mizzī (d. 742/1342), al-Birzālī (d. 739/ 1339) were all attending audition sessions with transmitters who did not have audition copies.57 A century earlier, Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ had already opined that the early conservative position that it was only valid to transmit from a personal audition copy, was “an abandoned position (madhhab matrūk), among the positions of extremists that are rejected in our times.”58 The sources provide only shards of material with which to piece together a narrative of how scholars came to hold that the position of early hadith scholars on this issue was 54 55

56 57 58

Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 120. Al-Dhahabī attributed this statement to al-Fatwānī. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 20:75. In Ibn Ḥajar’s al-Durar al-Kāmina, he notes that al-Mizzī often cited this anecdote as proof for his laxity in transmission practices, attributing it to Ibn Manda, Al-Durar al-Kāmina (Hyderabad: Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif al-ʿUthmāniya, 1392/1972), 4:458. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 16:389. Ibid., 24:86. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 192.

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no longer applicable. In the seventh/thirteenth century, Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ attempted to establish a precedent for this position dating all the way back to the fifth/ eleventh century, claiming that already al-Isfarāynī (d. 416/1027) permitted transmission from a non-audition copy.59 If he, in fact, held this position, he would have been quite rare among his contemporaries. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ also makes the claim that already in the fifth/eleventh century al-Khaṭīb allowed for the use of a non-audition copy that had been collated with an audition copy, so long as the transmitter declared this flaw to auditors at the time of transmission.60 This position does not, however, seem to occur in al-Khaṭīb’s own extant writings. On the contrary, al-Khaṭīb himself, in his history of Baghdad, is critical of a transmitter who transmitted hadith based on a non-source copy.61 This was not an anomaly, using non-audition copies seems to have been quite uncommon in fifth/eleventh century, and the reputations of transmitters who did so were tarnished.62 Further, in the two centuries that followed al-Khaṭīb transmission from non-audition copies would continue to be grounds for criticism.63 A sixth/twelfth-century report of an audition involving the prominent hadith scholars Abū Ṭāhir al-Silafī and ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Maqdisī (d. 600/1203) may shed some light on the chronology of opinions on this topic.64 Al-Maqdisī’s companion Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Rahāwī (d. 612/1215) recounts that he and al-Maqdisī traveled from their home in Syria in order to hear hadith from al-Silafī in Alexandria. They had in their possession a copy of Kitāb al-Sunna of al-Lālakāʾī (d. 418/1027), which they showed to al-Silafī, who commented that he had heard the book from Abū Bakr al-Ṭuraythīthī (d. 497/1103), who took it directly from the compiler. Al-Maqdisī and al-Rahāwī reply that they would like to read the text to al-Silafī. Al-Silafī, however, refused, saying that he did not have the manuscript used during his audition, so “how could you read it to me?”65 Al-Maqdisī and al-Rahāwī then requested to have an audition with him for an unspecified hadith collection all the while intending to have al-Lālakāʾī’s Kitāb al-Sunna read. Al-Silafī granted their request. When they met with al-Silafī again for the audition, they gave the book to a local reader to recite. After the reader had read for a time, al-Silafī raised his head

59 60 61 62 63 64 65

Ibid., 192. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 192. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh Baghdād, 4:687. Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān al-Mīzān, 5:367, 5:425; Ibn Nuqṭa, al-Taqyīd li-maʿrifat ruwāt al-sunan wa al-masānid, ed. Kamāl Yūsuf al-Ḥūt (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1408/1998), 234, 291. Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān al-Mīzān, 4:133. Ibn Nuqṭa, al-Taqyīd, 178. Ibid., 178.

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and asked, “what is this that you are reading?”66 They said, “it is al-Lālakāʾī’s Kitāb al-Sunna.” Al-Silafī replied incredulously, “How can you read this to me when I do not have my audition copy?” Al-Maqdisī and al-Rahāwī replied, “but it is a reliable copy that has been verified against the compiler’s original copy.”67 Al-Silafī, conflicted between the ideals of his discipline and the reality of contemporary hadith transmission, became quiet, seemingly resigning himself to his degenerate reality, and the reader continued reading until the audition of the text was complete. This was a departure for al-Silafī. On another occasion, when someone attempted to read a non-audition copy of al-Nisāʾī’s al-Mujtabā, he angrily ripped the manuscript from the reader’s hands and yelled at him, “I only transmit from my audition copy.”68 The attrition of the old norms of oral/aural transmission that these reports seem to reflect was slowly repeated over the next century until eventually it became the norm. Less than a century later, influential hadith scholars were condoning transmission from non-audition manuscripts not only in practice but also in theoretical terms. They stipulated, however, that the non-audition manuscript was rigorously collated against a ‘source’ manuscript. Regarding the permissibility of transmitting from non-source manuscripts, Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ writes, “… this is also the case for a manuscript that has been verified against the same sourcemanuscript upon which the transmitting authority’s audition was based.”69 This is acceptable, he explains, because “the desired aim is for the student’s manuscript to be identical to the authority’s source manuscript, upon which his audition was based. Whether this happens through intermediaries or without intermediaries makes no difference.”70 This was not permission to transmit from any manuscript available. He admonishes the reader, “Be not like the party of hadith collectors who, when they hear that a shaykh once audited a book, read that book to him from any manuscript they find.”71 Roughly a century later, Ibn Kathīr (d. 774/1372) would take Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s opinion on the use of non-audition manuscripts a step further and allow transmission from any manuscript one “believed” to be authentic. He writes: In the case that one has a heard a hadith collection such al-Bukhārī, then later found a manuscript of that text which has not been verified against

66 67 68 69 70 71

Ibn Nuqṭa, al-Taqyīd, 178. Ibid., 178. Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Hādī, Ṭabaqāt ʿulamāʾ al-ḥadīth, 4:76. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-Ḥadīth, 192. Ibid., 192. Ibid., 193.

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his shaykh’s manuscript, nor does he find an attestation of his audition in it, but he believes it to be an authentic copy, the majority of hadith scholars hold it to be prohibited to transmit from this. Ayyūb and Muḥammad the sons of Bakr al-Bursānī, however, held that there was a dispensation in this regard. And this is my opinion, and God knows best.72 Ibn Kathīr was far from the only eighth/fourteenth-century hadith scholar who took this dispensation for the use of non-audition manuscripts in oral/aural transmission. His contemporary al-Dhahabī suggests most of his contemporaries held this view. Al-Dhahabī writes, “most of the latter scholars of hadith have taken a dispensation in this regard.”73 Ibn Rajab (d. 795/1392) roughly half a century later would echo this, writing, “the latter-day scholars take many dispensations in this regard, taking hadith without a source manuscript, depending only on people’s word that the transmitting authority had actually heard the book in question, then reading it to him. They do not find anything about this problematic.”74 Despite the apparent increasing acceptance of transmitting from manuscripts of unverified provenance there was a clear recognition that it was a departure from the standards of the early authorities. As with other aspects of latter-day oral transmission that did not meet the standards of the early authorities, al-Dhahabī expressed his hope that the defectiveness of this mode of oral/aural transmission might be buttressed by issuing an ijāza of transmission upon completion of audition. This way if the oral/aural transmission was faulty, the auditor would at least have a chain of transmission based on the ijāza.75

3

The Age Structure of Oral Transmission

The transformation in the understanding of the functions of oral/aural transmission had important effects on the age structure of oral/transmission. It was already noted that as the audition notice became the guarantor of the veracity of oral/aural transmission, the standards that had previously been required of transmitters were lowered. One of the results of this was the lowering of the 72 73 74 75

Ibn Kathīr, al-Bāʿith al-ḥathīth, ed. Aḥmad Shākir (Cairo: Maktabat Dār al-Turāth, 1423/ 2003), 140. Al-Dhahabī, Mīzān al-Iʿtidāl, 3:467. Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī, Dhayl Ṭabaqāt al-ḥanābila, 3:320. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 16:389.

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minimum age required for a child’s auditions to be considered valid. Allowing children to audit hadith, of course, had the advantage of giving them an earlier start and an opportunity to acquire more elevated chains of transmission. For the early generations of hadith scholars, the minimum age for valid transmission was dependent on the auditor’s ability to comprehend the material being audited, although opinions varied considerably on when exactly this age was. Al-Rāmhurmuzī preserves a report stating that the early scholars of Kufa considered transmission valid at the age of twenty, while for the scholars of Syria it was at thirty.76 The difference of opinion seems to have been based on the age at which it was thought one was capable of understanding the material being transmitted and accurately copying and preserving it for later transmission. AlRāmhurmuzī notes that his own teacher Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Zubayrī (d. 317/929) held that one should not begin “writing,” which is to say collecting and auditing collections of hadith, before the age of twenty, because for him this was the age at which the intellect was fully mature. Before that age one’s energies should be focused on memorizing the Quran and learning one’s obligatory religious duties.77 Al-Rāmhurmuzī, however, states that his own opinion on this issue is that valid transmission should not be tied to any specific age, but rather to the auditor’s level of maturity, awareness and accuracy.78 This being said, he also writes that it was rare among the early generations for one to begin collecting hadith before the age of twenty.79 To illustrate this point he cites a report in which the prominent early authority al-Zuhrī (d. 124/741), upon meeting Ibn ʿUyayna (d. 198/814), who was then only fifteen years old, marveled, “I have never seen any hadith collector as young as him.”80 Although al-Rāmhurmuzī establishes that the early generations did not generally collect hadith before the age of twenty, he is careful to point out that there were exceptions to this. A number of the companions of the Prophet had transmitted hadith they heard or witnessed while they were still young children. ʿAbd Allāh b. Jaʿfar, for example, was only ten years old when the Prophet died, yet he transmitted hadith.81 He was not alone, he goes on to note that Sahl b. Abī Ḥathma, Thābit b. alḌaḥḥāk and Abū Ṭufayl all transmitted hadith although they were only eight years old when the Prophet died.82 Although they were clearly exceptional, the

76 77 78 79 80 81 82

Al-Rāmhurmuzī, al-Muḥaddith al-fāṣil, 185. Ibid., 187. Ibid., 185. Ibid., 185. Ibid., 185. Ibid., 190. Ibid., 190.

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existence of these child companions of the Prophet gave scholars a precedent for going against the opinions of the early scholars on the issue. Since the early fourth/tenth century, they had been increasingly doing just that and bringing their young children to audit hadith. This shift can be traced in both practice and theory, the former in the biographical literature and surviving audition notices, the latter in the uṣūl al-ḥadīth genre. The transmission of the canonical Sunan of Abū Dāwūd (d. 275/888) is an early example of this development. The primary line of transmission for the Sunan is through Abū Dāwūd’s student Abū ʿAlī al-Luʾluʾī (d. 329–333/940–944), who heard the final redaction of the Sunan from Abū Dāwūd the year of his death.83 Abū ʿUmar al-Hāshimī (d. 414/1023) was in turn the primary transmitter of the Sunan from al-Luʾluʾī, to the extent that it is extremely rare to find a chain of transmission to al-Luʾluʾī that does not go through him. His biographers report that al-Hāshimī heard the Sunan from al-Luʾluʾī multiple times. but differ on exactly how old he was during these auditions. The sources seem to agree, however, that he was born in the month of Rajab in the year 322/933.84 According to al-Khaṭīb, who is the earliest source to mention the dates of audition, al-Hāshimī attended readings of the Sunan with al-Luʾluʾī four times; the first of these was in the year 324/935 when he was only two years old, and at the time of the final audition he was five. It was only in the final reading that an audition notice was recorded for him.85 Later biographers, however, cite significantly later dates for al-Hāshimī’s auditions. Ibn Nuqṭa (d. 629/1231) and al-Dhahabī both report that al-Hāshimī’s first audition was at the age of eight and his final audition at ten.86 While the sources differ significantly on al-Hāshimī’s exact age at the time of his audition, they agree that he was still a child at the time of his final audition of the Sunan. For the primary transmitter of such an important hadith collection to have audited it as a child represents a major shift in transmission practices. Al-Hāshimī’s case was not an isolated one. The transmission of Muslim’s Ṣaḥīḥ in the fourth/tenth century also demonstrates the increasing participa83

84 85 86

Other transmissions of the work exist, but it is al-Luʾluʾī’s that is by far the most common. In the Maghrib, in particular, Ibn Dāsa’s (d. 346/957) transmission, which differs slightly from al-Luʾluʾī’s, was in circulation. Aḥmad al-Sahāranfūrī, Badhl majhūd fī ḥall Sunan Abī Dāwūd, ed. Taqī al-Dīn al-Nadawī (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 1427/2006) 1:127–139. For more on the transmission of the Sunan see James Robinson’s article “The Transmission of Abū Dāwūd’s Sunan”, BSOAS, 14 (1952), 579–588. Al-Khaṭīb, al-Kifāya, 62; Al-Subkī, al-Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya, 5:310; Tārīkh Baghdād wa dhuyūlihi, 12:447; Ibn Nuqṭa, al-Taqyīd, 1:428. Al-Khaṭīb, al-Kifāya, 62. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 17:225; Ibn Nuqṭa, al-Taqyīd, 1:429.

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tion of children in oral/aural hadith transmission. The prominent transmitter of Muslim’s Ṣaḥīḥ Abū Bakr Muḥammad al-Kisāʾī (d. 385/968) was taken by his father to an audition of Muslim’s Ṣaḥīḥ with Ibn Sufyān, who was the primary transmitter of the collection, at an unspecified but quite tender age, so young in fact that he had no memory of the event. His father’s close friend, who was present at the audition, years later described the audition to him: “I used to see your father sit you in the audition session, and you were so young that you would fall asleep.”87 Despite his young age at the time of his audition, alKisāʾī went on to become one of the most prominent transmitters of Muslim, although he was not without his critics.88 Even the most revered collection of the canon was not immune to this trend. The primary transmitter of al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ, Karīma al-Marwaziyya (d. 463/1070), was also very young when she had her audition of the text. Her biographers do not mention exactly how old she was when she had her audition of the Ṣaḥīh. They do note, however, that she was a child at the time and was taken to the audition by her father. While the sources do not specify Karīma’s exact age at the time of her audition, she was young enough that some critics questioned the validity of her transmission.89 That the primary transmitters of three out of the six canonical hadith works audited those works while still young children is a powerful testament to the increasing focus on the creation of short chains of transmission. Because all three had heard as small children and then lived to advanced age they could offer hadith collectors a remarkably short chain of transmission. In the case of Karīma, in the latter years of her life, she could span the more than two centuries between her and Bukhārī with just two links. Such a degree of elevation and the perceived stability of the canon trumped any concerns about the accuracy of childhood audition. By the end of the fourth/tenth century, taking small children to auditions had become the norm. Commenting on the transmitter Ibn al-Khallāl (d. 470/1077), whose father took him to hear hadith with Abū Hafṣ al-Kattānī (d. 390/999), when he was only five years old, al-Dhahabī comments, “It is in this era that hadith collectors began bringing their young children to hadith auditions.”90 This would remain the norm in later centuries, the biographical literature from 87 88 89 90

Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 16:465. Ibid. Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, al-Ilmāʿ fī maʿrifat al-riwāya wa taqyīd al-samāʿ, ed. Al-Sayyid Aḥmad al-Saqr (Cairo: Dār al-Turāth, 1379/1970), 145. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 18:369. Bulliet’s research on the age structure of education in Medieval Nishapur suggests that it was already common there for very young auditors to hear hadith in the early fourth/tenth century. Richard W. Bulliet, “The Age Structure of Medieval Islamic Education”, SI, no. 57 (1983), 105–117.

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the fifth/eleventh to the tenth/sixteenth centuries, which is chalked full of references to five-year-old auditors, provides ample evidence for this.91 The earliest explicit attempt to bring the theoretical standards for the minimum age for oral/aural transmission in line with practice would come in the mid-fifth/eleventh century with al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī. Al-Khaṭīb begins his treatment of the question noting that historically there has been considerable scholarly disagreement on the question of the minimum age for valid oral/aural transmission. He cites the same reports al-Rāmhurmuzī did a century earlier, documenting that the early authorities did not consider audition valid until the auditor reached an age of maturity. He simply discounts these opinions, however, stating, “the majority of scholars have said that the audition of one below this age is valid.”92 This, he notes, “is the correct opinion according to us.”93 It was noted above that al-Rāmhurmuzī held that the validity of transmission was not dependent on a particular minimum age, but rather on the auditor’s “maturity and accuracy.”94 Al-Khaṭīb agreed with al-Rāmhurmuzī on the first premise of this position, but the reality of the increasing participation of small children, who could not possibly meet the condition of accuracy, led him to tolerate considerable leniency on the conditions of “maturity and accuracy.” Regarding the condition of accuracy, al-Khaṭīb writes, “Some of the people of knowledge hold that accuracy (ḍabṭ) at the time of taking hadith is not a condition for the validity of the audition. Rather, if one hears and is aware then this audition is valid, even if one does not remember it.”95 As proof for this position al-Khaṭīb adduces a hadith in which the companion Abū Shāh, who was from the Yemen, hears the Prophet pronounce a number of rulings regarding the legal sanctity of the precinct of Mecca, but due to his poor memory asks the Prophet to have this pronouncement written down for him, so that he might then convey it to his countrymen on his return to the Yemen. The Prophet agrees and orders one of his scribes to write down his pronouncement for Abū Shāh.96 For al-Khaṭīb this hadith proved that the Prophet himself had allowed the condition of accuracy to be delegated to writing. Although Abū 91

92 93 94 95 96

Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 15:415, 19:537, 20:9, 20:181, 21:236, 21:424, 22:151, 22:585, 22:344, 22:383, 23:19, 23:45, 23:75, 23:244; Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-kāmina, 1:301, 2:136, 2:254, 2:369, 3:5, 3:91, 3:118, 3:127, 3:127, 3:133, 4:23, 5:220, 5:317, 5:323, 5:426, 6:195; al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 1:147, 1:191, 1:351, 1:352, 4:194, 4:151, 5:47, 5:127, 5:304, 6:70, 6:173, 8:77, 8:115, 8:237, 9:79, 9:144, 9:156, 10:10, 11:49, 12:6, 12:39, 12:112, 12:141. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Kifāya, 73. Ibid., 73. Al-Rāmhurmuzī, al-Muḥaddith al-fāṣil, 185. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Kifāya, 71. Ibid., 71–72.

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Shāh, himself did not meet the condition of accuracy due to his poor memory, he was still able to accurately transmit the pronouncement he heard from the Prophet, because the scribe who recorded the proclamation was accurate and reliable. This principle, of course, applied to young children, and validated their auditions although they were realistically too young to fulfill the condition of accuracy. So long as the material they received aurally was recorded by an individual who would fulfill the condition of accuracy for them, their auditions were valid. This is why al-Khaṭīb explains, “scholars, have taken their children at a young age to hear hadith from those shaykhs whose chains of transmission were elevated.”97 Although al-Rāmhurmuzī held that valid oral transmission was dependent on the individual auditor’s ability and accuracy rather than meeting a minimum age requirement, the youngest auditors he mentions were eight years old at the time of audition.98 A century later, al-Khaṭīb was arguing for the validity of even younger auditors. As proof, he cites a hadith transmitted by Maḥmūd b. al-Rabīʿ (d. 99/717), who was only five years old when the Prophet died, but claimed that he remembered the Prophet playfully splashing water in his face.99 This hadith was transmitted by al-Bukhārī and al-Nasāʾī and thus provided a fairly compelling precedent for the validity of auditors as young as five. Al-Khaṭīb takes this a step further, however, and suggests that, in fact, valid audition was not dependent on any specific age requirement. Remarkably, he suggests instead that the only requirement for the validity of a child’s audition is that they are cognizant enough to distinguish between a donkey and a cow.100 Ultimatley, this position seems to have been too extreme to ever gain much traction. The precedent of Maḥmud b. al-Rabīʿ would become the standard for later scholars, and most would consider five years the theoretical minimum age for valid transmission. Although, as will be seen, they found ways to work around this. By the early sixth/twelfth century, scholars had become habituated enough to the presence of five-year-old children in hadith audition sessions that the bar could be lowered even further. From this point onwards, we begin to find children as young as three attending hadith auditions. Fāṭima bt. Abī al-Ḥasan al-Anṣarī (d. 600/1203) is an example of this development. Born in Isfahan in the year 522/1128, her father was a hadith scholar and transmitter and in the year 525/1130 he took her to audition sessions with the famous transmitter 97 98 99 100

Al-Khaṭīb, al-Kifāya, 73. Al-Rāmhurmuzī, al-Muḥaddith al-fāṣil, 190. Al-Khaṭīb, al-Kifāya, 56. Ibid., 65.

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Fāṭima al-Jawzdāniyya (d. 525/1130).101 In the same year he took her to Baghdad to attended audition sessions with a number of other transmitters. Having audited at such an early age did not prevent her from transmitting this material later in life. As an adult, she travelled with her husband to Damascus and Cairo where she transmitted hadith in well-attended audition sessions.102 The prominent hadith scholar al-Samʿānī (d. 562/1166), is another early example of this development. He also attended his first audition session when just three years old in the year 506/1122.103 Audition notices from this period provide us with a plethora of documentary evidence, making it clear that the practice of taking three- and four-year-olds to attend hadith auditions was widespread.104

101 102 103 104

Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 21:412. Ibid., 21:413. Ibid., 19:248. For examples of three year old auditors in literary sources see al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 21:430, 22:254; al-ʿAlāʾī, Ithārat al-fawāʾid, 1:60, 1:128, 1:186, 1:404, 1:431, 1:443, 2:484, 2:456, 2:479, 2:583, 2:560, 2:646, 2:480, 2:481, 2:484, 2:606, 2:632, 2:646, 2:653, 2:666; al-Subkī, Muʿjam Shuyūkh al-Subkī, 86, 130, 220, 307, 335, 336, 388, 397, 423, 507, 548; al-Fāsī, Dhayl al-taqyīd, 1:89, 1:96, 1:107, 1:118, 1:132, 1:212, 1:333, 1:350, 1:162, 1:172, 1:212, 1:247, 1:262, 1:300, 1:320, 1:333, 1:334, 1:335, 1:438, 1:487, 2:7, 2:93, 2:234, 2:241, 2:251, 2:262, 2:270, 2:354, 2:393; Ibn Ḥajar, alDurar al-kāmina, 1:198, 1:430, 2:285, 2:359, 3:231, 3:265, 4:150, 5:20, 5;293, 5:470, 6:195, 6:242; al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 1:12, 1:73, 1:74, 1:210, 1:333, 1:337, 1:341, 2:288, 3:155, 4:22, 4:151, 4:160, 4:180, 4:209, 5:73, 5:234, 5:318, 6:8, 6:68, 6:78, 6:92, 6:296, 6:302, 7:49, 7:81, 7:162, 7:187, 7:224, 8:187, 9:106, 9:194, 9:216, 10:10, 10:155, 12:24, 12:34, 12:39, 12:70, 12:99, 12:126. For examples of four year old auditors see al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 6:307, 8:128, 9:18, 9:219, 12:299, 12:509, 13:274, 13:381, 15:342, 20:456, 20:504, 22:281, 23:59, 23:278; al-ʿAlāʾī, Ithārat al-fawāʾid, 1:125, 1:137, 1:175, 1:190, 1:196, 1:304, 1:318, 1:348, 1:361, 1:380, 2:448, 2:479, 2:486, 2:499, 2:508, 2:544, 2:588, 2:594, 2:615; al-Subkī, al-Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya, 1:32, 1:45, 1:140, 1:139, 1:152, 1:166, 1:183, 1:186, 1:220, 1:243, 1:246, 1:257, 1:259, 3:265, 4:200, 5:226; al-Subkī, Muʿjam Shuyūkh al-Subkī, 28, 42, 50, 54, 85, 111, 123, 159, 187, 293, 264, 273, 352, 373, 391, 394, 403, 423, 434, 455, 457, 458, 460, 501, 563, 617, 618, 624; al-Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī bi-l-wafayāt, ed. Aḥmad al-Arnaʾūṭ and Turkī Mustafā (Beirut: Dār Iḥyā al-Turāth, 1420/2000), 1:233, 3:86, 4:47, 5:155, 8:19, 9:160, 12:122, 16:348, 22:96, 29:119; Ibn Ḥajar, al-Muʿjam al-mufahras, ed. Muḥammad Shakūr (Beirut: Muaʾssasat al-Risāla, 1418/1998), 55, 298, 303, 355, 373; al-Fāsī, Dhayl al-Taqyīd, 1:52, 1:99, 1:134, 1:160, 1:183, 1:184, 1:230, 1:236, 1:244, 1:246, 1:306, 1:315, 1:415, 1:441, 1:485, 1:494, 1:505, 1:508, 1:509, 2:11, 2:58, 2:93, 2:111, 2:129, 2:182, 2:217, 2:241, 2:251, 2:315, 2:360, 2:364, 2:365, 2:370, 2:380, 2:386; Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-kāmina, 1:9, 1:108, 1:1:307, 1:440, 2:123, 2:136, 2:176, 2:306, 3:154, 3:174, 4:23, 4:24, 4:145, 5:172, 5:235, 5:451, 5:464, 5:476, 5:504, 5:513, 6:53, 6:213; al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 1:102, 1:147, 1:220, 1:258, 1:288, 1:333, 2:16, 2:24, 2:68, 2:169, 2:299, 3:52, 3:102, 3:187, 4:117, 4:210, 4:330, 5:36, 5:63, 5:174, 5, 187, 5:214, 6:122, 6:247, 6:313, 7:49, 7:137, 7:201, 7:258, 8:2, 8:162, 9:46, 9:111, 9:143, 9:145, 9:166, 10:122, 10:298, 11:11, 11:60, 11:116, 11:263, 12:9, 12:15, 12:38, 12:53, 12:95, 12:102, 12:124, 12:126, 12:132, 12:149, 12:150, 12:151. For numerous more examples of three and four-year-old transmitters taken from audition registers see the index of transmitters in Leder, al-Sawwās and al-Sāgharjī’s Muʿjam al-samāʿāt al-Dimashqiyya. The index gives the age of individuals under five and provides hundreds of examples of three

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Although hadith scholars were regularly bringing children under five years old to auditions, they made a theoretical distinction between their audition and the audition of children over five. As Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ explains children above five were categorized as auditors and were said to have heard (samiʿa). Children below five, on the other hand, were categorized as having attended (ḥaḍira).105 Although five years of age was the standard point of distinction between auditors and attendees, he maintained that it was theoretically possible for an exceptionally mature child younger than five to meet the criteria for audition.106 As a rule, according to Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, however, it was the distinction between auditors and attendees above and below five years of age that should be followed when recording notices of audition. The many scholars who commented on Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ without exception upheld this categorization of auditors and attendees.107 This categorization was largely a theoretical one, however, and there seems to have been little practical distinction, in terms of their ability to later transmit hadith, between children who had ‘attended’ while below the age of five and those who had ‘heard’ while above the age of five. The biographical sources regularly note that a transmitter’s chain of transmission was based on their attendance rather than audition; this, however, had no effect on their popularity or desirability as transmitters later in their lives. Some scholars, seemingly troubled by the lack of a meaningful distinction between the two categories, suggested that children below the age of five attending a transmission session should be issued an ijāza in order to compensate for the weakness of their transmission.108 In practice, this seems to have allowed for still younger children to participate in audition sessions. By the end of the seventh/thirteenth century, children as young as one and two years

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and four years old transmitters. Stefan Leder, Yāsīn Muḥammad al-Sawwās and Māʾmūn al-Sāgharjī, Muʿjam al-samāʿāt al-Dimashqiya (Damascus: al-Maʿhad al-Faransī li-l-Dirāsāt al-ʿArabiyya, 1996). Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 130. Al-Walī al-ʿIrāqī is reported to have claimed that he understood hadith when he was taken to auditions at the age of three, and he transmitted based on those auditions as an auditor not an attendee. Al-Sakhāwī, Fatḥ al-Mughīth, 2:153. Ibn Jamāʿa, al-Manhal al-rāwī, 79; Burhān al-Dīn al-Abnāsī, Al-Shadhā al-fayyāḥ min ʿUlūm Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ed. Ṣalāḥ Fatḥī (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Rushd, 1418/1998), 276; al-Ḥāfiẓ ʿIrāqī, alTaqyīd wa al-īḍāḥ, 164; Al-Sakhāwī, Fatḥ al-Mughīth, 2:145, 2:153; al-Suyūṭī, Tadrīb al-rawī, 1:523; Burhān al-Dīn al-Biqāʿī, al-Nukat al-wafiyya, 2:74; Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī, Fatḥ al-Bāqī, 356. Ibn Kathīr, al-Bāʿith al-ḥathīth, 116; Ibn Ḥajar, Nuzhat al-naẓar, ed. ʿAbd Allāh Ḍayf Allāh al-Raḥilī (Riyadh: Maktabat Safir, 1422/2001), 146.

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old were regularly being taken to attend hadith auditions.109 The eighth/fourteenth-century Syrian scholar al-Birzālī (d. 739/1339) is reported to have taken his daughter Fāṭima (d. 731/1331) to a hadith audition when she was just three days old.110 A century later, Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī even recorded his son Aḥmad’s attendance of an audition just a few hours after he was born.111 Not everyone was pleased with these developments. Al-Dhahabī, for one, was highly critical of the development. In the biography of al-Khallāl, whom he associates with the beginning of the practice, he writes, “… and so the system was corrupted … whoever attends an audition without understanding [what he or she hears] has not in reality received anything.”112 Despite his belief that the practice was a corruption, the culture of bringing young children to auditions was too widespread and established for al-Dhahabī to resist, and he himself took his son Abū Hurayra (d. 799/1396) to auditions when he was just three years old.113 Indeed, some audition notices from this period contain up to one/fifth children.114 Ibn Kathīr (d. 774/1372) reports that on one occasion in the audition session of Sulaymān b. Ḥamza al-Maqdisī (d. 715/1315) there were so many children playing that one of the adult attendees was annoyed and attempted to discipline them, but Sulaymān intervened saying, “do not scold them, for we heard hadith in the same way they are now.”115 While for most the primary aim of taking children to hadith auditions was to provide them opportunities to acquire elevated chains of transmission, there are indications that there were also other mystical understandings of the practice. In his discussion of young children attending hadith sessions Mullā ʿAlī alQārī (d. 1014/1605), for instance, associates the practice with the acquisition of baraka for the young attendees. He explains, “through the mention of the pious [in the chain of transmission], the blessings of God (baraka) descend, it is even more so with the mention of the companions, and the words of the liege lord

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For examples of one year old auditors see Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-kāmina, 4:188, 5:120, 6:245; al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 1:34, 4:282, 5:55, 5:129, 5:320, 8:297, 9:31, 10:101, 10:322, 12:10, 12:71, 12:96, 12:101; al-Fāsī, Dhayl al-Taqyīd, 1:98, 1:334, 1:428, 1:445, 2:93, 2:238, 2:251. For examples of two year old transmitters see Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-kāmina, 1:287, 1:301, 1:346, 2:260, 2:288, 3:75, 4:279, 5:153, 5:405, 6:36, 6:199, al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 1:196, 2:2, 3:260, 4:3, 4:227, 4:265, 5:35, 5:168, 6:274, 7:81, 7:218, 7:273, 7:301, 8:290, 9:18, 9:26, 9:64, 9; 67, 9:191, 9:289, 11:21, 12:15, 12:42, 12:51, 12:79, 12:129, 12:158, 12:159. Al-Safadī, Aʿyān al-ʿaṣr, 4:30. Hirschler, A Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture, forthcoming. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 18:369. Al-Fasī, Dhayl al-Taqyīd, 2:93. Hirschler, The Written Word, 39. Ibn Kathīr, al-Bāʿith al-ḥathīth, 96.

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of the universe.”116 However it was understood, the practice of taking young children to hear hadith remained common until roughly the eleventh/seventeenth century when, for reasons that are discussed later in this chapter, there were shifts in transmission practices, and references to child auditors fade from the sources.

4

Hadith Speed Reading

One of the results of this reconceptualization of oral/aural hadith transmission and the resultant shifts in the protocols of oral/aural transmission was the emergence of a distinct mode of reading intended to preserve the basic outward form of oral transmission, but greatly speed up the process. In essence, this was speed-reading for purposes of transmission. Hadith scholars generally referred to this mode of reading as sard (reading without pause). This was not, of course, the only mode of reading hadith. The renowned Indian hadith scholar Shāh Walī Allāh (d. 1176/1762) counted sard among three other distinct types of hadith reading; the other two types were both more instructive, involving various degrees of explanation and commentary.117 In some cases different modes were combined. Al-Jabartī (d. 1237/1882), for example, mentions of the Ṣaḥīhs of Bukhārī and Muslim, “some parts for understanding and others for transmission (li-baʿḍihā dirāya wa li-baʿḍihā riwāya).”118 For the purposes of transmission, though, more often than not the mode of sard was employed. Reading “without pause” did no necessarily mean speed-reading. In many cases it simply meant reading at a brisk pace to facilitate the transmission of a text in as short a time as possible. From the fifth/eleventh century onwards, however, reading was sometimes accelerated to rather extreme speeds. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī provides us with some of the earliest and most pronounced examples of this development. His most famous feat of hadith speed transmission was reading the entirety of al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ—that is all of the seven thousand plus hadith, multiple volumes in the printed edition—in just three sessions. In his History of Baghdad al-Khaṭīb explains the circumstances

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Mullā ʿAlī al-Qārī, Sharḥ Nukhbat al-fikr, 794. Ṣadīq Ḥasan Khān, al-Ḥaṭṭa fī dhikr al-ṣiḥāḥ al-sitta (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1405/1985), 131–132. For more on the tradition of hadith commentary see Joel Blecher’s Said the Prophet of God: Hadith Commentary Across a Millennium, (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018). ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī, ʿAjāib al-āthār fī al-tarājam wa al-akhbār, ed. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Jamāl al-Dīn, (Cairo: Maktabat Madbūlī, 1997), 1:236.

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that led up to this feat of speed-reading. He relates that in the year 423/1031 the renowned and elderly transmitter Ismāʿīl b. Aḥmad al-Ḥīrī (d. 430/1038) arrived in Baghdad with a caravan from Naysābūr on its way to the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Shortly after arriving, however, they were informed that the caravan would be forced to return to Naysābūr in just a few days as the road on to Mecca was impassable. Al-Ḥīrī had planned to spend time in Mecca following the pilgrimage to transmit hadith and for this purpose he had with him an entire camel load of manuscripts he had audited over his career. Among these books was his audition copy of al-Bukhārī’s Saḥīh, which he had heard from the prominent transmitter al-Kushmayhanī (d. 398/1007), who was removed from al-Bukhārī by only one link. Hearing of al-Ḥīrī’s impending departure, alKhaṭīb proposed a marathon reading of the text. Al-Ḥīrī agreed and al-Khaṭīb read the text at break-neck pace from sunset to dawn for two nights, then on the third day from noon until sunset and then from sunset until just before dawn.119 This was extraordinarily fast. It was so fast that three centuries later al-Dhahabī would marvel that he knew of no one in his time who could read the text at that rate.120 On another occasion al-Khaṭīb read all of al-Bukhārī again in just five sessions.121 To give some measure of just how fast this was, an unhurried audition of the text mentioned by Ibn Ḥajar consisted of two hundred and ten sessions over the course of two years.122 Al-Khaṭīb’s lightning fast reading of Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīh in just three sessions was the stuff of legend and would rarely be matched. He was, however, far from the only practitioner of speed transmission. The phenomenon was widespread and the sources provide us with numerous examples of scholars from the fifth/eleventh century onwards whose feats of speed reading come close to al-Khaṭīb’s.123 Perhaps the closest is the reading of Muslim’s Ṣaḥīh in just three days. This record was held by both the Ḥanbalī hadith scholar Ṭalḥa b. Muẓafar al-ʿUlthī (d. 593/1196) and the famous lexicographer al-Fayrūzābādī (d. 816/1413).124 The Egyptian hadith scholar al-Qasṭalānī (d. 923/1517) tied alKhaṭīb’s second fastest reading, flying through all of al-Bukhārī in just five days.125 Ibn Ḥajar was another of the great masters of speed transmission, perhaps not surprising for a man who could claim oral chains of transmission for 119 120 121 122 123 124 125

Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh Baghdād, 7:317. Al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islam, 31:99. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 18:277. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-kāmina, 5:148. For other examples see Muḥammad b. ʿAzzūz’s Surʿat al-qirāʾa wa al-ṣabr ʿālā al-samāʿ (Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 1428/2007). Ibn Rajab, Dhayl Ṭabaqāt al-ḥanābala, 2:430. Al-Kattānī, Fahras al-fahāris, 2:1048, al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 2:103.

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thousands of books.126 One of his most famous acts of speed transmission was racing through al-Ṭabarānī’s al-Muʿjam al-ṣaghīr, a collection that consisted of more than one thousand five hundred hadith, in a single audition session between the noon and afternoon prayers.127 His student al-Sakhāwī reports that he once asked Ibn Ḥajar if he had ever surpassed al-Khaṭīb’s record of reading al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ in just three days. Ibn Ḥajar responded that he had read the Ṣaḥīh in ten sessions, “and if they had been continuous, then it would have been less than three days.”128 Speed came at a price. The faster the reading was, of course, the more difficult it was for the auditor to follow. The sources tell us that speed reading often resulted in varying degrees of unintelligibility and as a result it was not without its critics. After listing a number of Ibn Ḥajar’s various feats of speed transmission, his student al-Sakhāwī notes, “this was not, however, without some unintelligibility.”129 Somewhat paradoxically, al-Khaṭīb, the all-time speed champion, was also one of the first to criticize the practice. In his guide to the manners of oral hadith transmission he includes a short section under the title, “On the dislike for the reading of hadith without pause (sard) and the recommendation to read slowly.”130 As proof for the undesirability of speed reading he cites a report from the Prophet’s wife ʿĀʾisha stating, “The Prophet did not run his words together the way you do, rather he separated his words, so that those who heard them could remember them.”131 This report would remain an important proof-text for critics of speed-reading in later centuries. The desire to quickly move through the pro forma audition, however, seems to have been more compelling for many than ʿĀʾisha’s admonition.132 Commenting on the problem of speed reading al-Qasṭalānī, who was himself a speed reader, writes: One should read hadith in a clear and beautiful voice, one should not read without pause, in order that the auditor not become confused or miss part of what is read. Many, however, have taken a dispensation in this regard 126 127

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Ibn Ḥajar, al-Muʿjam al-mufahras. Al-Fāsī, Dhayl al-Taqyīd, 1:355. Among his other accomplishments of speed transmission, he read Muslim in four sessions. During his two-month sojourn in Damascus he is reported to have transmitted more than one hundred volumes. ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-ʿImrān, Al-Mushawwiq ilā qirāʾat wa ṭalab al-ʿilm (Mecca: Dār ʿĀlam al-Fawāʾid, 1422/2001), 70. Al-Sakhāwī, Fatḥ al-Mughīth, 2:205. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Jāmiʿ li-akhlāq al-rāwī, 1:414. Ibid., 1:414. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ghāya, 1:118.

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and read in such a way that many letters, indeed many words are impossible to understand. May God through his generosity guide us to the right path.133 In his influential manual on the protocols of hadith transmission Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ agreed that speed-reading should be avoided. He recognized, however, that the current realities of oral/aural transmission required some accommodation. To accommodate the common problem of readers flying through the text at a rate so fast that the auditors were unable to comprehend all of what was being recited, he made two suggestions. First, he suggests that if it was only a small amount of the text that was incomprehensible, then it should be excused. Second, as with so many problems related to oral transmission, he suggests that the authority overseeing the audition should issue all the auditors a license to transmit (ijāza) in order that “the weakness created by the gaps in this audition be buttressed.”134 According to the eight/fourteenth-century Egyptian hadith master al-ʿIrāqī and others, the practice of issuing ijāzas to rectify the gaps in an audition session went back to the late sixth/twelfth century, identifying the Egyptian hadith scholar Ibn al-Anmāṭī (d. 619/1222) as the first to have employed the practice.135 There was a tension inherent in this arrangement. If this was a valid oral/ aural transmission, why then was there a need for it to be buttressed with the ijāza, a non-oral-mode of transmission? Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ acknowledges this tension, following his recommendation for the use of the ijāza as a means to strengthen less than ideal transmission, he writes “even though all of this can still be called audition.”136 The tension does not seem to have much bothered many of the numerous commentators on Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s manual, although it did cause the ninth/fifteenth-century commentator Burhān al-Dīn al-Biqāʿī (d. 885/1480) to feel the need to point out that issuing an ijāza was not a condition for a valid audition, but only a way to affirm the audition, “for this [weakness] in transmission was a possibility in every age, and the early scholars did not stipulate this [the ijāza] for the validity of the audition.”137 The vast majority of scholars who composed works on the protocols of hadith transmission

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Al-Qastalānī, Irshād al-sārī, 18. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 146. Al-Ḥāfiẓ al-ʿIrāqī, Sharh al-Tabṣira, ed. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Humaym and Māhir Yāsīn Fahl (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1423/2002), 18; Burhān al-Dīn al-Abnāsī, al-shadhā alfayyāḥ, 293; al-Zarkashī, al-Nukat, 3:498. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 329. Al-Biqāʿī, Al-Nukat al-wafiyya, 2:61.

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after Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ would endorse his recommendation for the use of the ijāza as a means to buttress potentially weak oral transmission, to the extent that al-ʿIrāqī would invoke God’s blessings on Ibn al-Anmāṭī for “establishing this sunna of the community of hadith scholars ( jāzāhu Allāhū Khayrān fī sannihi dhālika li-ahl al-ḥadīth).”138 Scholars continued speed-reading and transmission into the modern period. The late Ottoman scholar Yūsuf al-Nabahānī (d. 1350/1931), for example, reports that during his pilgrimage to Mecca the Moroccan Sufī and scholar Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Kabīr al-Kattānī (d. 1327/1909) read aloud the Ṣaḥīh of al-Bukhārī in the impossibly short span of time between the afternoon and sunset prayers. Al-Nabahānī, fittingly, counted this among the miracles that al-Kattānī had performed.139

5

Further Liberalization of Oral Transmission

The evolution of the conception of oral/aural hadith transmission manifested itself in both the theory and practice of oral/aural hadith transmission in a myriad of other instructive and significant ways. One of the more instructive of these developments was the practice and theory of accepting auditors who could not understand the Arabic language and therefore the hadith texts being read. The earliest evidence of this phenomenon seems to date to the sixth/twelfth century. Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ (d. 544/1149) reports that “today, and before today, in all of the lands the authorities consider valid the audition of those who do not understand Arabic.”140 This was reiterated by scholars in the centuries after al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ. In the ninth/fifteenth century, Ibn al-Jazarī (d. 833/1429) would report that al-Mizzī, Ibn Kathīr, Ibn Rāfiʿ (d. 774/1372) and Ibn al-Muḥibb (d. 828/1425) all accepted the audition of those who could not understand Arabic.141 Al-Sakhāwī too reports that his teacher Ibn Ḥajar was asked about auditors who understood “not a word of Arabic” and answered that they should be recorded in audition notices.142 This was not a purely theoretical concern. Al-Dhahabī reports that Sunqar b. ʿAbd Allāh, who was born to non-Arab parents and then sold into slavery,

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Al-Ḥāfiẓ al-ʿIrāqī, Sharh al-Tabṣira, 1:410. Yūsuf Al-Nabahānī, Jāmiʿ karāmāt al-awliyāʾ, ed. ʿAbd al-Wārith Muḥammad ʿAlī (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1422/2002), 1:307. Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, al-ʿIlmāʿ, 144. Al-Sakhāwī, Fatḥ al-Mughīth, 2:155. Ibid., 2:155.

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began attending hadith auditions soon after his arrival in Egypt and before having learned any Arabic. Despite his not understanding any Arabic nor any of the hadith that were read, his name was recorded in audition notices. Al-Dhahabī notes, however, that in the audition notice the registrar had written next to his name, “and he does not understand Arabic.”143 Al-Sakhāwī preserves a similar case involving the Circassian slave of the Mamluk sultan al-Ashraf Barsbay, Azbak al-Ẓāhirī, who attended a hadith audition before learning any Arabic, noting that al-Qalqashandī (d. 871/1467) recorded his name in the audition register, writing next to it “and he did not understand a word of Arabic.”144 The case of non-Arabic speaking auditors is telling of the symbolic nature of oral/aural hadith transmission. For the symbolic purposes of transmission, the auditor literally need not understand anything of the text being read. It was enough for the auditor to be present while the text was recited, literally for the sound waves produced by the voice of the reader to enter the ear and cause the eardrum to vibrate, even if those sounds had no meaning for the auditor. The question of the validity of auditing while distracted provides an interesting contrast to the case of non-Arabic speaking auditors. Copying manuscripts was an important part of the process of collecting hadith. An active hadith collector who heard from hundreds or thousands of transmitters would need to copy or obtain copies of at least a selection of each transmitter’s hadith, if not more, in order to have to access and transmit what he had audited. Reports on the copying of hadith manuscripts abound in the biographies of hadith scholars. It is reported about Khalf b. Furāt (d. 384/994), for instance, that upon his death, he had eighteen trunks full of hadith manuscripts, most of which he copied himself.145 Ibn Manda is said to have copied four thousand juzʾ of hadith from just four of his shaykhs.146 Similarly, al-ʿAbduwayī (d. 417/1026) is reported to have copied ten thousand juzʾ from ten of his shaykhs, a thousand from each!147 Al-Daqqāq (d. 516/1122) claimed that in Isfahan alone, he copied hadith from more than a thousand transmitters, and on his journeys from another thousand.148 ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Maqdasī (d. 600/1203) is likewise said to have copied a thousand juzʾ of al-Silafī’s hadith during the time he spent with him in Alexandria.149 Al-Anmātī (d. 538/1143) is described as hav-

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Al-Dhahabī, Muʿjam al-shuyūkh al-kabīr, 276; al-Ṣafadī, Aʿyān al-ʿaṣr, 2:476. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 2:270. Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, Ṭabaqāt ʿulamāʾ al-ḥadīth, 3:215. Ibid., 3:231. Ibid., 3:271. Ibid., 4:28. Ibid.

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ing spent all his waking hours either reading or copying hadith.150 Al-Ḥumaydī (d. 488/1095) is even reported to have spent his nights copying hadith and in the months of summer heat, in order to cool down, he would copy while sitting in a washbasin full of water.151 Many hadith collectors also put the skills they developed at copying to commercial ends, earning their living as copyists.152 A hadith scholar working as a copyist might produce numerous copies of popular hadith works to sell. Muḥammad b. Ṭāhir Ibn al-Qaysarānī (d. 507/1114), for instance, is reported to have made seven copies of both Bukhārī and Muslim, seven more of Abū Dāwūd, as well as ten copies of Ibn Majah.153 All of this copying was, of course, time consuming and some collectors of hadith seem to have been combining their copying with another time-consuming demand of their field: auditing hadith. As a result, the validity of an inattentive copyist’s audition is discussed in some length in manuals of the discipline’s protocols. Interestingly, what emerges from this material is that in contrast to the reasoning employed in the question of the attendance of non-Arabic speaking auditors, in the case of copyists it was the comprehension of the auditor that was considered the deciding factor between the validity and invalidity of an audition. The audition of those auditors who, in our parlance, were capable of multi-tasking, that is to say creating a copy of one manuscript while listening to and understanding another completely different text, was deemed valid.154 On the other hand, the audition of auditors who were not able to concentrate on these two separate tasks was considered invalid. The fourth/tenth-century critic and hadith scholar al-Dāraquṭnī’s (d. 385/995) ability to copy while listening and paying attention as hadith was read aloud is often cited as a precedent for this position. He is reported to have been copying a juzʾ of hadith while attending an audition when some of the other auditors censured him saying, “copying invalidates your audition.”155 Al-Dāraquṭnī responded, “my ability to understand is not like yours (i.e., it is superior to yours).” He then turned the table on his accusers and questioned them, “How many hadith have been

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Ibid., 4:57. Among the works he is noted to have copied are large works including alKhaṭib’s Tārikh and Ibn Saʿd’s Ṭabaqāt. Ibid., 3:411. Ibid., 3:416, 3:411, 3:403, 4:89, 4:276. He is reported to have copied so much that it was said about him that “it is rare to find in the countries of Islam a country in which there is not something in his hand.” In an amusing anecdote, he is said to have once turned to his friend and said, “tell me to repent.” He replied, “for what?” He said I have copied the diwān of al-Nīlī seven times. Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, Ṭabaqāt ʿulamāʾ al-ḥadīth, 4:12. Ibid., 4:15. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 145. Al-Ḥāfiẓ al-ʿIrāqī, al-Taqyīd wa al-īḍāḥ, 175.

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recited in this session so far?”156 They could not, of course, answer his question and al-Dāraquṭnī proceeded to demonstrate his superior abilities, reciting from memory all the hadith that had been transmitted in the session.157 Few auditors were as gifted as al-Dāraquṭnī, but the commentators do note a handful of other scholars who had similar talents.158 For most commentators, however, alDāraquṭnī was an exception, not the rule. For these scholars, such an audition could not be considered acceptable.159 Some scholars took the middle ground, suggesting that while such an audition was technically valid, one should not say that he or she “heard,” but rather that they “attended.”160 Other scholars held that while the audition of one distracted by copying was technically valid, his or her name should be recorded in the audition notice, but with the disclaimer “while he was writing.”161 Listening to hadith read aloud for hours could be less than riveting and the question of auditors dozing off during auditions is addressed by a number of hadith scholars. According to Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ and the commentators who came after him, either the transmitter or the auditor falling into deep sleep invalidated transmission. Immediately following this, however, he notes, as we saw in Chapter One, that because the purpose of continued hadith transmission was not preservation, but rather the preservation of the chain of transmission, all but four of the fourteen conditions previously stipulated of transmitters had been nullified. The four conditions that were still to be applied were that the transmitter be a Muslim of the age of majority, conscious and of sound mind (ʿāqil) and not a known degenerate.162 Deep sleep in which consciousness is lost would invalidate the third condition. Some collectors would, however, overlook this condition; in one rare case, we even find collectors reading to a scholar in a coma. In this case Ibn Nabhān (d. 511/1117), who was a hundred years old and as such had very elevated chains of transmission, fell into a coma and remained comatose for nearly a year before his death. Despite his being in a coma, hadith collectors desirous of his elevated chain of transmission read to him. This was, however, an excess unacceptable to most and indeed Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 597/1200) condemned those who had read to Ibn Nabhān in the last year of his life while he was in a coma on the very reasonable grounds that he was

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Ibid., 175. Al-Ḥāfiẓ al-ʿIrāqī, al-Taqyīd wa al-īḍāḥ, 175. Al-Ḥāfiẓ al-ʿIrāqī, Sharḥ al-Tabṣira, 1:408. Ibid., 1:408. Ibid., 1:408. Al-Zarkashī, Al-Nukat, 3:424. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 119.

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not conscious of what was being read to him.163 In the same vein, the sources preserve another extreme case of a sixth/twelfth-century collector who was reading hadith to a transmitter as he lay dying, and then continued reading the book to him after he died, only stopping when others present insisted they prepare the shaykh for burial.164 While reading to a transmitter who was unconscious or even recently deceased was condemned by most, in the case of light sleep or dozing (naʿs), most scholars held that one retained enough consciousness for the audition to be considered valid.165 Some suggested that while the audition of one who dozed during an audition was still technically valid, the auditor’s state should be indicated in the audition notice by writing next to his name, “and he was dozing.”166 Not surprisingly, considering that hadith auditions could go on for hours, the sources contain accounts of both dozing auditors and transmitting authorities. Al-Mizzī is reported to have often dozed during auditions in which he was the acting transmitter, but had heard so much hadith over the course of his life that he was able to correct any mistakes the reader made despite being in a state of light sleep.167 Al-Sakhāwī reports the same about his teacher Ibn Ḥajar.168 Although most seem to have been fairly forgiving of dozing during auditions, Ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd (d. 702/1302) is reported to have taken a very conservative position, refusing to transmit based on his auditions with the transmitter Ibn al-Muqīr (d. 691/1291), as he suspected he might have dozed off during these auditions.169 The line between light dozing and deep sleep was a thin one. AlQāḍī ʿIyāḍ preserves an account of the attempts of a group of young hadith collectors to prevent a transmitter from crossing that line. Growing tired of waking up their elderly transmitter who was constantly falling asleep as they read to him, and worried that their audition might be spoiled, one of the students came up with the idea of bringing the transmitter the gift of a kind of candy that was extremely sweet and very chewy and thus difficult to eat. Whenever the shaykh began to doze off the student would put a piece of the candy in the shaykh’s mouth and the difficulty of chewing the candy and its extreme sweetness would keep him awake for a time.170

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Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam, 17:158. Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, Ṭabaqāt ʿulamāʾ al-ḥadīth, 4:20. Al-Sakhāwī, Fatḥ al-Mughīth, 2:104. Ibn Jamāʿa, al-Manhal al-rāwī, 1:66. Al-Sakhāwī, Fatḥ al-Mughīth, 2:104. Ibid., 2:104. Ibid., 2:104. Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, al-Ilmāʿ, 144.

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The Ritualization of Oral Hadith Transmission

While standards of oral/aural transmission were being lowered and transformed, the actual practice of hadith transmission was becoming increasingly ritualized. Chapter One showed how scholars conceived of the transmission of hadith as an act of piety and devotion. By continuing to engage in hadith transmission scholars performed the pious deed of maintaining the chain of transmission linking them to the Prophet, which was an important distinction between the Muslim community and the Jews and Christians that had preceded them. Collecting and transmitting hadith was thus transformed into the pious task of preserving a distinguishing trait of their religious community and of “honoring the Prophet.”171 Indeed, according to some it was a communal obligation ( farḍ kifāya), that is to say that some elements of the community were obligated to transmit hadith in order for the obligation to be lifted from the remainder of the community.172 Indeed, the act of collection and transmission of hadith was seen as such an act of piety that it could be cause for all of one’s sins to be forgiven. Al-Silafī reports that after the death of a fellow avid collector of hadith, he saw him in a dream and asked him, “How did God judge you (mā faʿala Allāh bika)?” He responded by removing a quire of hadith from his sleeve and saying, “he forgave me due to this.”173 Ibn al-Jawzī likewise reports that the hadith scholar Ibn Nāṣīr (d. 550/ 1155) was seen in a dream after his death and was asked “How did God judge you,” to which he replied, “I was forgiven, and God told me, ‘I have forgiven you and ten of the people of hadith of your time, for you are their chief and leader.’”174 Similarly, the Meccan hadith scholar Abū Qāsim al-Zinjānī (d. 471/1078) was seen in a dream after his death by one of his students and told him, “verily, for every hadith audition session the people of hadith sit in, God builds them a house in paradise.”175 Some even believed that the residents of paradise were piously engaging in hadith transmission. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd al-Hādī (d. 744/1344) transmits a dream vision which relays that every Friday in paradise a chair is put in front of the Throne of God for ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Maqdasī and hadith is recited to him.176 The Prophet himself might intercede to aid those engaged in hadith collection, as he is reported to have done for Ibn ʿAsākir. On his hadith collecting journey in Transoxania, Ibn

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Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 121. ʿAlī al-Qārī, Sharḥ Nukhbat al-Fikar, 617; Jaʿfar al-Kattānī, Fihrist Jaʿfar al-Kattanī, 57. Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Hādī, Ṭabaqāt ʿulamāʾ al-ḥadīth, 4:24. Ibid., 4:66. Ibid., 3:370. Ibid., 4:155.

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ʿAsākir was reported to have been reading hadith to al-Furāwī, whose chain of transmission was elevated. After the third long day of Ibn ʿAsākir reading hadith to him, al-Furāwī had grown bored and tired and contemplated locking his door and entertaining no further readings with Ibn ʿAsākir. When he woke the following day, however, a man came to his door and said, “I am the messenger of the Messenger of God, I saw him in a dream and he told me to go to al-Furāwī and tell him, ‘a Damascene man of dark complexion has come to you seeking my words, do not grow weary of him.’”177 After this, we are told, al-Furāwī did not end a session until Ibn ʿAsākir was ready.178 Already in the fourth/tenth century, this pious aspect of continued hadith transmission was manifesting itself in an increasing ritualization of oral/aural transmission. At the core of this ritualization was the was the conception of the hadith as a kind of ritual synecdoche representing the Prophet himself. The words that had emanated from the Prophet were a part of him and functioned as a conduit for his blessings and spiritual power. Just as the believer could come into the presence of God through the recitation of His revealed words in the Quran, the hadith brought one into the presence of the Prophet, and the Prophet’s words were widely believed to be a locus of intense spiritual power that could lift hardship, bring victory, cure illness, relieve plague and even prevent ships from sinking.179 The physical manifestations of the words of God on earth were sacred and demanded that the believer observe ritual when engaging with them; so too did the physical manifestations of the words of the Prophet of God. The normative literature prescribes, for example, that one must not touch the physical written hadith except in a state of ritual purity.180 Some scholars are indeed praised in the sources for never even touching a single folio of hadith, except while in a state of ritual purity.181 The recitation of hadith was the aural repre-

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Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Hādī, Ṭabaqāt ʿulamāʾ al-ḥadīth, 4:108. Ibid., 4:108. Jonathan Brown, The Canonization of al-Bukhārī and Muslim: The Formation and Function of the Sunnī Ḥadīth Canon (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 340–342. Al-Jabartī notes that in the year 1202/1787, the Sultan distributed four thousand qirsh to the students (mujāwrīn) of alAzhar for them to read Bukhārī with the intention of lifting a plague fallen upon the city. The plague, however, only became worse. Jabartī ʿAjāʾib al-Āthār, 3:358. The Following year during the Russian Ottoman war over the Crimea, al-Jabartī notes that the Ottoman sultan sent an official order for al-Bukhārī to be read in al-Azhar with the intention of giving victory to him over the Russians. Ten shaykhs were ordered to complete a reading of alBukhārī every day. Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib al-Āthār, 3:403. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Jāmiʿ li akhlāq al-rāwī, 1:409–410. Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Hādī, Ṭabaqāt ʿulamāʾ al-ḥadīth, 4:104.

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sentation of the Prophet’s words and it too demanded ritual observances. The transmitter of hadith and his audience were in a sense engaging in an act of ritual mimesis, reenacting the original moment of prophecy. The transmitter stood in for the Prophet, his words emanated from the transmitter’s mouth, the audience played the role of the Prophet’s companions. Those in the presence of the Prophet’s words were in his presence, and the normative literature advises them to behave as such, to listen intently and quietly, just as the companions had done, and heed the words of God, “Do not raise your voices over the voice of the Prophet.”182 As a form of ritual, hadith transmission adopted many of the observances prescribed for the canonical daily prayer and recitation of the Quran. Just as the canonical daily prayers could only be performed in a state of ritual purity, as early as the fifth/eleventh century, al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī would argue that it was disliked (makrūh) for one to engage in hadith transmission without ritual purity, attributing this position to early authorities such as Mālik, who alKhaṭīb reports having said that he hated to transmit hadith except in a state of ritual purity “out of reverence for the words of the Prophet of God.”183 In addition to observing ritual purity, out of reverence for God and the ritual, like the ritual prayer, it was recommended for one engaging in hadith transmission to beautify oneself, so that God’s blessings upon one could be observed. Towards this end it was recommended for one attending a hadith transmission session to wear his best and preferably white clothes.184 He should comb his hair and beard, trim his nails, use incense and perfume and check his appearance in a mirror.185 Just as one must face the Kaʿba in Mecca to perform the daily ritual prayers the hadith transmitter it was likewise advised to orient himself towards the holy city during transmission.186 It was also prescribed for the transmitter to strive to be in a state of humble submission to and reverence for God (khushūʿ), the same state one should seek to attain in ritual prayer.187 Further, invocations for the blessings of God and his Prophet were prescribed for the beginning, the pauses during, and the ending of the transmission of a hadith text.188

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Al-Samʿānī, Adab al-imlāʾ wa al-istimlāʾ, ed. Māks Fāysfāylir (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub alʿIlmiyya, 1401/1981), 27; Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Jāmiʿ li-akhlāq al-rāwī, 1:196. Ibid., 2:49. Al-Samʿānī, Adab al-imlāʾ wa al-istimlāʾ, 27–32. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 240. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Jāmiʿ li-akhlāq al-rāwī, 2:106; Al-Samʿānī, Adab al-imlāʾ wa alistimlāʾ, 44–45. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Jāmiʿ li-akhlāq al-rāwī, 2:51, 2:42. Al-Samʿānī, Adab al-imlāʾ wa al-istimlāʾ, 73–76.

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As with other rituals certain days of the week and the year were designated for hadith transmission. In the normative literature al-Khaṭīb, as well as other scholars after him, designated Thursday and especially Friday as days on which hadith should be transmitted.189 In practice, based on the datable sample of audition notices in the Damascene corpus dating from the years 550–750/1155– 1349, Friday was indeed the most popular day of the week for auditions.190 From the eighth/fourteenth century into the modern period, the transmission of Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīh and to a lesser extent Muslim’s Ṣaḥīh during the Islamic lunar months of Rajab, Shaʿban and Ramadan created a ritual season.191 This season of ritual reading of al-Bukhārī and Muslim would begin in the month of Rajab, which is one of the four sacred months of the Islamic calendar. It would continue through the month of Shaʿbān, in which one of the most important nights of the Islamic calendar, the night of mid-Shaʿbān, was observed and through the month of Ramaḍān, the month of fasting in which the Quran was believed to be revealed, climaxing on the 27th of Ramaḍān: the night of power.192 This season of ritual transmission of the two Ṣaḥiḥs was observed widely from the Hijaz to Damascus, Cairo, Fez and Timbuktu.193 The manuscript tradition of al-Bukhārī reflects this practice, and it is not uncommon for the text to be divided into thirty volumes, a third of each part would have been read during the season.194 Much like the ritual reading of the Quran during the month of Ramaḍān, the transmission of hadith texts, especially major canonical works, both inside and outside the season of ritual hadith transmission culminated in a final ritual closing session (khatm). These khatms could be of a quite public and festive nature and often had a far larger audience than the previous transmission sessions of the text, with many only attending the khatm.195 Sweets and 189 190 191

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Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Jāmiʿ li-akhlāq al-rāwī, 2:57. Stefan Leder, Yāsīn Muḥammad al-Sawwās and Māʾmūn al-Sāgharjī, Muʿjam al-samāʿāt al-Dimashqiyya. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Dawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 3:263, 5:30, 6:71, 7:62, 7:123, 7:242, 8:91, 8:195; al-Muḥibbī, Khalaṣat al-Athar fī Aʿyān alqarn al-ḥādī ʿashar (Beirut: Dār al-Ṣādr, n.d.), 4:198, 4:202; Abū al-Yuman ʿAbd al-Raḥman b. Muḥammad al-ʿUlaymī, al-Uns al-jalīl bi-tārīkh al-Quds wa Khalīl, ed. ʿAdnān Yūnis ʿAbd al-Majīd (Amman: Maktabat Dandīs, n.d.), 1:61. Brown, The Canonization of al-Bukhārī and Muslim, 342–343. Ibid. See for example Garrett MS 688h (i), Princeton University Library, and AP Ar MS 178, the National Library of Israel. For references in the biographical literature to attendees only attending the khatm session see Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-kāmina, 1:68, 3:85; Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 1:10, 1:21, 1:24, 1:30, 1:121, 1:210, 1:218, 1:263, 1:288, 1:318, 1:360, 2:32, 2:43, 2:219, 3:52, 3:93, 4:26, 4:258, 5:133, 6:75, 7:92, 7:47, 9:156, 10:240, 11:110, 11:160, 12:38; Najm al-Dīn al-Ghazzī, al-Kawākib al-sāʾira

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other delicacies as well as gifts were distributed to the attendees and poems were composed and recited for the occasion.196 The ninth/fifteenth-century Yemeni scholar al-Saksakī (d. 904/1498) notes that when Ibn al-Jazarī and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Muḥammad al-ʿAdnānī held an audition of Mālik’s Muwaṭṭāʾ in the Ashrafiyya Madrasa in the city of Taʿz so many people attended that they spilled out of the madrassa.197 Al-Sakhāwī describes a late ninth/fifteenthcentury khatm in the Prophet’s mosque in Medina: It was held on a Friday in the inner sanctum of the Prophet’s mosque (alRawḍa al-Nabawiyya) … and no one of any importance was absent. Many composed poems for the occasion and they were sung … the khāwajā alShamsī Ibn al-Zaman presented the readers and the composers of the poems of praise with robes of honor, may he be well compensated by God, and we hope for God’s acceptance and forgiveness.198 Roughly two centuries later, the Moroccan scholar and traveler Abu Sālim alʿAyyāshī (d. 1090/1679) describes a khatm of al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s al-Shifāʾ he attended in Mecca, “The day of the khatm was the most well attended day, all of the great scholars were in attendance. Goblets of sweet drinks were distributed to the attendees. All types of incense were burned and perfumes were passed around. This was the highest level of generosity known to the people of that region.”199 In a report preserved by al-Muḥibbī (d. 1111/1699) indicative of the blessings the khatm was believed to be bestow, the Prophet himself is said to have miraculously risen from his tomb in Medina and flown to Mecca for Ibn ʿAllān’s (d. 1111/1699) khatm of al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ in the sacred mosque of Mecca, where he was seen by some of the pious attending from a green tent pitched in the clouds above the mosque.200 Hadith scholars often authored short works to present at the occasions of a khatm, to the extent that by the ninth/fifteenth century they had come to form

196 197 198 199 200

bi-aʿyān al-miʾa al-ʿāshira, ed. Khalīl Manṣūr (Beirut Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1418/1997), 1:226; al-Muḥibbī, Khulāṣat al-athar fī aʿyān ahl al-athar (Beirut: Dār Ṣāḍir, 1284/1867), 4:164. On the distribution of gifts during the khatm, see Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 2:263, 3:312. For more on the recitation of poetry at the khatm, see al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 1:135, 6:130. Al-Saksakī, Ṭabaqāt ṣulaḥāʾ al-Yaman, ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad al-Habashī (Sanʿa: Maktabat al-Irshād, 1403/1983), 348. Al-Sakhāwī, Badhl majhūd fī khatm Abī Dāwūd, ed. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Jīlānī (Riyadh: Aḍwāʾ al-Salaf, 1424/2003), 16–17. Ibid., 17. Al-Muḥibbī, Khulāṣat al-athar, 4:186.

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an independent genre. These khatm works were most often a presentation of what the author considered to be the most essential information the attendees should know about the collection. They might also consist of a brief commentary on the last hadith in the collection, a discussion of the various redactions of the collection, a brief and often hagiographical sketch of the author’s life and a presentation of the author’s chains of transmission for the hadith collection being transmitted. Khatm works remained popular in later centuries with scholars producing numerous, likely hundreds, of works in the genre into the twentieth century.201

7

Locations of Oral Hadith Transmission

Paratextual audition notices often record the location where the auditions took place, offering us a fascinating view of the places where oral/aural transmission occurred. Although the protocols for composing audition notices include the location among the information that should be noted in an audition notice, not all audition notices mention location. In my survey of the 223 audition notices found in the hadith manuscripts in the Princeton University Library Collection of Islamic Manuscripts, 54 notices mention where the audition took place. Some of these notices are very general and simply note the city where the audition took place. For instance, a seventh/thirteenth-century audition notice on the title folio of a manuscript of Muslim’s Ṣaḥīḥ names the auditor, the transmitting authority, and date, and then simply notes that the audition took place in city of Cairo (Miṣr al-maḥrūsa).202 Other notices are more precise and specify the part of town where the audition was held. A notice composed on Ibn Abī Dunyā’s Kitāb al-Shukr, for instance, notes that the audition was held in Cairo near the tomb of al-Shafīʾī.203 Another notice dated 864/1460 notes that the audition took place in the Anatolian quarter of Cairo (Ḥārat alRūm min al-Qāhira).204 The suburb of Damascus, al-Ṣalahiyya is the most frequently mentioned neighborhood in the Princeton corpus of audition notices, 201

202 203 204

The twentieth century Moroccan hadith scholar ʿAbd al-Kabīr al-Kattānī, for example, composed khatm works on both al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ and the Shamāʾil. ʿAbd al-Ḥayy alKattānī, Fahras al-fahāris, 2:745. Muslim b. Ḥajjaq al-Qushayrī, al-Ṣaḥīḥ, Garrett MS 169B, Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections. Ibn Abī Dunyā, Kitāb al-Shukr, Garrett MS 744h, Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Aḥmad al-Qalqashandī, Hadith Collection, Garrett MS 185b, Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections.

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occurring in some 18 notices, a third of the total corpus that specify location. In addition to mentioning the city or neighborhood some notices specify the institutions in which the audition was held. Mosques predictably emerge as a common setting for transmission. Perhaps not surprisingly various educational institutions are among the most common locations mentioned. Institutes dedicated to the study of hadith (dār al-ḥadīth) are particularly common sites of transmission. A Sufi lodge is mentioned as the place of transmission in one notice.205 Tombs and cemeteries, including the Tomb of Abraham in Hebron, and the Qarafa necropolis in Cairo are mentioned in a few notices.206 While some notices simply mention the institution, others give very specific information about the location of the audition. An audition notice on manuscript 1357y notes that the audition took place in the cell (khalwa) of the transmitting authority on the roof of the Hakim mosque.207 Another mentions “the room of the shaykh in the Muẓafarī mosque.”208 One audition notice mentions that the audition took place at “the Gate of Iron (Bāb al-Ḥadīd) of the al-Aqṣā mosque.”209 A notice recorded on al-Kharāʾiṭī, Makārim al-Akhlāq mentions that the audition was held in the enclosure of Khidr in the Umayyad mosque (maqsūrat al-Khidr).210 While various institutions are the most common sites of transmission in this corpus, some notices mention domestic sites. One notice from Baghdad, for example, mentions that the audition was held “in a house on the bank of the Tigris.”211 One notice mentions that the audition occurred in “the home of the shaykh.”212 Another records an audition with a father and his children in the family home.213 Yet another audition seems to have taken place in a domestic space within an institution, mentioning “the

205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212

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Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣbahānī, Juzʾ fīhi dhikr man ismuhu Shuʿbah min ruwāt al-āthār, Garrett MS 1856y, Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections. al-Zuhrī, al-Juzʾ fīhi nuskhat Ibrāhīm b. Saʿd b. Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ibn ʿAwfi, Garrett MS 1357y, Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections. Ibid. Hannād Ibn al-Sarī, Kitāb al-Zuhd, Garrett MS 746h, Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections. Garrett MS 1357y, Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections. Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar al-Kharāʾiṭī, Makārim al-Akhlāq, Garrett MS 522y, Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections. Ibn al-Dubaythī, Dhayl Tārīkh Baghdād, Garrett MS 396y, Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections. Muḥammad b. Ṭughr Ibn al-Ṣayrafī, Juzʾ fīhi arbaʿūn ḥadīth muntaqā min Kitāb al-Shifāʾ bi-taʿrīf ḥuqūq al-Muṣṭafā, Garrett MS 761h, Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections. Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣbahānī, Juzʾ fīhi dhikr man ismuhu Shuʿbah min ruwāt al-āth, Garrett MS 1856y, Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections.

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home of the shaykh in the monastery of the Hanbalites (Dayr al-Ḥanābila).”214 One notice records that the audition was held in a commercial space, specifically a shop in the copper market of Damascus.215 Because successive audition notices were often recorded on a single manuscript over generations, in some cases we are able to trace how a manuscript was audited in a variety of spaces and even allow us to trace the itinerary of travelling manuscripts. For example, a short collection of hadith attributed to Abū Nuʾaym al-Iṣbahānī (d. 430/1038) was first audited in Aleppo in the year 625/1228. We then have no information on the location for the next two auditions, both held in the year 638/1241. Then in the year 646/1249 it was read again in the Khānqāh of Ibn al-ʿAjamī still in Aleppo. More than a hundred years later it was read in the shop of a descendent of one of the auditors in the previous notice, Isḥāaq b. Abī Bakr b. Ibrāhīm al-Nahhās, in the Copper market in Damascus in the year 750/1350. Then fortyfour years later it is read in Ṣālahiyya in “the house of one Nāṣir al-Dīn Abī ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. Muḥammd b. Dawūd b. Ḥamza al-Maqdasī in the Monastery of the Jerusalemites.” Then a hundred years later in 897/1492 it is read again by Yusūf Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī to his children in his house in Ṣalaḥiyya.216 What emerges from the Princeton corpus of audition notices then is that hadith transmission took place in various settings ranging from religious institutions, including mosques, Sufi lodges and madrasas to domestic and even commercial locations. This is, of course, a fairly small sample, and the study of larger collections will no doubt provide us with a more diverse array of locations where hadith transmission took place. A preliminary survey of the corpus of Damascene audition notices compiled by Leder and Sawwās, yields even more variety in the locations where hadith auditions took place. Essentially hadith transmission could take place almost anywhere. Interestingly, the gardens outside Damascus emerge as particularly popular sites of transmission.217

8

Musalsalāt: Ritual and Mimesis in Oral Hadith Transmission

One of the more historically influential developments related to the ritualization of hadith transmission was the emergence of the genre of hadith known as musalsalāt beginning in the early fourth/tenth century. The term musalsal 214 215 216 217

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Stefan Leder, Yasīn Muḥammad al-Sawwās et al., (eds), Muʿjam al-samāʿāt al-Dimashqiyya: al-ṣuwar, 13, 193–195, 400–409.

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literally means linked, as a technical term it refers to a hadith with a series of links in the chain of transmission in which a quality or action is repeated. The commonality could be a quality shared by each successive generation of transmitters, such as being a descendant of the Prophet or sharing the name Muḥammad. In one of the more common examples of this sub-genre of musalsal hadith, a series of transmitters share residence in the same city.218 In another common type of musalsal hadith an action, either attributed to the Prophet or a later transmitter, is serially reenacted in each subsequent act of transmission. A hadith known as “the musalsal hadith of hospitality with the two black ones” is a popular example of this sub-genre.219 In this hadith the Prophet is said to have hosted a visitor by offering him “the two black ones,” dates and water and then said: Whoever hosts a believer as a guest, it is as if he has hosted Adam as a guest; whoever hosts two believers, it is as if he has hosted Adam and Eve; whoever hosts three, it is as if he has hosted the angles Gabriel, Michael and Israfil; whoever hosts four it is as if he has read the Torah and the New Testament, the Psalms of David and the Quran; whoever hosts five, it is as if he has prayed all five daily ritual prayers in congregation from the first day of God’s creation until the Last day; whoever hosts six it is as if he has freed sixty slaves of the sons of Ishmael; whoever has hosted seven, the seven gates of hell will be closed to him; whoever hosts eight, the eight gates of paradise will be opened for him, whoever hosts nine will have a number of good deeds recorded for him equal to the number of all who have ever disobeyed Him from the beginning of creation until the Last day; whoever hosts ten will have recorded for him the good deeds of everyone who has ever prayed and fasted from the beginning of creation until the Last day.220 This companion, whom the Prophet hosted with dates and water, in turn hosted some of his own companions with dates and water and transmitted the hadith on the merits of hosting guests; these guests in turn became hosts and recited the hadith to their guests, and so on, generation after generation. Each generation of transmitters thus reenacted the Prophet’s act of hospitality, offering their guests dates and water while repeating his words on the merit of receiving guests. In another commonly transmitted musalsal hadith the 218 219 220

Al-Fadānī, Al-ʿUjāla, 132. Ibid., 11. Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar al-Kattānī, Risālat al-musalsalāt, 48.

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Prophet is reported to have turned to his companion Muʿādh b. Jabal after the ritual prayer and said, “Indeed I love you, so say after every prayer, O God help me to remember, thank and worship you well.”221 A generation later Muʿādh b. Jabal repeated this with his companion ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣunābiḥī, turning to him after a ritual prayer and saying “Indeed I love you, so say after every prayer …” Al-Ṣunābiḥī then did the same with his companion ʿAbd Allāh b. Yazīd alḤalabī, who in turn repeated the words and action to his student ʿUqba b. Muslim (d. 120/738). This reenactment continued generation after generation and continues even now among Muslim scholars and their students throughout the world. Indeed, in 2005 I personally experienced this, when my teacher shaykh Usāma al-Sayyid turned to me after praying next to him in the al-Azhar mosque and said “Indeed I love you, so say after every prayer …” reciting his unbroken chain of teachers and students who had repeated this action for more than a thousand years before us. In some cases, the serial reenactment in a musalsal hadith does not trace all the way back to the Prophet’s companions, but ends at a later figure in the chain of transmission. This is the case with the most common of all musalsal hadith, the musalsal bi-l-awaliyya. Literally, al-musalsal bi-l-awaliyya means the hadith of serial first transmission, this is because it was often the first hadith an authority would transmit to a student coming to hear hadith from him. This tradition goes back to the second/eighth century, when the esteemed authority Sufyān b. ʿUyayna (d. 198/814) chose the hadith “Those who are merciful are shown mercy by God, show mercy to those on earth and He who is in the heavens will show mercy to you” as the first hadith to transmit to his student Bishr b. al-Ḥakam al-ʿAbdī (d. 238/852). Bishr b. al-Ḥakam followed Sufyān b. ʿUyayna’s lead, and repeated this with his students. By the end of the fifth/eleventh century, it had become a standard feature of ritual oral/aural hadith transmission. A report describing a fifth/eleventh-century hadith collector’s first encounter with the Egyptian hadith scholar al-Ḥabbāl (d. 488/1095) demonstrates well how almusalsal bi-l-awaliyya was used. The fifth/eleventh-century collector, Ibn Ṭāhir, reports that he travelled to Cairo in the year 470/1077 to hear hadith from alḤabbāl, but upon arriving in the city was not sure where he should go to find him. Before traveling to Cairo, however, a friend of his, who knew al-Ḥabbāl, had described him to Ibn Ṭāhir and while wandering through the market he saw a shaykh standing in front of a perfumer’s shop whom he thought might be him. He waited and when al-Ḥabbāl left he went and asked the owner of the shop who the shaykh was, and was told that it was none other than al-Ḥabbāl.

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Ibn Ṭāhir left the shop and caught up with al-Ḥabbāl. Upon introducing himself and giving him a letter from a mutual acquaintance, al-Ḥabbāl took a folio out of his sleeve and proceeded to read from it the musalsal bi-l-awaliyya. Following this first encounter, Ibn Ṭāhir notes, they agreed to meet every day in the mosque of ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ to read hadith.222 By the end of the fourth/tenth century, scholars were classifying musalsal hadith as a distinct genre of orally transmitted hadith. The Persian hadith master al-Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī (d. 405/1015) seems to be the first to count the musalsal as a distinct type, categorizing it as the tenth type of hadith and subdividing it into eight distinct sub-types. Around the same time al-Ḥākim was categorizing them, other scholars were beginning to produce independent collections of musalsal hadith. The fourth/tenth-century Iraqi hadith scholar Ibn Shadhān (d. 383/993) produced one of the first musalsal collections. This was soon followed by collections produced by other fourth/tenth-century scholars including al-Ḍarrāb (d. 392/1001), al-Nūqātī (d. 400/1009), and Ibn Fanjawayh (d. 414/1023).223 In following centuries scholars continued to produce collections of musalsal hadith, ultimately producing at least a hundred such collections, and likely many more.224 As time went on scholars and transmitters discovered and invented new musalsal hadith, producing a huge corpus of musalsal hadith involving a variety of actions and contexts. Musalsal hadith emerged in which the transmitters ritually performed a variety of actions including shaking hands in different ways, placing their hands on their heads, holding their beards and trimming their nails.225 Other musalsal hadith emerged that were ritually transmitted in different times and places, such as in front of the Kaʿba, on the days of the two Eids and the day of ʿĀshūrāʾ.226 By the twelfth/eighteenth century, al-Zabīdī could count more than three hundred different musalsal hadith.227 Despite the popularity of the musalsal genre, scholars did not shy away from pointing out that in most cases the chains of transmission for these hadith were

222 223 224

225 226 227

Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Hādī, Ṭabaqāt ʿulamāʾ al-ḥadīth, 3:386. Al-Suyūṭī, Jiyād al-musalsalāt, ed. Muḥammad Makkī (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 1423/2002) 18–19. For a brief bibliography of 112 musalsal works, see Muḥammad Makkī’s introduction to alSuyūṭī’s Jiyād al-musalsalāt, 18–112. A more comprehensive bibliography of the works of this genre has not yet been produced, but it would likely include hundreds of works. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Bāqī al-Ayyūbī, al-Manāhil al-salsala fī al-aḥādīth al-musalsala (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1403/1983), 66. Al-Suyūṭī, Jiyād al-musalsalāt, 187–201. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī, Kashf al-libās ʿan ḥadīth waḍʿ al-yad ʿalā al-rāʾs (Tangier: Al-Maṭbaʿ al-Maghribiyya, 1326/ 1908), 44.

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quite weak, although they could often be found elsewhere with non-musalsal reliable chains of transmission.228 In some cases the hadith were even deemed to be outright fabrications.229 Veracity was not, however, the point of the musalsal hadith. Commenting on a musalsal hadith he deemed to be fabricated alSakhāwī writes, “… despite this fact the scholars of hadith continue to mention this hadith and transmit it serially based on their good intentions and for the purposes of baraka.”230 The allure that the oral transmission of these hadith held for scholars, although they knew most of them were weak or forged, resided in the realm of spirituality. That is to say that the oral/aural transmission of these hadith functioned as a means to piously reenact moments from the Prophet’s or a later revered figure’s life. The transmitter and the student thus engage in a kind of pious mimeses. Performing an act attributed to the Prophet and his companion, supposedly or at least possibly, passed down across the generations unchanged, transports them across time allowing them for that moment to imagine themselves in the roles of the Prophet and his companion, or the roles of the revered ancient scholars and their pious students who had serially reenacted that moment. The twentieth-century Moroccan hadith scholar al-Kattānī alludes to this understanding of the performance of the musalsal hadith while addressing the question of the admitted weakness of a musalsal hadith attributed to the Prophet in which the transmitters place their hands on their heads while reading verses from the Quran. For al-Kattānī it was acceptable to transmit this hadith, in spite of its weakness, because as a principle the scholars of hadith held that it was acceptable to transmit and use a weak hadith for the purposes of virtuous deeds ( faḍāʾil al-ʿamal).231 He writes, “the imams, whom should be followed and in whose way we find our guidance, were permissive in the transmission of weak hadith, so long as it was for the purposes of promoting the virtues of deeds and men and so it is with the hadith of placing the hand on the head.”232 It did not matter then that the attribution of the hadith was weak, or whether it had in fact been repeated by generations back to the Prophet, as was claimed. What mattered was what it meant for those involved in its transmission and performance: the sense of connection to the Prophet and the revered predecessors that its serial reenactment made them feel. This feeling 228 229 230 231 232

Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 176; Al-Fadānī, al-ʿUjāla, 28. Al-Fadānī, al-ʿUjāla, 15, 93. Ibid., 15. Al-Kattānī, Kashf al-libās, 40. Ibid., 39.

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transformed the transmission of a weak and even fabricated hadith into a pious and virtuous deed. This is perhaps why the musalsal genre until now endures as a standard of oral hadith transmission.

9

A Shifting Culture of Oral Hadith Transmission

Not all aspects of oral/aural hadith transmission would fare as well as the musalsal hadith. A significant body of evidence suggests that from the tenth/ sixteenth century, after enduring as a central feature of the culture of hadith scholars since its emergence, oral/aural transmission underwent changes that ultimately left it a far less prominent place in the larger scholarly culture. While the broad strokes of this shift are fairly clear. It is important to note that scholarship on this period of the history of hadith remains quite limited and the fine details of this shift will require much further work. It is clear that these shifts did not happen at the same pace everywhere. Hirschler’s recent work showed that in Damascus oral hadith transmission was already in decline in the ninth/fifteenth century.233 In Egypt, as will be seen, this decline seems to have happened slightly later. For other areas, we know far less. One of the strongest sources of evidence for this shift are audition notices, which witness a sharp decline in this period. As was discussed earlier in this chapter, audition notices had been at the core of the culture of hadith transmission since its emergence, and are ubiquitous in medieval hadith manuscripts. From the tenth/sixteenth century, however, there is a sharp decline in audition notices and it is quite rare to find notices recorded after the end of the century. Indeed, they are so rare that it was once thought that audition notices altogether disappear after the tenth/sixteenth century.234 This is not entirely true, however, and a small corpus of audition notices composed after the tenth/sixteenth century were discovered in the course of researching this book, and no doubt many more await discovery.235 While audition notices do not completely disappear from the manuscript tradition, it is true that there was a remarkable decline in the institution, and that from the late tenth/sixteenth onwards they became 233 234

235

Konrad Hirschler, A Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture, forthcoming. Adam Gacek, for example, in his Arabic Manuscripts: A Vademecum For Readers, writes, “We notice this clearly visible decline on audition notes to the point where they entirely disappear.” Adam Gacek, Arabic Manuscripts: A Vademecum For Readers (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 55. See, for examples, the audition notices ranging from the year 1074 to the year 1238, found in Garrett MSS 94y, 235b, 407yq, 443y, 453y, 517y, 539y, 736yq, 1362y, 1837y, 3789y, 5923y, 214y, Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections.

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increasingly obscure and rare. Moreover, notices composed after the tenth/sixteenth century are often fundamentally different than those recorded in earlier centuries. Some of the late notices I have discovered, such as an audition notice recorded in the year 1074/1663, on a volume of Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, consist of all the elements one finds in earlier audition notices: the name of the transmitter, in this case one ʿAbd al-Qādir Afandī, the auditor who composed the notice, Aḥmad b. al-ʿAjamī, as well as the exact date.236 A similer notice composed on a volume of al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ in Jerusalem in 1238/1822 documents the audition of one ʿUthmān Abū Suʿūd the imām of the Shāfiʿīs of Jerusalem with his shaykh ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Qudsī.237 Other late audition notices, however, seem to have been composed for entirely different reasons than early notices and as a result have a fundamentally different composition. The three most fundamental pieces of information audition notices record are the names of the transmitter, and auditors and the dates of transmission. However, some of this essential information is absent in later notices. A volume of Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī held at the National library of Israel illustrates this well. This manuscript contains six audition notices following the colophon dated, 1202/1787, 1203/1788, 1204/1789, 1205/1890, 1206/1791, 1207/1702.238 Not a single one of these notices, however, identifies the auditor or the transmitting authority; they simply note, “the audition was completed on the … (balagha samāʿa fī …)” followed by the date. The intended function of such a notice is unclear, but it clearly had a function different than that of earlier audition notices. Other late notices I discovered display a similar departure from the form and content of earlier notices. A notice recorded in the year 1238/1822 on a manuscript of al-Nawawī’s Adhkār, for example, mentions the name of the shaykh, one Muḥammad Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Ḥusaynī, but does not, however, identify a single auditor.239 Conversely, as can be seen in the image below, a notice recorded in the year 123o/1815 in the al-Aqsa mosque on a volume of al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ states that one Muḥammad b. Najm al-Dīn al-Jamāʿī audited the work, but no transmitter is noted.240

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237 238 239 240

Al-Bukhārī, al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaḥīh, Garrett MS 736yq, Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections. Others audition notices that are consistent with earlier notices include notices found in Princeton University Library Manuscripts, 235b, 407yq, 517y, 736yq, 1362y. Muḥammad b. Ismāiʿl al-Bukhārī, al-Saḥīh al-Jāmiʿ, al-Masjid al-Aqsa Library, Muḥammad b. Ismāiʿl al-Bukhārī, al-Saḥīh al-Jāmiʿ, ABLJ 00413-60, al-Masjid al-Aqsa Library, Jerusalem. Al-Bukhārī, al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaḥīḥ, MS 178, The National Library of Israel, Yahuda Collection. Al-Nawāwī, Kitāb al-Adhkār, Garrett MS 94y, Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections. Muḥammad b. Ismāiʿl al-Bukhārī, al-Saḥīh al-Jāmiʿ, ms ABLJ 00413-60, al-Masjid al-Aqsa Library, Jerusalem.

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figure 2 A notice documenting an audition that took place in the khalwa of Muṣtafā al-Bakrī in 1230/1815. Muḥammad b. Ismāiʿl al-Bukhārī, al-Saḥīh al-Jāmiʿ, MS ABLJ 00413-60, al-Masjid al-Aqsa Library, Jerusalem

It is worth noting here that the decline in frequency and shift in the nature of audition notices seems to be paralleled by an increase in the frequency of notices of silent reading. Silent reading notices are generally rather short notes that consist of the composer’s name, a statement that he either silently read (ṭalaʿ), or looked at (naẓar fī) all or part of the manuscript, some pious statement or prayer, and in many cases the date. Upon surveying eight hundred and fifteen paratextual silent reading notices found on manuscripts housed in the manuscript collections of the State Library of Berlin, Liepzig, and Gotha, I found that just over half, 442 to be precise, are dated.241 The earliest of these notices date to the sixth/twelfth century, but generally these notices are quite rare until the tenth/sixteenth century and steadily increase each century thereafter until the thirteenth/nineteenth century as is demonstrated in the chart below. It is true that this increase in notices of silent reading may, in a part, be due to the fact that more manuscripts survive from later centuries, but it is also true that many of these notices occur on manuscripts produced centuries earlier that have no earlier reading notices, which would seem to point to a steady increase in the practice of recording notices of silent reading. This correlation between the increasing frequency of notices of reading and the declining frequency of notices of audition over the course of the tenth/sixteenth, eleventh/seventeenth, twelfth/eighteenth, and thirteenth/nineteenth centuries may be related to a function that both notices of audition and notices of silent reading share: namely at some level, both types of notices can be seen as a means of appropriating the manuscript and commemorating and memori-

241

This survey was conducted with the excellent Secondary Entry Database of the Orient Digital Database Project of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. http://orient‑digital.staatsbiblio thek‑berlin.de/content/index.xml;jsessionid=54D0B441212032225409E3408D1AE7C1?lan g=en. Boris Liebrenz cataloged these entries as well as the secondary entries at the Refayia collection in Leipzig and Gotha. https://www.refaiya.uni‑leipzig.de/search_form_secentry _simple.xed?XSL.lastPage.SESSION=/search_form_secentry_simple.xed&lang=en.

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Notices of silent reading by century in the manuscript collections of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Gotha and the Refaiya family library at Leipzig University Library

alizing the event of its reading. Perhaps as oral/aural transmission and the practice of recording notices of audition became less common, the notice of silent reading came to perform this aspect of the audition notice’s function for some readers. This apparent shift in the practice of oral/aural hadith transmission seems to be partially tied to a larger shift in the scholarly culture away from the transmitted sciences and towards the rational sciences. It was once thought that that interest in the rational sciences in the Ottoman lands declined following the seventeenth century as a result of the puritan Kaḍīzāde movement. In his 2015 book, Islamic Intellectual History in the Seventeenth Century: Scholarly Currents in the Ottoman Empire and the Maghreb, Khaled el-Rouayheb has, however, convincingly shown that in fact the opposite is true and that interest in the rational sciences increased in the seventeenth century.242 He points to a number of causes for this shift, one of these was a westward movement of Azeri and Kurdish scholars, in part due to conquest of these areas by the Shiite Safavids.243 These scholars’ local scholarly culture emphasized the study of the rational and philosophical disciplines and they brought this tradition and its texts with them West, where they began teaching. This tradition, and its emphasis on the rational sciences, found a receptive audience and ulti242

243

Khaled el-Rouayheb, Islamic Intellectual History in the Seventeenth Century: Scholarly Currents in the Ottoman Empire and the Maghreb, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015). Ibid., 4.

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mately led to an explosion of interest in these fields.244 The shift in the scholarly culture was accelerated by the Eastern movement of scholars from the Maghreb due to turmoil there following the collapse of the Saʿdī dynasty. Many of these Moroccan scholars belonged to a tradition of what el-Rouayheb calls “theologian-logicians” in which demonstrative argument and logic were central and they began teaching this tradition in Cairo and the Hijaz.245 The arrival of these “theologian-logicians” in Cairo, according to the twelfth/eighteenthcentury polymath hadith scholar al-Zabīdī, resulted in a florescence of interest in logic that caused interest in other fields, especially hadith and its transmission, to wane. Al-Zabīdī writes, “The study of logic and other such disciplines became like nourishment for them and they would not listen to any criticism or blame, to such an extent that this made them devoid of the narration of hadith.”246 According to al-Zabīdī, this shift in interest towards logic occurred in “the time of the teachers of our teachers.”247 Al-Zabīdī explains, “Thus you see that those who came to Egypt in the time of the teachers of our teachers had little knowledge of narrations … this is the reason for the decline of the science of hadith.”248 Al-Zabīdī arrived in Egypt as a young man in the year 1167/1753. I have been able to date the birth year of the oldest of al-Zabīdī’s Egyptian teachers to 1080/1669, which might mean their teachers were active around the middle of the eleventh/seventeenth century.249 This seems to fairly closely fit the timeline establishd by the reading and audition notices. Although it should be noted that audition notices seem to begin to fall into decline sometime before this. El-Rouyaheb argument that this shift in culture brought about an important shift in reading practices may help to explain the increased frequency of notices of silent reading mentioned above. He argues that “deep reading” increasingly displaced the oral/aural modes of reading that had previously characterized Islamic education.250 The face to face student-teacher model of extracting meaning from texts gave way to a more impersonal and textual mode of study in which silent reading and careful contemplation of texts

244 245 246 247 248 249

250

Ibid., 4. Ibid., 4. Ibid., 132. Ibid., 133. Ibid., 133. Muḥammad Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī, al-Muʿjam al-mukhtaṣṣ, ed. Niẓām al-Yaʿqūbī and Muḥammad b. Nāsir al-ʿAjmī (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 2010/1421), 227. His other eldest teachers were born in the years 1094, 1087, and 1083. Al-Zabīdī, al-Muʿjam al-Mukhtaṣṣ, 181, 227, 245, 325. El-Rouayheb, Islamic Intellectual History, 98.

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were central.251 To explain this new mode of reading, scholars like Müneccimbāşī composed manuals instructing students how to properly read and comprehend a text independent of instruction (ādāb al-muṭālaʿa).252 This was a major departure from earlier pedagogic manuals like those composed by al-Zarnūjī (d. 597/1200) and Ibn Jamāʿa (d. 733/1332), in which silent independent reading is hardly mentioned. A decline in economic opportunity and patronage seems to have accompanied and perhaps compounded the declining popularity of oral hadith transmission. The biographies of scholars noted to have been appointed to various dār al-ḥadīth institutions in the central Islamic lands from the eleventh/seventeenth century indicate that positions in dār al-ḥadīth institutions were consistently given to non-specialists and moreover that some institutions seem to have suffered general mismanagement. From their establishment in the seventh/thirteenth century, dār al-ḥadīth institutions were important centers of hadith transmission. Among other things they provided employment opportunities for hadith transmitters.253 As we saw above, notices of audition indicate that these institutions were common sites of oral/aural hadith transmission. They also encouraged the cultivation of short chains of transmission, stipulating it as a condition of employment for some positions. In contrast to this, the vast majority of tenth/sixteenth and eleventh/seventeenth-century, scholars noted to have been appointed to positions in dār al-ḥadīth institutions are not distinguished in any way as transmitters of hadith, as their predecessors in previous centuries were. In a recent article by Ottoman historian Kadir Ayaz, he argues that in the Ottoman context the institution of dār al-ḥadīth differed very little, if at all, from other educational institutions and moreover that the curriculum used in the Ottoman Dār al-ḥadīth was not in fact focused on hadith.254 Beyond the increase in the popularity of the rational sciences, 251 252 253

254

Ibid., 115. Ibid., 109. For a survey of these institutions in Cairo and Damascus see Mohammad Gharaibeh, The Sociology of Commentarial Literature; An Analysis of the Commentary Tradition of the Muqaddima of Ibn aṣ-Ṣalāḥ (d. 643/1245) from the Perspective of the Sociology of Knowledge, 76–85. The foundation deed (waqfiyya) of the Dār al-ḥadīth al-Ashrafiyya, founded in Damascus in the year 632/1235, for example, stipulates that transmitters who possessed exceptionally elevated chains of transmission could stay at the institution be given a stipend of sixty dirhams a month plus a thirty dinār, or two hundred and ten dirham bonus after they finished transmitting. Eerik Dickinson, “Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ al-Shahrazūrī and the Isnād,” 490. Al-Sakhāwī, makes reference to a number of paid position for transmitters in both Cairo and Tanta. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ 5:117, 5:126. Kadir Ayaz, “Hadis İlimlerinin Tedrîsâti Açından Osmanlı Dârulhadidleri,” The Journal of Ottoman Studies, (2016), 39–68.

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it would seem this was, at least, partially because Ottoman policy favored an education that produced judges, administrators and bureaucrats; hadith, let alone hadith transmission, was not seen as contributing to this aim. My own survey of the biographies of scholars employed at dār al-ḥadīth institutions in the tenth/sixteenth and eleventh/seventeenth centuries supports this thesis. Positions at dār al-ḥadīth institutions seem to have regularly been given to scholars who were not hadith specialists. Of course, some study of hadith would have been part of their training; the focus of these scholars’ intellectual output and interest, however, was in fields other than hadith. This is particularly true for those scholars who were appointed to the dār al-ḥadith institutions in the central Ottoman lands. For example, of the eighteen scholars mentioned by Taşköprüzade in his al-Shaqāʾiq al-Nuʿmāniyya as having taught at the Dār al-ḥadīth in Edirne, only three are noted to have had an interest in or taught hadith, and not a single one of them is noted to have been distinguished as a transmitter of hadith, or even to have transmitted hadith at all.255 Instead of hadith, the scholars who taught at the dār al-ḥadīth in Edirne seem to have been interested in theology, law, jurisprudence, tafsīr, literature and the rational sciences.256 In some cases the appointment of non-specialists to dār al-ḥadīth institutions seems to be part of a wider pattern of mismanagement of dār al-ḥadīth endowments and the appointment of individuals who did not meet the conditions stipulated by the founder of the endowment. The Dār al-ḥadīth al-Ashrafiyya in Damascus seems to be particularly telling of this. The Dār al-ḥadīth al-Ashrafiyya was one of the first and most prestigious dār al-ḥadīth institutions. Indeed, a list of the scholars who taught there reads like a who’s who of scholarship, including Ibn al-Salāḥ, al-Nawāwī, al-Subkī, al-Mizzī, al-Dhahabī and Ibn Nāsir al-Dīn. When Dār al-ḥadīth alAshrafiyya was founded in the year 630/1232 by al-Malak al-Ashraf (r. 626/1229– 635/1237), he stipulated in the endowment deed that in addition to being scholars of hadith with elevated chains of transmission anyone appointed to teach at the institution must also be Shāfiʿī and Ashʿarī. All of these conditions seem to have been ignored fairly regularly from the mid-tenth/sixteenth century onwards. The position was given to a number of Ḥanafī scholars, who were also not hadith specialists or transmitters.257 In what is perhaps the most indicative case of mismanagement of the institution, a position at the Dār al-

255 256 257

Taşköprüzade, al-Shaqāʾiq al-nuʿmāniyya fī ʿulamāʾ al-dawla al-ʿUthmāniyya, (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿArabī). Ibid., 1:93, 1:107, 1:169, 1:181, 1:226, 1:227, 1:239. al-Muḥibbī, Khalaṣat, 2:342.

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ḥadīth al-Ashrafiyya was given to a scholar that would no doubt have been considered entirely unfit in previous centuries for a variety of reasons. To begin with, Abū Fatḥ al-Mālikī (d. 1173/1760) did not meet the waqf’s stipulation that the position only be given to scholars of the Shāfiʿī school, nor did he have an elevated chain of transmission, as was stipulated. This, however, was only one of many issues that his predecessors would have no doubt found, at the least, problematic about Abū Fatḥ.258 Rather than hadith, he seems to have specialized in Mālikī jurisprudence, grammar, logic and poetry. His biographers give no indication of a specialization in hadith nor that he was distinguished as a transmitter. If that were not enough, he is also noted to have been an infamous profligate, constantly intoxicated on a cocktail of wine, opium and hashish, as well as having reveled in the company of “handsome beardless youths.”259 While Abū Fatḥ’s appointment to what was once one of the most iconic institutions of hadith scholarship is something of an extreme case, it along with the other appointments to the Dār al-ḥadith al-Ashrafiyya seems to point to a broad and fundamental shift in the scholarly culture and the role of hadith transmission within it. There seem to have been other changes in the Dār al-ḥadīth al-Ashrafiyya around the late tenth/sixteenth century that also indicate a shift in the use of the institution. Ibn ʿImād al-Ḥanbalī (d. 1089/1678) notes that in the late tenth/sixteenth century, a new position was established at the institution for the teaching of subjects other than hadith with a daily salary of thirty Ottoman.260 Significantly, the first scholar to hold this position is reported to have been a specialist in the rational disciplines (al-maʿqūlāt).261 It is unclear what effect the creation of this new position had on the old endowed chair for the Shaykh al-ḥadīth, Ibn ʿImād simply notes that prior to this subjects other than hadith were not taught at the institution. Later sources do, however, contain references to the teaching of a wide range of subjects at the Dār al-ḥadīth alAshrafiyya. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Khālidī (d. 1283/1866), for instance, is noted to have taught both the “rational and transmitted” disciplines at the al-Ashrafiyya.262 The terminology used in the sources to refer to the Dār alḥadīth al-Ashrafiyya may provide further evidence of a shift in its function and

258 259 260 261 262

Najm al-Dīn al-Ghazī, al-Kawākib al-sāʾira bi-aʿyān al-miʾa al-ʿāshira, ed. Khalīl Manṣūr (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1418/1997), 3:21. Ibid., 3:121. Ibn ʿImād, Kitāb Shadharāt al-Dhahab fī akhbār ma dhahab, 10:531. Ibid. ʿAbd al-Razzāq b. Ḥasan b. Ibrāhīm al-Bayṭār, Ḥilyat al-Bashar fī Tārīkh al-Qarn al-thālith ʿAshar, ed. Muḥammad Bahjat al-Bayṭar (Beirut: Dār al-Ṣādir, 1413/1993), 1282.

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the activities it supported. From the late tenth/sixteenth century onwards, the institution is increasingly referred to as madrasat dār al-ḥadīth.263 The use of the term madrasa to refer to Dār al-ḥadīth al-Ashrafiyya may indicate that it had become, like dār al-ḥadīth institutes of the central Ottoman lands, less of a specialized institute and more of a general seminary. The fate of other dār ḥadīth institutions is not clear and requires much further research, there are indications, however, that some may have fared better than the Ashrafiyya, at least for a time. Upon visiting Egypt, the Ottoman scholar Evliya Çelibi (d. 1095/1684) noted with surprise that the curriculum of the Dār al-ḥadith there was focused exclusively on hadith.264 Çelibi was likely referring to the Dār al-ḥadīth al-Kāmiliyya, built by al-Mālik al-Kāmil in 622/1225. It is not clear, however, how long that focus on hadith might have persisted. By 1166/1752 al-Kāmiliyya had fallen into a state of disrepair and was renovated, only to be destroyed in an earthquake and never fully rebuilt.265 That oral/aural hadith transmission seems to have underwent significant changes following the tenth/sixteenth century is not by any means to say that oral/aural hadith transmission ceased. Sources from all over the Muslim world produced after the tenth/sixteenth century reference continued oral/aural hadith transmission. The thabat genre in particular provides us with substantial evidence of continued oral/aural transmission.266 The eleventh/ seventeenth-century Moroccan hadith scholar Muḥammad b. Aḥmad Miyāra (d. 1072/1661), for one, notes in his Fihrist having audited a great number

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264 265 266

Muḥammad Khalīl b. ʿAlī al-Murādī, Silk al-durar fī aʿyān al-qarn al-thāni ʿashar, (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 1408/1988), 2:151; al-Bayṭār, Ḥilyat al-Bashar 376, 1282; Muḥammad b. ʿĪsā b. Maḥmūd b. Kanān, Yawmiyāt Shāmiyyar, 85. Kadir Ayaz, “Hadis İlimlerinin Tedrîsâti Açından Osmanlı Dârulhadidleri,” 63. For more on the Kāmiliyya see Mohammad Gharaibeh, The Sociology of Commentarial Literature, 84–85. The thabat of Shams al-Dīn al-Bābilī is an example of an eleventh/seventeenth century thabat that provides evidence of extensive oral/aural hadith transmission. ʿĪsā b. Muḥammad al-Thʿālabī, Thabat Shams al-Dīn al-Bābilī, ed. Muḥammad Nāṣir al-ʿAjmī (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 2004/1425). For examples from the twelfth/eighteenth century see the fihrist of the twelfth/eighteenth century Moroccan scholar al-ʿIraqī al-Fāsī (d. 1184/1770) in which he makes numerous references to continued oral/aural transmission. Abū ʿAlāʾ Idrīs al-ʿIraqī al-Fāsī, Fihrist al-ḥāfiẓ Abī ʿAlāʾ Idrīs al-ʿIraqī al-Fāsī, ed. Badr al-ʿImrānī al-Ṭanjī (Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 1430/2009). The Fihrist of ʿAbd Allāh b. Sālim al-Baṣrī (d. 1134/1721) is another twelfth/eighteenth century fihrist providing significant evidence of continued oral/aural hadith transmission. ʿAbd Allāh b. Sālim al-Baṣrī, alImdād ilā maʿrifat ʿulūw al-isnād, ed. Al-ʿArabī al-Dāʾiz al-Firiyāṭī (Riyadh: Dār al-Tawhīd, 1427/2006).

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The remains of the Dār al-Ḥadīth al-Kāmiliyya showing the surviving Western iwān. Shaykh ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ṭarābīshī in the foreground

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of hadith collections, including al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ six times.267 In Damascus the tradition of holding hadith auditions under the cupola of the Umayyad mosque known as Qubbat al-Nasr endured into at least the twelfth/eighteenth century.268 In his history and biographical dictionary of Egypt between the years 1100/1688–1236/1821, al-Jabartī makes a number of references to continued oral/aural hadith transmission.269 Jabartī, however, also counts the discipline of transmission and the preservation of chains of transmission among disciplines that had been ignored by moderns (aghfalahā al-mutāʾkhirūn).270 Scholars continued to transmit hadith orally into the twentieth century, indeed scholars like ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī dedicated their careers to transmitting hadith and tracing chains of transmission, as will be seen in the final chapter of this book. Nevertheless, by the late twelfth/eighteenth century, oral/aural hadith transmission in the old manner had become much less common than it had once been. When Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī held oral/aural hadith transmission sessions in Cairo, it was considered unusual and his contemporary al-Jabartī commented that it was “in the manner of the ancients.”271 Likewise, when alZabīdī composed audition notices following his oral transmission sessions, it was perceived as a revival of an ancient lost practice, and when describing this, al-Jabartī felt the need to explain to his readers that the recording of audition notices was “the method of traditionists in previous times, as we have seen in ancient books.”272 Al-Zabīdī’s interest in ‘old-style’ hadith transmission seems to have led to something of a revival of hadith transmission in Egypt. In the catalog of his teachers and students al-Muʿjam al-mukhtaṣṣ, alZabīdī refers to a number of students who consistently attended his audition sessions and learned how to compose audition notices. This revival, however, seems to have been short lived, and perhaps was largely dependent on alZabīdī’s charisma. His students and disciples do not seem to have continued

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268 269 270 271

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Muḥammad b. Aḥmad Miyāra al-Fāsī, Fihrist al-Shaykh Muḥammad b. Aḥmad Miyāra alFāsī, ed. Badr al-ʿUmrānī al-Ṭanjī (Casablanca: Markaz al-turath al-thaqafī al-Maghribī, 2009/1430), 31. Al-Muḥibbī, Khalaṣat, 1:305, 2:112, 4:124, 4:125, 4:171. For more on Qubbat al-Nasr Gharaibeh, see The Sociology of Commentarial Literature, 80. Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāib al-Āthār, 2:134, 1:236, 1:237, 1:324, 1:430, 1:454. Ibid., 3:404. Stefan Reichmuth, “Murtadā az-Zabidī (d. 1791) in Biographical and Autobiographical Accounts: Glimpses of Islamic scholarship in the 18th Century,” Die Welt des Islams, vol. 39 (Mar., 1999), 79. Reichmuth, “Murtadā az-Zabidī (d. 1791) in Biographical and Autobiographical Accounts,” 80.

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the practices he reestablished in Egypt after him.273 There are some indications that the scholarly culture of the Indian subcontinent retained more of an interest in hadith and its oral/aural transmission than that of the Ottoman realm. Even there, however, the situation seems to have been lamentable from the perspective of a hadith specialist. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the renowned scholar and prince consort of Bhopal, Ṣadīq Ḥasan Khān (d. 1307/1890), would compare and lament the lack of interest in hadith in both India and the Ottoman lands, “if the scholars of India are in such a lack of knowledge of hadith, then what is to be said about other scholars of this age, who are not called [scholars of hadith], even if officially, but instead are nothing more than philosophers and jurists.”274 While oral/aural hadith transmission did not completely cease, the decline of the audition notice, which had been one of its core institutions, the rarity with which one finds references to oral/aural hadith transmission in late biographical dictionaries, a genre in which it had once been a central element, as well as what appears to be the diminished role of oral/aural hadith transmission in the activities of dār al-ḥadīth institutions all point to a general shift in the overall significance assigned to oral hadith transmission in the larger scholarly culture from at least as early as the eleventh/seventeenth century. The shifts in the practice of oral/aural hadith transmission did not by any means mean the end of hadith transmission. Hadith transmission continued, and scholars continued to collect and present their chains of transmission, and to value elevation, but this was increasingly done through non-oral/aural modes of transmission, specifically the ijāza, which is the subject of the following chapter. 273 274

Al-Zabīdī, al-Muʿjam al-mukhtaṣṣ, 247, 337, 338. Ṣadīq Ḥasan Khān, Silsilat al-ʿasjad fī dhikr mashāyakh al-sanad, tr. Layth Muḥammad Lāl Muḥammad al-ʿUmarī al-Makkī, ed. Muḥammad Ziyād b. ʿUmar al-Takla (Beirut: Dār alBashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 1435/2014), 250.

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chapter 3

Non-oral Transmission in the Oral Idiom: The Development and Function of the Ijāza On an early spring day in Beirut in the year 1900, the last Ottoman chief justice of the city Yūsuf al-Nabahānī finished composing a catalog of the chains of transmission he had collected throughout his career as a scholar.1 In the final pages of this catalog, which he titled The Guide for the Seeker to the Paths of Transmission (Hādī al-murīd ilā ṭuruq al-asānīd), he issued an ijāza granting everyone alive during his lifetime permission to transmit all of the texts in the catalog. This was a truly massive body of literature. Indeed, in the introduction to the catalog al-Nabahānī explains that the work includes his chains of transmission to the catalogs of numerous earlier scholars and by extension it thus encompassed “the majority of all Muslim scholars’ chains of transmission.”2 This meant that based on this ijāza any Muslim born before al-Nabahānī died in 1350/1932, still alive today would have a chain of transmission connecting him or her to nearly every master of hadith who ever lived, and through them to essentially every work of hadith ever produced. Further, they would possess a complex network of chains of transmission connecting them to the Prophet Muḥammad and the founding generations of Muslims. The ijāza that al-Nabahānī issued to every Muslim alive, was the product of centuries of evolution set in motion by the developments outlined in Chapter One. This chapter tells the story of that evolution. It traces the ijāza’s development from an uncommon and suspect mode of transmission to the most common mode of transmission acclaimed as the only means of preserving the Muslim community’s connection to their Prophet, and the scholars and saints of the past. The ijāza belongs to the scholarly toolkit of the hadith discipline, more precisely, it is one of the seven modes of transmission scholars of hadith developed and recognized as acceptable means of transmission. Considered an analog to oral/aural transmission, in essence the ijāza is a permission granted by a transmitter allowing the recipient to cite and further transmit a text or groups of texts through the granting transmitter’s personal chain of transmission. The

1 Yūsuf al-Nabahānī, Hādī al-murīd ilā ṭuruq al-asānīd, (n.p.: 1318/1900), 63–64. 2 Ibid., 3.

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ijāza thus allowed scholars to establish a personal chain of transmission for a text when time, distance or other factors made oral/aural transmission of the text unfeasible. In a scholarly culture that expected that a chain of transmission would be cited, the ijāza was a means of meeting this expectation without investing the time in actual, oral/aural transmission. The ijāza was, however, more than a tool for citation in the oral idiom. It allowed scholars to maintain the paradigm of oral hadith discipleship without having to engage in the nearly impossible task of actually transmitting every text orally. In their own oft repeated words the ijāza was a means “to preserve the chain of transmission that is one of the distinct traits of the Muslim community.” In other words, it was simply infeasible for the vast literature of hadith to continue be to be transmitted orally from generation-to-generation; time would simply not allow this, and eventually most, if not all, chains of transmission would be broken and the community’s connections to the Prophet and his heirs would be cut and the community would go the way of the Jews and Christians. In addition to this argument for the ijāza based in the logic of spirituality, there was a social logic. Utilizing the ijāza to preserve the chain of transmission meant that scholars could preserve hadith collection and transmission as a species of social and religious capital and maintain the system of hierarchy inherent in oral/aural transmission without having to engage in timeconsuming audition. In order for the ijāza to serve this function it would undergo a transformation over the course of several centuries. Once transformed, the ijāza became an essential feature of the hierarchy of Islamic scholarly culture. This chapter provides a diachronic account of these developments and explains the ijāza’s function in the culture of post-canonical hadith transmission.

1

Confusion in the Secondary Literature

The ijāza has been a subject of considerable confusion in the field and before delving into the body of this chapter, it is necessary to first address this. The confusion surrounding the ijāza in part stems from the conflation of hadith transmission with education. The term ijāza literally means ‘permission’, and the permission to transmit hadith (ijāzat al-riwāya) has long been conflated in secondary literature with the permission granted to qualified individuals to teach (ijāzat al-dirāya or ijāzat al-tadrīs) or issue fatwas (ijāzat al-iftāʾ). In contrast, the ijāzat al-riwāya is simply a permission for the recipient to transmit an individual hadith or other text without having heard all or any of the material

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from the authority granting the ijāza. It was often granted through correspondence or after a brief meeting in which oral transmission was not possible. As an analog to the oral/aural transmission of a hadith, scholars did not stipulate any qualifications for the recipient, nor did they consider the issuance of an ijāza to any way attest to the qualifications of the recipient. In fact, as will be discussed in detail below, babies and small children who, of course, possessed absolutely no scholarly qualifications were regularly issued ijāzas. The ijāzat al-dirāya, on the other hand, was an attestation of qualification used in some contexts to grant the recipient the right to teach or pursue other activities which required qualifications and was much more difficult to obtain and thus, as has been shown by Devin Stewart, references to this type of ijāza are rare in the primary sources.3 The rarity of this kind of ijāza in the sources is perhaps partially because it does not seem to have been recognized by all as a necessary requirement to teach or issue fatwas. In fact, the prolific Egyptian polymath alSuyūṭī (d. 911/1505) stated that whoever considered the ijāza to be a prerequisite to begin teaching is an ignoramus. He writes, “An ijāza from a shaykh is not a condition for one to begin teaching and imparting one’s knowledge. Whoever knows that he is qualified to teach may do so, even if no one has issued him an ijāza. This is the way of the pious ancestors and righteous forbearers. This is true for every discipline and teaching and issuing fatwas, contrary to the opinion of some ignoramuses.”4 When ijāzas attesting to the qualification of the recipient do occur in the sources, it is almost always with a qualifier. For example, “he was issued an ijāza to teach and issue fatwas.”5 On the other hand, when the term ijāza appears without qualification in the vast majority of cases it refers to the much more common ijāza of transmission.6 The conflation of these two very different types of ijāzas has led a number of scholars in the field to arrive at numerous false conclusions. The eminent 3 Devin Stewart, “The doctorate of Islamic Law in Mamluk Egypt and Syria” in Law and Education in Medieval Islam: Studies in Memory of Professor George Makdisi, eds. Joseph Lowry, Devin J. Stewart and Shawkat M. Toorawa (Cambridge: E.J.W. Gibb Memorial Trust, 2004), 45–91. 4 Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī, al-Itqān fī ʿulūm al-Qurān, ed. Saʿīd al-Mandūb (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1416/1996) 1:273. 5 Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-kāmina, 1:510. 6 As will be explained below, George Makdisi has noted and the books of hadith terminology explain, when the term ijāza is used without qualification in the sources, it refers to the ijāzat al-riwāya or permission to transmit hadith; George Makdisi, The Rise of the Colleges, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981), 147. Devin Stewart has correctly shown that there are rare exceptions to this rule when the context provides the qualification, but in the vast majority of cases where the term ijāza occurs without qualification, it refers to the ijāzat alriwāya; Devin Stewart, “The Doctorate of Islamic Law in Mamluk Egypt and Syria”, 56.

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historian of Islam Marshall Hodgson, for example, in his The Venture of Islam confuses the two types of ijāzas, and thus mistakenly posits that the common nonchalance with which medieval authorities granted ijāzas was indicative of a depreciation of educational titles.7 John Voll conflates the ijāza of hadith transmission with the other more difficult to obtain ijāza in a number of his works and in one article goes so far as to posit that the emphasis on short chains of transmission in an ijāza is evidence of reform in eighteenth century scholarly practices.8 In fact, Muslim scholars’ emphasis on short chains of transmission goes back to at least the fourth/tenth century, as has been shown in Chapter One, and thus was not indicative of any change in the eighteenth century. Jonathan Berkey makes the same mistake of conflating the different types of ijāzas in his discussion of the “abuses” in the issuance of ijāzas in medieval Cairo, thus misrepresenting that educational and cultural environment.9 Michael Chamberlain makes the same mistake in his study of the educational practices of medieval Damascus.10 This conflation of the ijāza of transmission and the ijāza of qualification and the faulty conclusions that arise from it is widespread in the secondary literature and many further examples could be cited here.11 It is hoped that this chapter will provide a corrective to the confusion that pervades previous discussions of the ijāza in Islamic educational practices and provide an accurate account of the development and function of this fundamental feature of Islamic scholarly culture.

2

The Origins and Early Development of the Ijāza

The earliest scholars to discuss the ijāza, such as al-Rāmhurmuzī (d. 360/970) and the influential Iraqi scholar al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī (d. 463/1071) envisioned 7 8 9 10 11

Marshall Hodgson, The Venture of Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 2:444. John Voll, “ʿAbdallah Ibn Salim al-Basri and 18th Century Hadith Scholarship,” Die Welt des Islams, 42.3 (2002), 361. Berkey, The Transmission of Knowledge, 31–32. Michael Chamberlain, Knowledge and Social Practice in Mediaeval Damascus, 1190–1350 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 88–89. J.O. Hunwick is another scholar who conflates the two types of ijāzas in his study of Ṣāliḥ al-Fulānī. John Hunwick, “Salih al-Fullani (1752/3–1803): the career and teachings of a West African ʿalim in Medina,” in Islamic Humanism: Arabic and Islamic Studies in Memory of Mohamed al-Nowaihi, ed. A.H. Green (Cairo: American University in Cairo, 1984), 139–155. In his article on audition notes in Arabic manuscripts, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Munajjid likewise confused the process of transmission and education, stating that the ijāza of transmission is equivalent to a modern diploma. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Munajjid, “Ijāzāt al-samāʿ fī al-makhṭūṭāṭ al-qadīma,” Majallat Maʿhad al-Makhṭūṭāt 1 (1955), 232.

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the ijāza as having emerged in the second/eighth century. These and later scholars attributed a plethora of opinions on the ijāza to the founders of the schools of law and other early authorities. A number of opinions both for and against the ijāza are attributed to Mālik (d. 179/795), for example. In one report, a petitioner who had made a copy of Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ asks him for an ijāza to transmit the text. Mālik grants him permission. The petitioner then asks, “how should I cite the text? Should I say, ‘Mālik told us (ḥaddathanā Mālik)’ or ‘Mālik informed us (akhbaranā Mālik)?’” Mālik responds, “say whichever you want.”12 In another seemingly contradictory report Mālik is asked about the ijāza and states, “I don’t consider it valid, those who request it only want to spend a short amount of time and carry away much.”13 Similar reports are attributed to al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820). In one report, Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī al-Karābīsī requests that al-Shāfiʿī allot him time to read his books to him, so that he could later transmit them. Al-Shāfiʿī refuses his request saying, “take al-Zaʿfarānī’s copies of my books and make copies of them, I grant you ijāza for them.”14 In another report, al-Shāfiʿī is asked by his student al-Rabīʿ b. Sulaymān (d. 270/884) to transmit a section of the book he had missed transmitting orally, but al-Shāfiʿī refuses and has him read the missed pages.15 Numerous other reports both for and against the ijāza are attributed to other early authorities such as Sufyān b. ʿUyayna (d. 198/814), al-ʿAwzāʿī (d. 157/773), Shuʿba (d. 160/776), al-Zuhrī (d. 124/741), Makḥūl al-Shāmī (d. 112/730 to 118/736), alLayth b. Saʿd (d. 175/791) and Ibn Jurayj (d. 150/767).16 Indeed, al-Khaṭīb alBaghdādī even compiled a list, which constitutes almost a who’s who of early Islamic thought, all of whom are reported to have weighed in on the question of the ijāza.17 These scholars’ vision of the ijāza having already been in use in the second/eighth century is not, however, corroborated well by the contemporaneous sources. A survey of second century sources yields no evidence for the usage of the ijāza, as purported by scholars of fourth/tenth century and later. The apparent absence of any surviving second/eighth or early third/ninth century sources confirming that the ijāza was in fact in use at this time means that all that can be said with any certainty about these reports is that they reflect the

12 13 14 15 16 17

Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Kifāya fī ʿilm al-riwāya, ed. Aḥmad ʿUmar Hāshim (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1405/1985), 370. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Kifāya, 353. Ibid., 361. Ibid., 354. Ibn Kathīr, al-Bāʿith al-ḥathīth, 121. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Kifāya, 350.

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contemporary concerns of their authors, or their immediate predecessors, who cited these statements as evidence in contemporary debates over the validity of the ijāza.

3

The Earliest Attestations of the Ijāza

The ijāza emerges as a product of a struggle between the ideal of oral/aural transmission and the desire to maintain that ideal in the context of a scholarly culture that had produced a body of literature far too large for this ideal to be realistically maintained. The ijāza represents a reconciliation between these opposing forces. The culture of hadith transmission idealized oral transmission and, even if non-oral transmission was and had been part of the reality of hadith transmission, the culture of hadith scholars remained suspicious of it. The rapid expansion of the written hadith corpus in the third/ninth century brought these tensions to a head and the ijāza emerged as a means of maintaining the idiom of oral transmission, while accepting that the corpus of written texts was simply far too large for the ideal of oral transmission to be maintained. This process of compromise was a gradual one; the earliest attestations for the ijāza appear to date to roughly the middle of the third/ninth century. Its use in this period, however, seems to have been nascent and quite limited, seemingly appearing in only two sources, Abū ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī’s (d. 279/892) Kitāb al-ʿIlal al-ṣaghīr and the Akhbār Makka of al-Fākihī (d. 272–279/885–892). AlTirmidhī’s Kitāb al-ʿIlal al-ṣaghīr, which is a short epilogue to his canonical hadith collection al-Sunan is the most instructive of these sources. Al-Tirmidhī opens the ʿIlal by citing his chains of transmission for the opinions he attributes to jurists (ikhtiyār al-fuqahāʾ) in the main body of the Sunan.18 After citing his chains of transmission to several other prominent jurists, Abū ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī notes that he transmits the majority of al-Shāfiʿī’s corpus from his student alZaʿfarānī (d. 259/873). He explains, however, that the sections of al-Shāfiʿī’s work related to prayer and ablution he heard from Abū al-Walīd al-Makkī and that other unspecified sections of al-Shāfiʿī’s works he transmitted from his countryman Abū Ismāʿīl al-Tirmidhī from al-Buwayṭī from al-Shāfiʿī. Here, Abū ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī continues, “He [Abū Ismāʿīl al-Tirmidhī] mentioned material that al-Rabīʿ had taken from al-Shāfiʿī (wa dhakara minhu ashyāʾ ʿan al-Rabīʿ ʿan al-Shafiʿī).”19 Abū ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī then notes that in addition to this oral chain 18 19

Al-Tirmidhī, al-Jāmiʿ al-kabīr, ed. Bashshār ʿAwwād Maʿrūf (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1996), 6:246. Ibid., 6:229.

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of transmission for al-Shāfiʿī’s material, “al-Rabīʿ issued me an ijāza to transmit these and sent them to me (wa qad ajāza lanā al-Rabīʿ dhālika wa kataba bihi ilaynā).”20 This early reference to the ijāza illuminates a number of aspects of the ijāza’s use in this nascent stage of its development. To begin with, it helps to explain the circumstances in which the ijāza might be used at this time, namely, when constraints of time or distance made oral transmission impossible. In this particular case, it was the vast distance that separated Abū ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī, who was a resident of Tirmiz in Central Asia, from al-Rabīʿ (d. 270/884), who resided in Egypt, that prevented direct oral/aural transmission. The ijāza thus provided scholars of the third/ninth century a means to cite material from its most authoritative sources in the idiom of oral transmission, which they would otherwise be unable to do. It is important to note here that transmission through correspondence (kitāba) was not unheard of at this time and had already been used by alBukhārī and Muslim in their ṣaḥīḥs. Al-Tirmidhī’s use of the ijāza in this report seems to differ little from kitāba. As a concept, however, the ijāza differed from kitāba in that it was not limited to correspondence, but could also be issued in face-to-face encounters when time constraints prevented oral transmission. Al-Tirmidhī alludes to this wider application of the ijāza in a passage of his ʿIlal where he states, “If a scholar gives permission (ijāza) to someone to transmit some of his hadith, then he may do so.”21 The ability to cite material without having to invest the time in auditing it was an extremely useful tool in a scholarly culture that was increasingly becoming dependent on widely-circulated and often lengthy authored texts but still expected that these sources would be cited with a chain of transmission in the oral idiom. The utility of the ijāza, however, was not appreciated by all. Al-Tirmidhī prefaces this statement on the permissibility of the ijāza by noting that “some scholars (baʿḍ ahl al-ʿilm) have permitted the ijāza.”22 The inverse of this is, of course, that the majority, or at least many, of al-Tirmidhī’s contemporaries did not consider the ijāza to be a valid mode of transmission. Al-Tirmidhī explains the reasoning behind the positions of both the proponents and critics of the ijāza and further provides the proof texts that were being used by the two camps to support their positions. The first three of the texts he cites are adduced as evidence for the validity of the ijāza. Among these is a report in which ʿUbayd Allāh b. ʿUmar takes a book of hadith to al-Zuhrī and says, “this is some of your 20 21 22

Ibid., 6:246. Al-Tirmidhī, al-Jāmiʿ al-kabīr, 6:246. Ibid., 6:246.

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hadith, may I transmit it on your authority?” To which al-Zuhrī replies in the affirmative.23 The authenticity of the report aside, its use here would seem to indicate that for some of al-Tirmidhī’s contemporaries the issue of the ijāza was one of practicality. It was simply impractical for an authority of the stature of al-Zuhrī to be expected to transmit his vast collection of hadith orally to everyone who wanted a copy of it. The ijāza provided a means for an authority to quickly furnish scholars and students with a chain of transmission allowing them to cite texts without investing the time that oral transmission to each of them necessitated. While the first three reports al-Tirmidhī cites in this section are adduced as proof for the validity of the ijāza, the final report explains the viewpoint of those opposed to the ijāza. This report argues that any act of non-oral/aural transmission was equivalent to a break in the chain of transmission. Al-Tirmidhī writes, “the majority of the scholars of hadith consider a hadith that is transmitted with an interrupted chain (mursal) to be unacceptable (lā yaṣiḥḥ).”24 It would thus seem then that the opposition to the ijāza at this time was rooted in the perception that as a non-oral/aural link in the chain of transmission, it was essentially a break in the chain of transmission that made any text transmitted through it unreliable. The specter of having conservative scholars condemn any hadith one transmitted through an ijāza as unreliable provides a key to help us better understand why it is that, although al-Tirmidhī himself seems to have considered the ijāza a valid mode of transmission, it appears only once in his ʿIlal and why even there it is not used in the transmission of hadith, but only of legal opinions. Even in the transmission of al-Shāfiʿī’s legal opinions, as will be discussed later, the ijāza is used not as his primary mode of transmission, but merely to complement his oral transmission. Had the ijāza enjoyed wide acceptance at this time it would have been possible for al-Tirmidhī to obtain certain hadith with chains of transmission shorter than the oral/aural chains that he cites in his Sunan. The fear of the majority or even many scholars condemning any hadith transmitted with an ijāza as invalid seems to have been enough to prevent scholars of the late third/ninth century, even those who considered the ijāza valid, from employing it in the transmission of hadith. There are indications though that some late third/ninth-century scholars may have considered hadith transmitted through an ijāza acceptable for other purposes. Ibn Abī Ḥātim (d. 327/ 938) reports that upon being asked about the

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Al-Tirmidhī, al-Jāmiʿ al-kabīr, 6:246. Ibid., 6:247.

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transmitter Bishr Ibn Shuʿayb, his father responded, “Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal asked Bishr ‘did you hear your father narrate hadith?’ He responded, ‘no.’ ‘Did someone else read hadith to your father aloud while you were present?’ He said, ‘no.’ ‘Did he give you an ijāza?’ he replied, ‘yes.’” He then copied some of his hadith in order to examine and compare them against other hadith (ʿalā maʿnā al-iʿtibār), but didn’t transmit any hadith on his authority.25 Al-Tirmidhī’s use of the ijāza to transmit sections of al-Shāfiʿī’s legal corpus may also indicate that while the ijāza was not thought to meet the stringent standards that most scholars set for the transmission of hadith, its utility as a mode of transmission was taken advantage of in the transmission of other materials. This view is supported by the fact that seemingly the only other contemporary source in which the term ijāza occurs dating to the mid-third/ninth century is al-Fākihī’s Akhbār Makka, where the ijaza significantly occurs only in the chains of transmission for historical reports, not hadith.26 A reportedly third/ninth-century ijāza reproduced in full by al-Khaṭīb alBaghdādī in his al-Kifāya seems to further strengthen this possibility. This ijāza is reported to have been composed by Ismāʿīl b. Isḥāq al-Azdī (d. 281/894) to Aḥmad b. Isḥāq b. Bahlūl, for the books Kitāb al-Nāsikh wa al-mansūkh on the authority of Zayd b. Aslam, Kitāb al-ʿIlal on the authority of ʿAlī al-Madīnī, Kitāb al-Radd ʿalā Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan, Kitāb Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, the Masāʾil of Ibn Abī ʿUwāʾis from (ʿan) Mālik and the Masāʾil al-mabsūṭa from (ʿan) Mālik.27 Here again, significantly, no hadith texts are transmitted in this ijaza. ʿAlī alMadīnī’s Kitāb al-ʿIlal, although it falls within the discipline of hadith, deals with subtle flaws in the transmission of hadith and the remaining texts deal with legal issues. Al-Khaṭīb notes that he found the original copy of this ijāza, recognized the handwriting as that of Ismāʿīl b. Isḥāq and copied it. If we accept al-Khaṭīb’s assertion that the text was in fact composed by Ismāʿīl b. Isḥāq in the late third/ninth century, it would give support to the view that the ijāza may have been in limited use in the transmission of non-hadith materials, but that the strictures applied to the transmission of hadith meant that it was not yet being used for the transmission of hadith texts. Returning to al-Tirmidhī, a further question about his use of the ijāza remains. It is clear from the passage in which he references his ijāza that he had already received the material orally from his teacher Abū Ismāʿīl al-Tirmidhī who had taken it from al-Rabīʿ before he wrote to request an ijāza from al-Rabīʿ.

25 26 27

Ibn Abī Ḥātim, al-Jarḥ wa al-taʿdīl, 2:359. Al-Fākihī, Akhbār Makka, 1:323, 3:132, 3:319. Al-Khaṭīb, Al-Kifāya, 379.

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This raises the question of why he would write to obtain an ijāza for this material when he already had a valid oral chain of transmission for it, and further, according to his own statement, the majority of his contemporaries considered the ijāza to be problematic at best. The answer may lie in the premium that his scholarly culture placed on the short chain of transmission. Al-Rabīʿ was still alive when Abū ʿĪsā was composing this work, and transmitting through the intermediate Abū Ismāʿīl would have meant that his chain of transmission through an intermediate would be perceived as inferior. Abū ʿĪsā, then, wrote to al-Rabīʿ directly in order to obtain the shortest possible chain of transmission for that material. The doubt that the use of the ijāza would normally cast on a chain of transmission for conservative critics was mitigated in this case by two factors. First, that the material being transmitted was a work of law, not hadith, and second that he corroborated his transmission through the ijāza with direct oral transmission, thus allowing al-Tirmidhī to enjoy the prestige of citing the material through a shorter and thus a more authoritative and prestigious chain of transmission. The use of the ijāza here to create a chain of transmission shorter than what would be possible through oral transmission is significant, and as will be seen later in this chapter, the cultivation of short chains of transmission was to become an important function of the ijāza.28 For the utility of the ijāza in the creation of short chains of transmission to be appreciated, however, the bias against non-oral transmission would first have to break down. As will be shown later in this chapter, over the course of the next few centuries a growing confidence in the stability of the hadith corpus would eventually do just this. By all indications, however, in the third/ninth century the bias against nonoral transmission remained strong and kept the ijāza in quite limited use. The absence of the ijāza from contemporary third/ninth century sources such as Abū Zurʿa al-Dimashqī’s (d. 281/894) Tārīkh, which takes significant interest in the protocols governing the various modes of hadith transmission but makes no reference to the ijāza, lends further support to this view.

28

An alternative explanation of Abū ʿĪsāʿ’s motivation for requesting an ijāza from al-Rabīʿ may lie in the verb “dhakara” that Abū ʿĪsā uses to describe his transmission from Abū Ismāʿīl. According to later scholars such as Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, use of this verb may indicate that the material was transmitted in an informal session, known as mudhākara. If this is the case, it may be that Abū ʿĪsā sought an ijāza from al-Rabīʿ due to the weakness of mudhākara as a mode of transmission. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ also notes, however, that the verb in some cases has the same meaning as the more common term “ḥaddatha”; Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 65.

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The Tide Begins to Turn: The Increasing Acceptance of the Ijāza in the Fourth/Tenth Century

Over the course of the fourth/tenth century, the bias against non-oral transmission slowly broke down as a result of the growing confidence in the written corpus of hadith. Scholars gradually accepted that it was unrealistic to demand that the already vast and rapidly expanding body of literature continue to be transmitted orally. This process was slow, but there are indications that the tension between the ideal of oral/aural transmission and the current realities of the scholarly culture was already beginning to shift in favor of the ijāza in the early years of the fourth/tenth century. The prominent Egyptian Hanafi scholar Abū Jaʿfar al-Taḥāwī’s (d. 321/993) important works Sharḥ mushkil al-āthār and Sharḥ maʿānī al-āthār seem to provide evidence that while the ijāza was still considered problematic by most, attitudes were already shifting around the turn of the century. Al-Taḥāwī uses the ijāza to cite hadith both in his Sharḥ mushkil al-āthār and in his work of proHanafī polemic Sharḥ maʿānī al-athār.29 Al-Ṭaḥāwī’s citation of hadith with the ijāza seems to be indicative of its increasing acceptability. As an expert on hadith transmission, al-Taḥāwī would be unlikely to use the ijāza, if he thought it would be seen as so problematic as to possibly undermine his argument. This seems especially true when we consider that al-Taḥāwī had studied with some of the foremost hadith authorities of his time and was highly sensitive to the technical vocabulary of hadith scholars, having composed a work on the synonymy of the technical terms akhbaranā and ḥaddathanā.30 By roughly the middle of the fourth/tenth century, there is much more evidence for the growing acceptance of the ijāza. By this point, the ijāza had gained enough legitimacy in the scholarly community for the debate to shift away from the question of validity to how the ijāza should be properly used. The most extended discussion of the ijāza dating to this period is found in AlRāmhurmuzī’s work al-Muḥaddith al-fāṣīl where it is overwhelmingly clear that the ijāza’s validity was not an issue for al-Rāmhurmuzī. Al-Muḥaddith al-fāṣīl is the earliest surviving extended work on the theory and protocols of hadith transmission. The work consists of roughly nine hundred topically organized reports attributed to earlier hadith authorities, which the author uses as proof texts for and against issues related to hadith transmission including the ijāza. 29 30

Al-Taḥāwī, Sharḥ mushkil al-āthār, ed. Shuʿayb al-Arnāʾūt (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1416/1995) 1:37, 1:294, 2:184, 6:150, 7:227, 9:81. Al-Taḥāwī, Sharḥ maʿānī al-āthār, ed. Muḥammad Zuhrī al-Najjār and Muḥammad Jād alḤaqq (Beirut: Dār ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1414/1994) 2:220, 4:101.

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Al-Rāmhurmuzī’s authorial presence in the book is primarily that of the compiler. He compiles reports attributed to earlier authorities on various topics, occasionally inserting his own comments or opinions, but for the most part he allows his material to speak for itself. Al-Rāmhurmuzī does not seem to have conceived of the ijāza as an entirely independent subject, and presents his material on the ijāza along with material on other non-oral modes of transmission. In total, al-Rāmhurmuzī includes forty-seven reports in this section, ten of which deal with the ijāza specifically. For al-Rāmhurmuzī’s predecessors, such as al-Tirmidhī and his contemporaries, the debate around the ijāza revolved around whether it, as a non-oral mode of transmission, was valid or was tantamount to a break in the chain of transmission, thus rendering anything transmitted through it unacceptable or suspect. For al-Rāmhurmuzī, who was writing close to a century after alTirmidhī, the debate seems to have shifted away from the problem of the ijāza as a non-oral transmission to how one should properly cite material transmitted through the ijāza. Indeed, al-Rāmhurmuzī takes very little interest in the question of the ijāza’s validity. In fact, only one report even addresses the question and trivializes those who deemed the ijāza invalid. In this report, a student asks a shaykh to allocate him time for an audition session. Too busy to grant the student’s request, the shaykh replies, “take the books of hadith I transmit and copy them.” The student responds, “we only accept hadith through oral transmission.” The shaykh unapologetically replies, “this is what we do with everyone, if you want the material, take it this way, otherwise leave it.”31 The complete lack of interest the shaykh has in responding to this student’s objection to the validity of the ijāza is reflective of most of the material al-Rāmhurmuzī compiles in this section. Neither he nor the authorities in the reports he compiles were concerned with proving the ijāza’s validity as a mode of transmission. On the contrary, they seem to have been quite convinced of and confident in the validity of the ijāza. He does record numerous reports, which provide precedent for the use of non-oral modes of transmission by the early authorities of Islamic thought, such as al-Awzāʿī, Zuhrī, Mālik and Shāfiʿī. He seems to cite these reports, however, not as proof for the ijāza itself, but as proof for ancillary issues that assume the ijāza’s validity. The majority of the reports al-Rāmhurmuzī compiles deal with issues related to the citation of material transmitted by ijāza. The standard terminology used to cite the transmission of a hadith, “ḥaddathanī (he said to me)” or “akhbaranī (he informed me),” is, of course, based in oral/aural transmission. For some

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Al-Rāmhurmuzī, al-Muḥaddith al-fāṣil, 441.

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scholars, the use of this terminology to cite material that was transmitted through non-oral modes was a serious problem. Indeed some would consider it tantamount to the deceptive misrepresentation of how one had received reports, a cardinal sin among hadith scholars. One authority succinctly summarized the anxiety the ijāza caused some scholars for this reason: “when someone says, ‘I give you ijāza’, what he has actually said is, ‘I give you permission to lie.’”32 Al-Rāmhurmuzī’s primary aim in this section was to solve the problem of citing material transmitted through the ijāza. The material he presents reflects significant diversity of opinion on the correct terminology that should be used in the citation material transmitted through the ijāza. Much of this material revolves around the problem of ambiguity in citation that seems to have been the root of some scholars’ objection to the ijāza. Some of the terminology that appears in these reports successfully avoids the problem of ambiguity. Al-Rāmhurmuzī notes, for instance, that his shaykh, Mūsā b. Hārūn used the term idhn, a synonym of ijāza also roughly meaning ‘permission’ to cite hadith his father had permitted him to transmit but had not actually heard.33 Other terminology that appears here fails in this regard, making the ijāza impossible to discern and even implying oral transmission. He records a report, for example, in which al-Walīd b. Mazyad asks al-Awzāʿī how he should cite the hadith, which he had given him an ijāza to transmit. He replies, “cite the hadith that I have given you permission (ajaztuka) to transmit when you were alone, with the phrase, ‘he informed me (khabbaranī),’ and the hadith which I gave you permission to transmit when you were with others, cite with ‘he informed us (khabbaranā).’”34 Al-Rāmhurmuzī notes that some “latter-day” scholars have allowed the use of the phrases “ḥaddatha” and “akhbara” to cite material received through non-oral modes of transmission with the condition that the authority informs the recipient, “I have read and reviewed this material and it is exactly as I received each letter of it from so-and-so.”35 He stipulates,

32 33

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Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 153. To illustrate, “my father informed me among the materials he gave me permission to transmit on his authority (akhbaranī Abī fī mā adhina lī fi riwāyatihi ʿanhu).” Al-Ramhurmuzī, al-Muḥaddith al-fāṣil, 447. Al-Ramhurmuzī, al-Muḥaddith al-fāṣil, 436. In another report, Shuʿba is said to have asked Manṣūr how he should cite hadith he received through correspondence. He asks, “Should I say ‘he informed me’ (ḥaddathanī)?” He replies, “Yes, if I write to you I have informed you.” Upon seeking a second opinion on the matter, he is told, “Indeed, if one sends you [hadith] he has informed you (idhā kataba ilayka fa-qad haddathaka).” Al-Ramhurmuzī, al-Muḥaddith al-fāṣil, 439. There are also indications that the term “on the authority of (ʿan)” was used in the citation

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however, that if the terms “ḥaddatha” or “akhbara” are used in the citation of material received through the ijāza or other non-oral means, phraseology that differs slightly from the standard formulas for oral/aural transmission must be used.36 As a solution to the problem of the ijāza and ambiguity in citation alRāmhurmuzī suggests that the most suitable existing phraseology is “he wrote to me (kataba ilayya).”37 He argues that this term has the advantage of avoiding the ambiguity that plagued many of the other terms used in the citation of material received through the ijāza. Further, this phrase had the advantage of a lengthy precedent reportedly reaching as far back as the companions of the Prophet.38 Indeed, al-Rāmhurmuzī demonstrates a strong precedent for this phraseology, citing a number of reports in which early authorities are shown to have used it to cite hadith received through correspondence.39 This phraseology, however, has the shortcoming of implying that all material transmitted by ijāza was done through correspondence. As is clear from several of the reports in this section, the ijāza was already being used in face-to-face encounters. It seems unlikely that al-Rāmhurmuzī intended the awkward phrase “he sent me (kataba ilayya)” to be used to cite material received through an ijāza in faceto-face scenarios. It may be that he intended material received through ijāzas granted in face-to-face encounters to fall under the above-mentioned opinion that if one has received oral confirmation that the written material one has received has been read and reviewed is entirely accurate one may use the phraseology “ḥaddathanī” and “akhbaranī.”40 That the problem of citing material received in person through an ijāza is not specifically addressed by al-Rāmhurmuzī may indicate that it was not yet com-

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of hadith transmitted with ijāza. Although this does not appear in any reports in this section, al-Ramhurmuzī does make a lengthy comment on the use of ʿan here, which seems to indicate that it was used in this way. He states essentially that the use of ʿan to cite a hadith regardless of the modality was problematic as it is ambiguous and can conceal breaks in the chain of transmission. This comment seems to be meant to discourage the use of ʿan for the citation of ijāza. Indeed, he notes that because of this problem many scholars argue that hadith transmitted using ʿan are not legally compelling. Al-Rāmhurmuzī, al-Muḥaddith al-fāṣil, 450. He suggests the phraseology “ḥaddathanī fulān anna fulān ḥaddathahu,” it would seem in order to distinguish it from the “ḥaddathanī fulān anna fulān qāla ḥaddathanī fulān,” which he says can only be used to indicate direct oral transmission. Al-Ramhurmuzī, alMuḥaddith al-fāṣil, 451. Al-Ramhurmuzī, al-Muḥaddith al-fāṣīl, 448. Ibid., 453–454. Ibid., 449. Ibid., 451.

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monly used in face-to-face encounters at this time. Or more simply, this may just be a flaw in his suggested system of citation. Al-Rāmhurmuzī’s contemporary Ibn ʿAdī (d. 365/976) employs the verb akhbara qualified by the phrase “by way of oral ijāza (ijāzatan mushāfahatan)” to cite material that he received through an ijāza in person.41 To illustrate, “Muḥammad b. ʿĪsā al-Marwazī informed me by way of oral ijāza (akhbaranī ijāzatan mushāfahatan).”42 Despite al-Rāmhurmuzī’s efforts to standardize the citation of hadith through ijāza, scholars continued to employ a variety of terminology. Some of the problems of ambiguous citation were partially solved by future generations of scholars. Ambiguity in citation, however, would remain something of a problem. One of the most notorious sources of ambiguity in the citation of ijāzas was the continued use of the term “ḥaddatha” by some scholars, especially those from the western Islamic lands.43 In spite of these problems of citation, by the latter half of the fourth/tenth century, the ijāza was rapidly becoming a standard feature of the scholarly culture. The growing popularity of the ijāza is evidenced by an increase in the discursive density on the topic in this period. By the close of the fourth/tenth century, a number of scholars had penned independent treatises on the ijāza. One the earliest of these works was that of the Andalusian scholar Abū ʿAbbās al-Walīd b. Bakr b. Makhlad al-Ghamrī al-Saraqusṭī (d. 392/1001) al-Wajāza biṣiḥḥat al-qawl bi-l-ijāza. Although the sole surviving manuscript of this work is currently inaccessible, it was an important resource for later scholars such as alKhaṭīb, al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ (d. 544/1149), al-Silafī (d. 576/1180), al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505) and al-Sakhāwī (d. 902/1497), and small portions of the text are preserved in quotation in their works.44 Based on these references the book seems to be an argument for the validity of the ijāza.45 Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ in his Ilmāʿ even quotes alGhamrī as having stated that according to many scholars of hadith ( jamāʿa min aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth) an ijāza issued for either a well-known book or a book present at the issuance of the ijāza is the epistemological equivalent to direct oral/aural

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Ibn ʿAdī, al-Kāmil fī ḍuʿafāʾ al-rijāl, ed. Yaḥyā Mukhtār Ghazzāwī (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1408/1988), 3:217. Ibid., 3:217. Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. Rushayd al-Fihrī, Istidʿaʾāt al-ijāza, ed. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf alJaylānī (Rabat: Manshūrāt Wizārat al-Awqāf, 1428/2007), 178. Al-Silafī, al-Wajīz, 58. This manuscript seems to have originally been housed in the Ẓāhiriyya library in Damascus but was sold at some point to a private collector under the false pretense that it had been published. The exact whereabouts of this manuscript then seem to have been unknown until it surfaced at a London auction in November of 2010 where it was sold for 28,00 pounds. Al-Silafī, al-Wajīz, 58.

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transmission.46 Around the same time on the other end of the empire in Isfahan, the Persian hadith scholar Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. Isḥāq b. Mandah (d. 395/1005) was composing another work dedicated to the subject of the ijāza.47 Perhaps a few years later, in Andalusia, Abū Muṭarrif ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Muḥammad al-Qurṭubī (d. 402/1011) likewise composed a multi-volume work dedicated to questions related to the ijāza and munāwala.48 By the early years of the fifth/eleventh century, the ijāza had become so widely recognized to give the Andalusian hadith scholar Abū al-Walīd al-Bājī (d. 426/1034) the confidence to claim that there was scholarly consensus on its validity.49 As later scholars pointed out, al-Bājī was mistaken and in fact some resistance to the ijāza remained in this period and beyond.50 The influential chief Shāfiʿī judge of Baghdad al-Māwardī (d. 450/1058), for one, deemed the ijāza invalid and was confident enough about this position to argue that this was the position of the entire Shāfiʿī school. While some isolated conservative opponents of the ijāza held out, by the middle of the fifth/eleventh century they were a rapidly disappearing minority. The prominent hadith scholar Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣbahānī (d. 430/1038), for example, reports that all but one of his shaykhs, who numbered in the hundreds, considered the ijāza valid.51 The case of Abū Naṣr al-Sijzī (d. 444/1052), who is reported to have begun his career as an opponent of the ijāza and then accepted it late in his life, is indicative of the acquiescence of the opposition to the ijāza over the course of the fifth/eleventh century.52

5

Al-Khaṭīb and the Evolution of the Ijāza

By the middle of the fifth/eleventh century, the weakening of the opposition to the ijāza seems to have emboldened the ijāza’s supporters to adopt increasingly liberal positions and push the ijāza in new directions. This was a watershed moment that set the tone for continued discussions of the ijāza. The works of al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, which contain some of the most innovative and 46 47

48 49 50 51 52

Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, al-Ilmāʿ, 88–89. Al-Fihrī, Istidʿaʾāt al-ijāza, 192. According to ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Jaylānī there is an extant manuscript of this work in the Imām Muḥammad University library in Riyadh, but I have, as of yet, been unable to verify this. Al-Fihrī, Istidʿaʾāt al-ijāza, 192. Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, al-Ilmāʿ, 88–89. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 151. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Kifāya, 350. Al-Silafī, al-Wajīz, 65.

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influential opinions ever produced on the ijāza, exemplify this moment in the development of the ijāza. In his manual on the terminology and protocols of the discipline of hadith, al-Kifāya, al-Khaṭīb dedicates a lengthy discussion to the ijāza. In addition to this he composed an independent treatise on specific aspects of the ijāza. The discussion of the ijāza that emerges in these works is far more nuanced and sophisticated than those that preceded it. Moreover, al-Khaṭīb’s treatment of the ijāza is expressed in a far more assertive tone than that of earlier discussions. The ijāza’s validity was a resolved issue for al-Khaṭīb. He opens his treatment of the ijāza stating that while in the past scholars have disagreed over the ijāza the vast majority of scholars have now accepted it.53 Not only have the vast majority of the scholars endorsed the ijāza, but al-Khaṭīb argues that in doing so they were following a precedent set by none other than the Prophet himself. As proof for this claim, he cites a hadith in which the Prophet is reported to have sent his companions on a mission and for purposes of secrecy given them sealed instructions ordering them not to open these instructions until the third day of their mission.54 For al-Khaṭīb this report was a clear indication that the Prophet himself had engaged in non-oral transmission and it thus gave the ijāza a compelling prophetic precedent. If this supposed Prophetic precedent was not enough, al-Khaṭīb follows with reports establishing that both Abū Bakr and ʿAlī also approved of and made use of modes of transmission he considered analogous to the ijāza.55 To further support his reading of these reports and ascribe his interpretation to the larger historical community of scholars, al-Khaṭīb adduces a long list of all the scholars who supposedly considered the ijāza valid, including the majority of the pantheon of early Islamic thought, ranging from Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (d. 110/728) to al-Shāfiʿī.56 Al-Khaṭīb readily admits that there had been opposition to the ijāza, but he portrays them as a mistaken minority relegated to the past. The way al-Khaṭīb presents the opposition to the ijāza reveals that the debate was no longer simply about whether or not the ijāza was a valid mode of transmission. It would seem that in the course of the ijāza’s ascendency over the fourth/tenth century an interesting caveat had developed in the debate. Al-Khaṭīb explains that among the majority of his contemporaries who have accepted the ijāza there existed a further debate over whether a hadith transmitted through an ijāza was legally compelling or not ( yajib al-ʿamal bihā); in other words, if a hadith trans53 54 55 56

Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Kifāya, 348. Ibid., 348. Ibid., 349–350. Ibid., 350.

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mitted through the ijāza had the same epistemic weight as a hadith transmitted orally and could thus be used as proof for legal purposes. He explains that the majority of scholars hold that hadith transmitted through ijāza are legally compelling. A minority, which he describes as being composed of adherents of the Ẓāhirī school “and some of their later followers (wa baʿḍ al-mutaʾakhirīn min man tābaʿahum),” however, apparently adopted the curious position that the ijāza was a valid mode of transmission, but produced a broken chain of transmission (mursal) and was thus not legally compelling.57 It is not at all clear who, if anyone, actually held this opinion. The archetypal Ẓāhirī, Ibn Ḥazm, seems to have been generally opposed to the ijāza, but does not seem to have held this strange position.58 It may be that al-Khaṭīb was simply using this opinion as a foil for his own opinions. In any case, as later commentators would point out, this position suffers from serious incoherence, since there would be little point in transmitting a hadith by ijāza if that link were to be considered validly transmitted, but at the same time a break in the chain of transmission.59 The idea that it created a break in the chain of transmission seems to have been the basis for the remaining opposition to the ijāza. Al-Khaṭīb summarily dismisses this. He writes: As for the claims of those who have objected to the ijāza on the grounds that it constitutes a break in the chain of transmission (irsāl) and transmission on the authority of unknown individuals, this is false. The authority issuing the ijāza is known, as is his reliability and trustworthiness, so how can it be argued that the ijāza is analogous to transmission from an unknown transmitter? This issue is obvious and unambiguous.60 Completely discounting the idea that the it constituted a break in the chain of transmission, al-Khaṭīb turns his attention to refuting other less fundamental objections to the ijāza. While clearly not an entirely objective representation of the opposition to the ijāza, the anti-ijāza reports that al-Khaṭīb presents here 57 58

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Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Kifāya, 348. Ibn Ḥazm, al-Iḥkām fī usūl al-aḥkām, ed. Muḥammad Aḥmad ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, (Cairo: Maktabat ʿĀtif, 1392/1978), 2:325. Although he was generally opposed to the ijāza, al-Dhahabī notes that he made at least one exception to this, granting an ijāza for his works to one of his close students; al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 20:142. I have been unable to identify anyone from the Ẓāhirī school who seems to have actually advocated such a position, but this attribution is regularly repeated by the commentators after al-Khaṭīb. See for example, al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, al-Ilmāʿ, 93; Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 154. Al-Khaṭīb, Al-Kifāya, 354.

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offer a fascinating view of the anxieties that the ijāza apparently elicited. Significantly, al-Khaṭīb cites a number of reports indicating that some scholars objected to the ijāza because they were concerned that it would cause social disruption. These scholars feared that the ijāza would disrupt the system of oral/aural discipleship relationships and thereby the hierarchy of authority that had been central to the community of hadith scholars since its emergence. He, for instance, quotes a report attributed to the third/ninth-century Damascene scholar Abū Zurʿa in which is asked about the validity of the ijāza and responds, “I have never seen anyone use this [the ijāza], if we become lax in this matter, knowledge will disappear and its pursuit will become meaningless. This is not the way of the people of knowledge!”61 This anxiety is further demonstrated in another report al-Khaṭīb attributes to the early hadith authority Shuʿba b. al-Ḥajjāj, which states, “If the ijāza is valid, then the practice of travelling to hear from transmitters will disappear.”62 In other words, what was at stake was the cultural norm of traveling to hear from a master that had been an established feature of the culture of hadith discipleship. The practice of travelling to hear and collect hadith from the mouths of masters was central to the culture and ethos of the scholarly community. The ijāza as a non-oral mode of transmission that could be used through correspondence mitigated the need to travel to hear from masters and these conservative scholars saw it as a threat to the social hierarchy inherent in the tradition of the journey to collect hadith. One of the reports most telling of the social anxiety the ijāza caused these scholars is attributed to Mālik. Al-Khaṭīb narrates that Mālik was asked about the ijāza and responded that he did not approve of it, and that those who request them “want to called priest without having served the church ( yurīd an yunādā qissan wa lam yakhdim al-kanīsa).”63 Mālik’s supposed equation of those who requested ijāzas to would-be clergy, who wanted to be ordained and enjoy the privileges of being a priest without undergoing any difficulty and hardship, reflects the anxiety some scholars had about the ijāza upsetting the established social function and culture of hadith collection and transmission. In the terms of Bourdieu, these reports point to a concern that the ijāza would lead to a circumvention of hadith collection as a field of competition and a means of distinguishing oneself. Those who expended the effort and/or resources to travel to collect hadith required would no longer be distinguished from their peers who did not. They could simply acquire and ijāza to transmit this material. This

61 62 63

Ibid., 352. Ibid., 353. Ibid., 354.

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might ultimately lead to the obsolescence of the hadith journey, and the elimination of an important species of social capital and established paradigm of hierarchy. Al-Khaṭīb clearly did not share these scholars’ anxiety that the ijāza would result in the demise of hadith transmission as a social institution. Quite the opposite, for him ceding the obsolescence of aspects of hadith culture and accepting the ijāza would no more cause the riḥla to be abandoned than the existence of a stable hadith canon had caused the practice of hadith transmission to be abandoned. Things were changing, but some aspects of the culture were too ingrained to ever disappear. This understanding of the state of affairs allowed al-Khaṭīb to modify the ijāza in a number of innovative ways that reflected the contemporary realities of hadith transmission. A colossal figure in the history of hadith, al-Khaṭīb’s approach to the ijāza was seminal and set the tone for discussions of the ijāza for generations.

6

The ijāza as a Means of Preserving the Chain of Transmission

While a small minority of fifth/eleventh-century hadith scholars still saw the ijāza as a threat to the norms and social hierarchy of hadith transmission, alKhaṭīb’s approach was quickly becoming the dominant one. By the middle of the sixth/twelfth century, in fact, some scholars were arguing that rather than being a threat to the culture of hadith transmission, on the contrary—the ijāza was a means to preserve it. These scholars saw the ijāza as a means of maintaining the doctrine, which was discussed in Chapter One, that the chain of transmission was a unique trait of the Muslim community distinguishing it from the religious communities that preceded it. Al-Silafī was one of the earliest scholars to put forward this argument for the ijāza. The premise of his argument is that the chain of transmission is “the pillar and foundation of the sacred law” and thus “every means must be taken to preserve it.”64 It is inconceivable, he argues, that every work of the sharīʿa would continue to be transmitted orally from generation to generation.65 The library of hadith and the other Islamic disciplines had simply become too massive for it to realistically continue to be transmitted orally. Here al-Silafī is referring to the opinion, which was discussed in Chapter One, that without a chain of transmission a work of hadith was rendered unusable. If a text’s chain of trans-

64 65

Al-Silafī, al-Wajīz, 54. Ibid., 54.

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mission were to be permanently broken then all of its contents would be forever lost to the community and the basis of the religion itself would be endangered. The ijāza, he argues, “as is clear to anyone with insight” was thus a means to preserve the chain of transmission and by extension the religion itself.66 In a similar vein, al-Silafī’s Andalusian contemporary Ibn Khayr al-Ishbīlī (d. 575/1179) premises his argument for the ijāza by noting disconcertedly that many of his contemporaries were now referencing hadith without possessing or citing their own personal chains of transmission.67 Concerned by this disregard for the culture of transmission and the norms of the scholarly tradition, he claims that by the consensus of the scholarly community it is impermissible for a scholar to reference a hadith without first obtaining a chain of transmission for it.68 The community was thus falling into widespread sin. Although clearly disturbed by his contemporaries’ disregard for the norms of scholarly culture, Ibn Khayr recognized that is was unreasonable to demand that everyone attend auditions of all the major and minor hadith collections before they could cite their contents. As a solution to this problem, he suggests liberal use of the ijāza. Through the ijāza a scholar could easily obtain multiple chains of transmission for all the collections and thus be able to cite any hadith without fear of contravening this supposed scholarly consensus.69 This idea that the ijāza was a mode of preserving the culture of hadith scholarship and the chain of transmission was widely influential and regularly appears in later scholars’ writings on the ijāza. Roughly a century after al-Silafī and Ibn Khayr put forward this idea, the influential seventh/thirteenth-century hadith scholar Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, for example, would write that scholars have permitted the ijāza “in order to open the means of preserving the chain of transmission, which is an essential trait of the Muslim Community.”70 Six centuries later in India, ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Laknawī would echo this explaining that the granting of ijāzas was recommended (tustaḥabb al-ijāza), “in order that the chain of transmission, which is a unique trait of the Muslim community, be preserved.”71 Judging by the frequency with which the ijāza appears in later chains of transmission, it would seem that the scholars who put forth these arguments were not far off. The preservation of the culture of hadith transmission does, in fact, seem to have been to a large degree dependent on the ijāza. Hadith trans-

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Ibid., 54. Ibn Khayr al-Ishbīlī, Fihrist, 16. Ibid., 16. Ibid. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 160. Al-Laknawī, Ẓafar al-amānī, 518.

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mission may have survived in some limited capacity based on purely oral/aural transmission, but the ijāza allowed it to continue to be a much more prominent feature of the culture than would have been possible based on oral/aural transmission alone.

7

Permission for the Unspecified

In order to better perform its function of preserving the chain of transmission scholars would push the ijāza in new and more liberal directions. One of the most significant of these directions was the development of the ijāza for nonspecified material (ijāza muṭlaqa). This was essentially a license to transmit everything that the recipient felt could be reliably attributed to the transmitter who issued it. Though it may have emerged as early as the late fourth/tenth century, al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī seems to be the first scholar to discuss the ijāza muṭlaqa. The majority of al-Khaṭīb’s immediate predecessors and contemporaries conceived of the ijāza as a means to transmit a specific text or texts, when time, space or other factors did not allow for its oral/aural transmission. In this way, the early ijāza was a close analog to oral/aural transmission wherein a single specific text was transmitted. The modality was different, but the early ijāza preserved the basic analogy of oral/aural transmission of a single text. The development of the ijāza muṭlaqa stretched this analogy of oral transmission to previously inconceivable limits and by doing so helped to rationalize the process of transmission. The expansion of the library of Islamic scholarship was the primary impetus for streamlining the process of transmission. By the fifth/eleventh century, the vastness of hadith and other literature meant that it was increasingly difficult for a scholar to obtain chains of transmission for all of the books he was expected to access or be able to cite. The culture of hadith scholarship, however, still expected that scholars would cite transmitted material through a personal chain of transmission. This was a serious problem that threatened to undermine the established norms and hierarchy of the culture. Al-Khaṭīb was also exploring other means to address this problem and facilitate the transmission of the massive amounts of material that were being compiled. In his discussion of the mode of transmission known as al-munāwala, in which a manuscript is physically passed to the student as he is given permission to transmit it, alKhaṭīb notes that it is also theoretically possible for a shaykh to transmit the entire contents of his library (khazānat kutubihi) that he had taken from his shaykhs. He theorizes that were a shaykh present his library to a student and then say to him, “these are the books that I heard from my shaykhs, trans-

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mit them from me (irwī jamīʿ hādhihi al-kutub ʿannī fa innahā samaʿātī min al-shuyūkh)” and provide him with the titles of the books and their respective chains of transmission, this would be a valid form of transmission.72 While this method may have been feasible in some cases, clearly this was not a widely applicable solution to the problem. This would only provide a solution to the problem associated with transmitting the now vast library, when material was physically present with both the authority and the disciple at the time of transmission. The ijāza was originally developed to facilitate the transmission of texts when constraints such as time and the vastness of the empire made oral/aural transmission impossible. It was now, however, the vastness of the literature as much as the vastness of the empire that posed the problem. The ijāza muṭlaqa provided scholars a vehicle to traverse this vastness. Through the ijāza muṭlaqa whole libraries of material could be transmitted across the empire by uttering or writing only a few words.73 In the following centuries, as will be explored in detail in Chapter Six, scholars composed catalogues of the works for which they had chains of transmission, and an ijāza could then be granted for this catalogue and all of its contents as a means of rationalizing the process of transmission. In the early to midfifth/eleventh century, however, the use of catalogs of transmission as a means to solve the problem of specification in the granting of ijāza was only beginning to be explored. Even after the sixth/twelfth century, when the catalog began to be used widely as a solution to the problem of specificity in the transmission

72 73

Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Kifāya, 366. It was, of course, possible for a transmitter to specify each title or text along with his individual chains of transmission in an ijāza. For scholars who had transmitted hundreds of works from as many authorities and composed dozens of works themselves, delineating all of these titles and chains of transmission would require a major investment of time and one that would have to be repeated for each ijāza issued. This difficulty of specifying all the texts that a shaykh had heard in his life along with their associated chains of transmission is well illustrated by al-Khaṭīb’s teacher who eventually granted him an ijāza muṭlaqa. AlBarqānī had traveled widely and transmitted countless collections and ajzāʾ of hadith from his numerous teachers. It is reported that during his sojourn in Isfarāyīn alone al-Barqānī copied and transmitted a juzʾ of Bishr b. Aḥmad’s hadith every day. Indeed, his student Aḥmad b. Ṣāliḥ narrated that he once helped al-Barqānī move his library and recalls that he had sixty-three baskets (safaṭ) and two trunks (ṣandūq) full of books. A large part of this library was, no doubt, the material he had transmitted throughout his life. To catalog all of this material in an ijāza and specify his chain of transmission for each title would be a massive undertaking. The use of the ijāza muṭlaqa offered a means to transmit this material without undergoing the tedious task of cataloging and specifying each work. AlDhahabī, Siyar, 17:466.

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of large numbers of texts, it was only a partial solution. Not every shaykh who had transmitted large numbers of texts, had elevated chains of transmission and was thus sought after by students and asked to issue ijāzas, possessed the time, organization and knowledge required to compose a catalogue of the works he had taken over the course of his life. The ijāza muṭlaqa, thus, provided an unrivaled means to facilitate the transmission of large bodies of texts. Its utility was not lost on the scholarly community and within a century it had been widely adopted. Al-Khaṭīb describes the process of requesting and issuing an ijāza muṭlaqa in the following manner: The student hands the transmitter a paper on which he has written, ‘If the shaykh sees fit to grant me an ijāza to transmit all the transmitted material that can be reliably attributed to him, then let him do so.’ The transmitter responds, either orally or by writing below the petition, ‘I permit you all that you have asked (ajaztu lak kulla mā saʾalta).’74 The ijāza muṭlaqa could, of course, also be issued through correspondence. According to al-Khaṭīb the ijāza muṭlaqa issued through correspondence differed from that issued in person only in that the recipient must verify that the ijāza he received was, in fact, sent by the issuer.75 Because it was so comprehensive the problem of verifying what material could be accurately attributed to the issuer was inherent to the ijāza muṭlaqa. As a result, al-Khaṭīb reasoned that in a hierarchy of ijāzas the ijāza muṭlaqa was a rank below the specific ijāza.76 Further he explained that the recipient of an ijāza muṭlaqa must carefully verify any attribution through consultation of reliable copies of the transmitter’s books and notes.77 Only when the recipient has verified that a text can be reliably attributed to the authority who issued the ijāza muṭlaqa, may he cite his chain of transmission and transmit those texts. To buttress his argument for the validity of the ijāza muṭlaqa, al-Khaṭīb suggests that the issuance of an ijāza muṭlaqa and the condition of verification is analogous to the concept of granting power of attorney (tawkīl al-tafwīḍ) in 74 75 76

77

Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Kifāya, 371. Ibid., 371. Ibid., 371. In the absence of the transmitter specifying what he has transmitted the only way for one to obtain certainty of an attribution to the transmitter ( yaqtaʿ ʿalā ṣiḥḥa) is through the existence of a mass transmission (tawātur) of a specific text from the transmitter. Although, al-Khaṭīb notes, the attribution being widely-known is equivalent to tawātur. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Kifāya, 371.

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Islamic law. He explains that one who has been given power of attorney must verify the ownership of any property by the party who has authorized him to act in his interest, and upon verification of ownership he may then manage or dispose of that property however he sees fit. This, he notes, is permitted by the jurists of Medina. By analogy the same ruling applied to the recipient of an ijāza muṭlaqa, and thus they may, upon verifying the attribution of a text, transmit the text and cite the granting transmitter’s chain of transmission.78 According to al-Khaṭīb it was primarily the problem of establishing what the ijāza muṭlaqa entitled its recipient to transmit that prevented many scholars from accepting it. In cases where this problem was resolved, however, even scholars who generally opposed the ijāza muṭlaqa would endorse it. To convince his readers of this point al-Khaṭīb cites a personal anecdote. He recounts that his teacher al-Barqānī was staunchly opposed to the ijāza muṭlaqa.79 Nevertheless, he relates that he gave al-Barqānī a written request to issue an ijāza to a group of people for a number of specific texts as well as an ijāza to transmit everything that he ever heard, compiled mentioned, commented on or authored and al-Barqānī granted this request and wrote on the opposite side of the paper:80 I have sought the guidance of God, may His name be glorified much, and have issued an ijāza to those named on the opposite side of this paper for all my hadith that they can reliably attribute to me ( jamīʿ mā saḥḥa ladayhim min ḥadīthī), including what they have mentioned and what they have not mentioned. They may transmit with this ijāza all of the hadith found in my books (uṣūlī) if they consider that they can be reliably attributed to me. Written by Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Ghālib alKhawārizmī in the month of Muḥarram in the year 419.81 Although the account of al-Barqānī’s conversion may have swayed some, alKhaṭīb does not explain, and it is not at all clear from the text, how the problem of attribution was actually resolved in this case. However al-Barqānī justified his change of opinion on the issue, it is clear that not all of Al-Khaṭīb’s contemporaries were so easily converted. A conservative minority continued to hold that although the ijāza muṭlaqa was clearly convenient, it was not an accurate mode of transmission; scholars must not allow its convenience to outweigh the 78 79 80 81

Ibid., 371. Ibid., 371. Ibid., 371. Ibid., 372.

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need for careful and meticulous transmission. Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr (d. 463/1070), one of the most prominent of al-Khaṭīb’s contemporaries was one of these conservative scholars. He argued that the ijāza muṭlaqa was the cause of misattribution and confusion in transmission and as such could not be permitted. For Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr an ijāza was only valid with the conditions that the material being transmitted was specified and well known. If these conditions are not met, he writes, it cannot be assured that the recipient of the ijāza will not mistakenly attribute hadith to the issuer of the ijāza.82 This was not a theoretical objection; he noted that he himself had observed people make these types of mistakes due to their use of the ijāza muṭlaqa.83 Further, he speculates that it was likely due to these problems that some scholars had in the past deemed the ijāza, even for specific material, to be an invalid mode of transmission.84 Although Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr was no doubt justified to consider the ijāza muṭlaqa highly problematic, the stability of the hadith corpus meant that mistakes in transmission had very few practical ramifications. This reality as well as the convenience the ijāza muṭlaqa offered meant that Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr’s objection to the ijāza muṭlaqa fell on largely deaf ears and the community increasingly adopted al-Khaṭīb’s position. Roughly a century later, al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ (d. 544/1149) would refer to Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr’s opinion and remark “there is in reality some scholarly difference of opinion about this type of ijāza, the correct opinion, however, is that it is permissible.”85 He elaborates, The recipient may transmit and use the hadith he receives through such an ijāza with two conditions. First, that the recipient verify what texts the ijāza allows the recipient to transmit and second that he rely on copies that correspond to those of the shaykh who issued the ijāza. This is the position of the majority, and that of scholars and imāms of the salaf.86 Within a century almost no opposition remained. In his treatment of the topic Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ writes, “The difference of opinion about this type of ijāza is stronger than that on the specific ijāza. However, the vast majority of scholars, 82

83 84 85 86

It may be that Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr made exceptions to this rule. Ibn Khayr al-Ishbīlī, for one, notes having received an ijāza muṭlaqa from Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr; Ibn Khayr al-Ishbīlī, Fihrist, 439. Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, Jāmiʿ bayān al-ʿilm wa faḍlihi, ed. Abū Ashbal al-Zuhayrī (Dammām: Dār Ibn al-Jawzī, 1414/1994), 1159. Ibid., 1159. Al-Qādī ʿIyāḍ, al-Ilmāʿ, 91–92. Ibid., 91–92.

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including the scholars of hadith, the jurists and others, accept it.”87 Later commentators, almost without exception, agreed with Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ. Significantly, while al-Khaṭīb felt the need to put forth a variety of arguments in favor of the ijāza muṭlaqa, later commentators would rarely bother explaining why the scholarly establishment had accepted the ijāza muṭlaqa; it was simply that way. It would seem that the fact that the practice of hadith transmission, which was so central to their scholarly culture, was dependent on the ijāza muṭlaqa; its necessity was so obvious to them that it defied comment. In the centuries after Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, there was only a handful of scholars that followed his prohibition of the ijāza muṭlaqa. In the seventh/thirteenth century, Muḥammad b. Saʿīd al-Dubaythī (d. 637/1239) is reported to have ruled that the ijāza muṭlaqa was invalid.88 His contemporary al-Ruʿaynī (d. 666/1267) reports having met a shaykh who considered the ijāza muṭlaqa invalid.89 AlWādī Āshī (d. 749/1348) also recalls having met a shaykh who considered the ijāza muṭlaqa to be invalid, yet after Wādi Āshī makes a compelling argument for its validity this shaykh contradicts his own position and grants him an ijāza muṭlaqa.90 In the twelfth/eighteenth century, al-Zabīdī (d. 1205/1790) notes a similar case with his shaykh Muḥammad b. Ḥasan al-Samnūdī (d. 1199/1784), who generally held extremely conservative views on the ijāza and considered the ijāza muṭlaqa to be invalid. Al-Zabīdī notes, however, that after asking him repeatedly al-Samnūdī made an exception to this and granted him an ijāza muṭlaqa.91 Apart from these isolated exceptions, however, the vast majority of scholars who commented on the issue in the centuries after Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr considered the ijāza muṭlaqa valid. From the perspective of practice, the ijāza muṭlaqa appears to have been in regular use by the end of the fifth/eleventh century. Ibn ʿAṭiyya (d. 541/1146) notes having received the ijāza muṭlaqa from a number of scholars who died in the last decade of the fifth/eleventh century.92 Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ also records having received the ijāza muṭlaqa from numerous scholars who lived around

87 88 89 90 91

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Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 154. Al-Fihrī, Istidʿaʾāt al-ijāza, 190. ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Ruʿaynī, Barnāmaj shuyūkh al-Ruʿaynī, ed. Ibrāhīm Shabbūḥ (Damascus: Wizārat al-Thaqāfa wa al-Irshād al-Qawmī, 1381/1962), 20. Aḥmad b. ʿAlī al-Wādī Āshī, Thabat al-Wādī Āshī, 45. Al-Zabīdī notes that this was an extremely rare position for a scholar to hold in later times. Murṭaḍā al-Zabīdī, al-Muʿjam al-Mukhtaṣṣ, ed. Muḥammad Yaʿqūbī and Muḥammad Nāṣir al-ʿAjmī (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya), 686–687. Muḥammad Abū al-Ajfān Ibn ʿAṭṭiya, Fihris Ibn ʿAṭiyya (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1402/1982), 54, 67.

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the turn of the century.93 Al-Maqqarī preserves two requests al-Silafī sent from Alexandria to the famous Central Asian scholar al-Zamakhshārī (d. 538/1144) to issue him an ijāza for “all of the texts he received through oral transmission, as well as the texts he received through ijāza or through other modes of transmission, as well as all of the prose, poetry and letters he wrote,” which alZamakhsharī obliged.94 Al-Samʿānī (d. 562/1166) likewise notes having received the ijāza muṭlaqa from numerous transmitters.95

8

Who Can Receive an Ijāza?

It has been shown that the anxieties over the ijāza were based in both epistemological and social concerns. One of the main questions these concerns produced was who could be issued an ijāza and what qualifications they should possess? This question was already being debated by the end of the fourth/ tenth century. Later sources cite the fourth/tenth-century Spanish scholar Abū ʿAbbās al-Ghamrī as having reported that Mālik held the opinion that the ijāza could only be issued by or to scholars: Mālik’s conditions for the ijāza are that the issuer of the ijāza has knowledge of the material he is transmitting, be reliable in his religion and transmission and be well known for his knowledge. The recipient must be known as one of the people of knowledge (min ahl al-ʿilm muttasiman bihi). This is so that knowledge is not deposited except with its people.96 Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, as we have seen above in the case of the ijāza muṭlaqa, was suspicious of and generally took a very conservative approach to the ijāza. In keeping with this approach he stipulated that the ijāza could only be issued to “an expert in the field of hadith, who understands well how it should be used.”97 As evidence for this position he too cites a report attributed to Mālik in which when he is asked about the ijāza and responds, “I don’t like it or consider it valid

93 94 95

96 97

Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Al-Ilmāʿ, 28, 48, 55, 61, 69. Shihāb al-Dīn b. Aḥmad al-Maqqarī, al-Azhār wa al-riyāḍ fī akhbār ʿIyāḍ, 3:282. ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Samʿānī, al-Muntakhab min muʿjam al-shuyūkh, ed. Muwaffaq b. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd al-Qādir, (Riyadh: Dār ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1417/1996), 1:146, 1:153, 1:259, 1:501, 1:516, 2:686, 2:804, 2:849, 2:972, 2:1018, 3:1385, 3:1402. Al-ʿIrāqī uses the phrase “ḥakā” to introduce this attribution to Mālik, which would seem to suggest that he doubted the attribution; Al-Ḥāfiẓ al-ʿIrāqī, Fatḥ al-Mughīth, 164. Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, Jāmʿi bayān al-ʿilm wa faḍlihi, 1159.

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because these people only want to carry away much after residing only a short time and this is not pleasing to me.”98 For Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, however, the primary reason for the condition of knowledge seems to have been to ensure accuracy. His discussion of the conditions for the granting of an ijāza is found in the section he dedicates to the ijāza muṭlaqa and his concern seems to have been that granting ijāzas to non-scholars, unfamiliar with the technical vocabulary of the discipline of hadith, would lead to confusion in the citation of chains of transmission.99 Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr was not alone in this position. Abū al-Walīd al-Bājī (d. 474/1081) is also reported to have stipulated that the ijāza only be issued to scholars.100 Al-Bājī seems to have held this position based on the understanding that the point of receiving an ijāza was to act according to the contents of the text being received and only a scholar could do this.101 The idea that knowledge was a condition for the recipient of an ijāza was short lived. After Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr and al-Bājī it is rare to find a scholar who considered knowledge a condition. Al-Khaṭīb is again a pivotal figure in this development, seemingly the first to have argued extensively that the recipient of an ijāza need not possess any qualifications. Indeed, al-Khaṭīb argues at length that not only could an adult without any qualifications receive an ijāza, but also that it was permissible to issue ijāzas to infants and young children. As evidence for this this position al-Khaṭīb cites the precedent of his teacher Abū al-Ṭayyib al-Ṭabarī (d. 450/1058). He reports that when asked he asked Abū al-Ṭayyib about the issuance of ijāzas to children and whether there was a minimum age, or other stipulations, as there was for oral transmission, he replied that age was not a factor in the issuance of ijāzas.102 Al-Khaṭīb responded that some of their contemporaries disagree and argue that unless a child was old enough to have a valid audition of hadith any ijāza issued to them was invalid.103 To this objection, Abū al-Ṭayyib poses the rhetorical question, “Is it not accepted that an ijāza may be issued to one who is in a distant land and for whom it is therefore impossible to have a valid audition of the hadith?”104 In other words, Abū alṬayyib argues that because the ijāza is a non-oral/aural mode of transmission any analogy to oral/aural transmission is false and whether the recipient is old enough to have a valid audition or not is irrelevant.

98 99 100 101 102 103 104

Ibid., 1159. Ibid., 1159. Al-Fihrī, Istidʿaʾāt, 188. Ibid., 188. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Kifāya, 362. Ibid., 362. Ibid., 362.

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Al-Khaṭīb explains that his own reasoning on this issue is in essence that when an authority issues an ijāza he is granting the recipient permission to transmit from him whatever he can reliably attribute to him. This granting of permission is not entirely the same as orally/aurally communicating information to the recipient (ikhbār), which requires that both parties have sound faculty of hearing and discerning minds; rather it is simply granting them permission (ibāḥa) to transmit the material should they choose to do so in the future.105 Thus, he argues, a transmitter may grant this permission to anyone whether they are capable of comprehending the information or not.106 According to al-Khaṭīb this was the position of all his masters, and they issued ijāzas to children without them being present and without asking their ages or the extent of their discernment (tamyīz).107 There would be some limited resistance to the idea that the ijāza could be issued without condition, but it would ultimately become the dominant position. Two centuries later, Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ would even characterizes as extreme Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr’s condition of scholarship for the recipient of an ijāza. He writes, “some of them have exaggerated this point and made scholarship a condition for the recipient of an ijāza.”108 Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ explains that his own opinion is that knowledge is not a condition, but rather that “it is preferable that ijāzas only be issued to scholars because the ijāza is a liberty and a dispensation (tawassuʿ wa tarkhīṣ).”109 A century later, al-Tabrīzī (d. 746/1345), in his commentary on this section of Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s Muqaddima, remarked, “this condition [that the recipient be a scholar] is a hardship that is contradictory to the aims of the expansion and preservation of the chain of transmission for which the ijāza was made permissible.”110 Al-Tabrīzī further argues that the condition of scholarship does not offer any additional guarantee of accuracy because, whether issued to a scholar or layman, it is already a condition of the ijāza that the recipient rely on verified copies of the texts being transmitted.111 The Egyptian hadith scholar Shihāb al-Dīn al-Qaṣṭallānī (d. 923/1517) reiterates this point writing, “conditions are in contradiction to the aim of hadith transmission, which is to preserve the chain of transmission.”112 Al-Tabrīzī and al-Qaṣṭallānī provide 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112

Ibid., 362. Ibid., 362. Ibid., 362. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 164. Ibid., 164. Al-Tabrīzī, Al-Kāfī, 513. Ibid., 513. ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī, al-Radʿ al-wajīz li man abā an yujīz, manuscript from the private collection of Ḥamza b. ʿAlī al-Kattānī, Rabat, 5b.

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perhaps the most direct articulations of why the majority of the scholarly community accepted the ijāza without any conditions. Simply put, conditions were irrelevant to the current function of hadith transmission and any restrictions were in contradiction to what scholars now considered to be the more fundamental aim of hadith transmission: preserving the chain of transmission as a trait of the Muslim community.113

9

The Ijāza and the Short Chain of Transmission

The aim of preserving the chain of transmission was not the only force driving the debate over conditions for the ijaza. The desire to create elevated chains of transmission was another, if not a more powerful, force in this debate. It is not a coincidence that al-Khaṭīb focused his treatment of the conditions for the ijāza on the question of children. The issuance of ijāzas to children was an important means of creating elevated chains of transmission. Theoretically the removal of conditions for recipients would also apply to adults. However, completely unqualified adults were rarely the recipients of ijāzas. It was primarily children who benefited from removing conditions for the recipients of ijāzas. In arguing for the issuance of ijāzas to children, as has been seen, al-Khaṭīb claims that the majority of his teachers issued ijāzas to children without asking their age or whether they had reached the age of discernment. The narrative sources substantiate this claim. We find, for example, that Abū Nuʿaym is reported to have received ijāzas from “the shuyūkh of the world” the year he was born.114 Al-Dhahabī reports that already in the early fifth/eleventh century, Abū Qāsim al-Burjī (d. 511/1117) received an ijāza when he was just two years old.115 For the conservative, however, this arrangement was in contradiction to the fundamental premise of hadith transmission. Al-Khaṭīb’s argument for the issuance of ijāzas to children was based on the idea that the ijāza was, unlike oral transmission, not a means of conveying information (ikhbār or iʿlām), but simply a permission to transmit the material (ibāḥat al-riwāya). Therefore, the 113

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Al-Fihrī, Istidʿaʾāt, 188. While al-Tabrīzī and al-Qasṭallānī attempted to explain their rejection of the condition of knowledge for the ijāza in terms of the rationale of hadith transmission, Ibn Sayyid al-Nās (d. 734/ 1334) simply explained the condition away. He argued that the condition of knowledge for the recipient of the ijāza simply meant that the recipient understands that the ijāza is a mode of transmission; no knowledge beyond this was required. Muḥammad al-Rāwandī, ed. Abū al-Fatḥ al-Yaʿmarī: Ḥayātuhu wa āthāruhu wa taḥqīq ajwibatihi (Rabat: Wazarat al-Awqāf, 1990/1410), 2:127. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 17:454. Ibid., 19:321.

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recipient of the ijāza need not have reached the age of discernment, which, as was discussed in Chapter Two, was generally considered to be five years of age. Not everyone found this logic compelling. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, for one, found this argument for the issuance of ijāzas to children unacceptable.116 For him the ijāza was precisely a mode of transmission. It was a means of conveying texts and information, and infants and unborn children were clearly not able to perform this. He was ready to accept the issuance of ijāzas to children over five, just as he was ready to accept the audition of children over five, but was not able to accept the issuance of ijāzas to children who had not yet reached the age of discernment. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ seems to have recognized, however, that it was not the persuasiveness of the argument, but the desire to provide their children with short chains of transmission that led the majority of scholars to accept al-Khāṭīb’s argument. The desire to create a short chain of transmission could not be overcome with reason. With a hint of defeat, he remarks on al-Khaṭīb’s claim that all of his teachers issued ijāzas to children without regard to their age or discernment: “it is as if they allowed children to receive this mode of transmitting hadith in order that they transmit with it after they become qualified. This is done in order to expand the means to preserve the chain of transmission and bring the child closer to the Prophet.”117 By bringing “the child closer to the Prophet,” Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ references the paradigm of history in which time is measured in successive acts of transmission. As has been discussed in Chapter One, in this paradigm each generation of transmitters represents a distinct unit of time and each generation of transmitters is a degree further from the sacred time of the Prophet and his generation, and thus of less merit. By issuing an ijāza to a child he or she could be brought a degree, or more, closer to the Prophet’s blessed generation. This paradigm of generations and their relative virtue had a powerful grip on the imaginations of hadith scholars and the ability the ijāza had to create elevated chains of transmission meant that, while few scholars would argue against Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s suggestion that it was preferable for the ijāza only to be issued to scholars, it was largely theoretical. The narrative sources establish that in practice this preference did not prevent scholars from requesting ijāzas for the infants and young children of their families and friends nor did it prevent them from taking from individuals who had received ijāzas as infants and children. In fact, Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s preference seems to have been almost universally

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Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 159. Ibid., 160.

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ignored. The practice of obtaining ijāzas for children was so common that it was not unheard of to estimate a person’s birthdate, in cases when it was unknown, based on the year in which they began to receive ijāzas.118 The issuance of ijāzas to children under the age of discernment regularly succeeded in creating chains of transmission shorter than would have been possible through other means. It gave the child the opportunity to transmit from authorities years earlier than they would have otherwise been able to. As has been shown in Chapter Two, young children could and regularly did attend hadith auditions and were recorded as attendees before the age of five. The reality was, however, that taking very small children, who were likely to cry and fuss, to audition sessions was difficult. The ijāza was a much more convenient means of providing infants with chains of transmission. Further, ijāzas were regularly sought for infant children through correspondence, thus providing them with chains of transmission from transmitters in distant locations.119 The head start that the ijāza conferred on children who received ijāzas as infants could and often did mean that these children were the last people alive who could transmit from a particular transmitter.120 The case of Abū Nuʿaym is an early example of this phenomenon. The year he was born Abū Nuʿaym’s father requested ijāzas for him from “the shuyūkh of the world.” One of the ijāzas he received the year of his birth was from the famous transmitter al-Aṣamm (d. 346/957). Al-Ṭirāzī (d. 422/1030) is known as the last living transmitter to have heard hadith from al-Aṣamm.121 Eight years after Al-Ṭirāzī’s death, however, Abū Nuʿaym (d. 430/1038) was still transmitting with his ijāza from al-Aṣamm and came to be recognized as the last living person who could transmit from him.122 Similar cases abound; indeed it is a standard feature of the biographical dictionary to distinguish between the last person to transmit through oral/oral transmission and the last to transmit by ijāza, the latter in almost all cases is considerably later.

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Al-Dhahabī, for example, estimates that al-Furāwī was born in the year 441 because alṢabūnī issued him an ijāza in that year. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 19:615. Ibn Ḥajar notes about one biographee, “His father requested ijāzas for him from the shaykhs of the East and the West.” Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-kāmina, 3:304. This phenomenon is well illustrated by the high percentage of ijāzas in a hadith known as the ḥadīth al-musalsal bi-l-ākhiriyya in which each transmitter in the chain of transmission is the last person alive who can transmit from the shaykh before him. ʿAbd Allāh b. Ḥijāzī al-Sharqāwī, al-Jāmiʿ al-Ḥāwī fī marwiyyāt al-Sharqāwī, ed. Muḥammad Yasīn alFādānī (Damascus: Dār al-Baṣāʾir, 1405/1985), 32. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 17:454. Ibid., 17:409.

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For families of religious scholars, in addition to the perceived spiritual benefit of acquiring ijāzas for small children and thereby ensuring that they were as close to the Prophet in terms of generations of transmitters as possible, it also gave them an opportunity to provide their children with social and religious capital that children who were not issued ijāzas would not have. A child who received ijāzas from elderly authorities as an infant would as an adult have isnāds a link or more, shorter than their cohorts who did not have such an early start. The case of al-Dhahabī and his older milk-brother (akhūh fī alriḍāʿ) demonstrates this point well. His milk-brother requested ijāzas for him the year he was born and because of this, as a mature scholar, al-Dhahabī possessed unusually short chains of transmission and “benefited greatly” from these ijāzas.123 It was shown in Chapter Two that there was a social expectation among scholarly and cultured families that they would take their young children to hear hadith, in the same way it was expected that they would request ijāzas for them. In his biography of the sixth/twelfth-century Andalusian scholar Ibn Bashkuwāl, al-Dhahabī demonstrates this expectation, bemoaning the fact that none of Ibn Bashkuwāl’s relatives bothered to request ijāzas for him. He laments “If, when he was a small child, they had only requested an ijāza for him from Baghdad, he would have transmitted from al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī al-Buṣrī, Abū Bakr Aḥmad b. ʿAlī al-Ṭuraythīthī and Jaʿfar b. Aḥmad al-Sarrāj, but alas transmission is a preordained provision (rizq maqsūm).”124

10

The Ijāza and the Unborn

If an ijāza could be issued to infant children, then why not unborn children? This is the question al-Khaṭīb raises, arguing that it logically followed that if an ijāza could be issued to an infant child who had not reached the age of discernment, then an ijāza could also be issued to children who had not yet been born. According to al-Khaṭīb, he was not the first to hold this opinion. His teacher al-Qāḍī Abū al-Ṭayyib, in fact, suggested that an ijāza could be issued to the unborn using the phraseology, “I give ijāza to you and to those who will be

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Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-kāmina, 3:6. The case of Ṣafiyya bt. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Asadiyya (d. 646/1248) is another example of this. Al-Dhahabī notes, “her father was lazy and didn’t take her to hear any hadith, but her uncle al-Ḥāfiẓ ʿUmar b. ʿAlī requested ijāzas for her. She lived to old age and used this ijāza and transmitted things.” Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 23:270. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 21:139–140.

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born to you (ajaztu lak wa li-man yūlad lak).”125 Still, when al-Khaṭīb first wrote al-Kifāya he remarked that although he believed that this was theoretically valid he had not heard of anyone actually issuing an ijāza to the unborn. Sometime later, however, after further research al-Khaṭīb reported that there was a precedent for issuing ijāzas to unborn children. In fact, he notes that none other than Abū Bakr al-Sijistānī (d. 325/936), the son of Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī, the author of the canonical hadith work, once wrote an ijāza that stated “I issue an ijāza to you, and to your children, including any who have not yet been born.”126 This issue was important enough to al-Khaṭīb that sometime after he wrote al-Kifāya he penned a short treatise on the topic.127 In this treatise al-Khaṭīb argues for the validity of issuing ijāzas to unborn children by invoking an analogy to the Islamic law of endowment (waqf ). To support this he writes that because according to some jurists it is permissible to establish an endowment for beneficiaries that have not yet been born, it follows that it is permissible to issue an ijāza to children that have not yet been born.128 He writes it may be objected, “How can one ‘say so-and-so issued me an ijāza’ when his birthdate is long after so-and-so’s death?” He responds, “he says this in the same way that one would say ‘so-and-so, who died long ago, made me a beneficiary of this endowment.’”129 In one of the more instructive sections of this treatise al-Khaṭīb asserts that with regard to the ijāza temporal distance is not unlike physical distance.130 He suggests that the distance separating individuals inhabiting two distant countries is not different than the distance separating individuals inhabiting two distant times.131 Just as an ijāza could be issued by an authority living in the East and sent to an individual living in the West, thus overcoming the obstacle of space, an ijāza could also be used to overcome the obstacle of time, and even birth and death. 125

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Al-Khaṭīb, Al-Kifāya, 362. In his work, Ijāzat al-maʿdūm, al-Khaṭīb notes that Abū Ṭayyib later retracted this opinion and ruled this type of ijāza to be invalid. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, “Ijāzat al-maʿdūm,” in Majmūʿ fīhi rasāʾil fī ʿulūm al-ḥadīth, ed. Ṣubḥī Badrī al-Sāmmarāʾī (Medina: al-Maktaba al-Salafiyya, 1389/1969), 80. Al-Khaṭīb, al-Kifāya, 362. This report seems to have been added after the rest of this section was completed. In the final report of this section, al-Khaṭīb notes that while it follows logically that it should be permissible to issue an ijāza to an unborn child, he is unaware of a precedent for it. It would seem this treatise enjoyed some popularity. Al-Silafī notes having read this treatise to shaykhs in both Baghdad and Cairo. Al-Silafī, al-Wajīz, 68. Al-Khaṭīb, Ijāzat al-maʿdūm, 80. Ibid., 81. Ibid., 81. Ibid., 81.

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The ability of this type of ijāza to stretch time and expand the possible length of a generation of transmitters was apparently not lost on al-Khaṭīb’s immediate successors. While al-Khaṭīb knew of only one case of an ijāza issued to an unborn child, according to al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ by the sixth/twelfth century, “the majority of the authorities of hadith in the East and the West” approved of this type of ijāza.132 Al-Khaṭīb’s arguments for the issuance of ijāzas to the unborn seem to have remained in wide circulation; a century later on the western edge of the empire, al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ noted both the argument based in the analogy to endowment law, as well as the argument that physical distance was not fundamentally different than temporal distance.133 Ultimately though the concept of issuing an ijāza to an unborn child pushed the community’s sensibilities too far. The scholarly consensus on this type of ijāza that al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ reports did not last. Roughly a century after al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ vehemently condemned this this type of ijāza. He argued that whether one understood the ijāza as a permission (ibāḥa) to transmit, as al-Khaṭīb argued, or as a mode of transmission (ikhbār) it was invalid because a person who does not yet exist is incapable of receiving either.134 The scholarly establishment after him, for the most part, would agree with Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s assessment. Still Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ did concede that if the unborn children are mentioned along with their living parent it is “closer to being permissible.”135 The commentators after Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ upheld this distinction, but nevertheless it remained uncommon in practice.136 In the end, it would seem that the issuing ijāzas to the unborn simply asked scholars to stretch their conceptions of transmission too far for it to gain acceptance.

11

Ijāzas for All: The Development and Function of the al-Ijāza al-ʿĀmma

The issuance of ijāzas to unborn children pushed the community’s sensibilities too far to gain widespread currency. There were, however, other creative attempts to make the ijāza more conducive to the aims of preserving the chain

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Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, al-Ilmāʿ, 104. Ibid., 105. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 159. Ibid., 158. Abū Saʿīd al-ʿAlāʾī is one scholar who is reported to have allowed the ijāza to be issued to an unborn fetus (ḥaml). Al-ʿIrāqī, Fatḥ al-Mughīth bi Sharḥ alfiyyat al-ḥadīth (Beirut: al-Makataba al-ʿAṣriyya, 1429/2008), 161.

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of transmission and bridging temporal space that were more successful. Issuing an ijāza to all alive at the time, or to all the inhabitants of a particular city, or to other broad categories was one innovation that gained considerable popularity. A variety of terms were applied to this global ijāza, most commonly the al-ijāza al-ʿāmma and ijāzat al-ʿumūm, but also ijāza li-ahl al-zamān. The sources identify Ibn Manda (d. 395/1004) as the earliest authority to have issued a global ijaza. In particular he is reported to have issued an ijāza to everyone alive who said “there is no god, but God.”137 By the sixth/twelfth century, alKhāzimī (d. 525/1131) would state that all of the masters of hadith that he ever met considered the global ijāza valid.138 Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ apparently even held that if the ijāza was limited in some way, such as to the inhabitants of a particular city, it was no different than granting an ijāza to any large but specified group and even goes so far as to claim that there was no difference of opinion about its permissibility.139 Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, as might be expected from him by this point, considered the global ijāza highly problematic. He explains the reasoning behind his position: “the ijāza in itself is a weak form of transmission, this weakness is increased by these types of liberties to a point that cannot be tolerated.”140 He did, however, concede that if the global ijāza was limited in some way, such as to the inhabitants of a specific city it was “closer to being permissible.”141 Yet, he notes that in general he disapproves of the global ijāza and states, “I have never seen or heard of anyone who is worthy of being followed using this type of ijāza. Even the later-day rabble (al-sharmadha al-mustaʾkhira) who consider it theoretically valid do not actually use it.”142 The scholarly establishment after Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ did not, however, follow his opinion on the global ijāza. In the commentary on his versification of Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s muqaddima, the influential Egyptian hadith master al-ʿIrāqī follows Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s condemnation of the global ijāza with a long list of scholars who opposed him and approved of it. He notes that al-Silafī, Ibn Khayrūn al-

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Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 155. Al-ʿIrāqī, Fatḥ al-Mughīth, 155. Ibid., 155. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 155. Ibid., 154. Ibn Ḥajar issued such an ijāza to the people of Zabīd during his visit to Yemen and this ijāza is preserved by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ahdal (d. 1250/1834) in his work al-Nafs alYamānī. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ahdal, al-Nafs al-Yamānī wa al-rūḥ al-rūḥānī fī ijāzat al-quḍāt banī al-Shawkānī, ed. ʿAbd Allāh al-Habashī (Riyadh: Dār al-Sumayʿī 1433/2012), 179–180. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 155. It is worth noting that Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s teacher al-Muʾayyad al-Ṭūsī seems to have approved of the global ijāza and is reported to have used it as well. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-kāmina, 2:417.

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Baghdādī, Ibn Rushd, Abū ʿAmr b. al-Ḥājib, among others, all considered the global ijāza to be valid.143 Indeed, al-ʿIraqī notes that Abū Jaʿfar b. Abī al-Badr al-Kātib composed a list of scholars who approved of the global ijāza so lengthy that it had to be organized alphabetically.144 He further points out that Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ was mistaken in his claim that none of his predecessors or contemporaries had ever transmitted based on a global ijāza. He notes that, in fact, Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s predecessor Ibn Khayr al-Ishbīlī transmitted using the global ijāza. He could have also noted that al-Nawāwī regularly issued ijāzas to all living Muslims to transmit his works, as is witnessed by numerous global ijāzas found on the colophons of his works.145 Numerous later authorities including al-Dimyāṭī (d. 705/1305), al-Mizzī, al-Dhahabī, al-Birzālī and others did as well.146 In a note written by al-ʿIrāqī on the margin of a manuscript copy of Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s Muqaddima, he wrote that the majority of later scholars in fact went against Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ on this issue.147 Al-ʿIrāqī’s observations on the scholarly opinions on the global ijāza remained valid after him. In fact, the majority of hadith scholars from al-Suyūṭī in the tenth/sixteenth to al-Luknāwī in the thirteenth/nineteenth continued to uphold the validity of the global ijāza.148 While the majority of scholars after Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ accepted the validity of the global ijāza, within the larger hierarchy of types of ijāzas, however, it was considered inferior to an ijāza issued to a specific individual. For this reason, a minority of scholars, although they could transmit based on global ijāzas, chose not to out of scrupulousness.149 Even those who found the global ijāza problematic, however, were sometimes tempted by its ability to furnish them with chains of transmission that would otherwise be impossible. Ibn Ḥajar notes, for example, that although he could transmit based on numerous global ijāzas, he chose to not transmit anything through them as he considered them problematic and instead only transmitted based on specific ijāzas and oral/aural transmission.150 The allure of the short chains of transmission that the global

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Al-ʿIrāqī, Fatḥ al-Mughīth 155. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 154. In his Kashf al-ẓunūn, Hājjī Khalīfa notes that Taqī al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Rāfiʿ (d. 672/1273) also composed a juzʾ in which he compiled the names of those who accepted the ijāzat al-ʿumūm. Ḥājjī Khalīfa, Kashf al-ẓunūn fī asmā al-funūn (Baghdad: Maktabat al-Muthannā, 1360/1941), 1:10. See for example, Garrett MSS 2255y, 1381y, 778h, 1372y, Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections. Al-ʿIrāqī, Fatḥ al-Mughīth, 155. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, note no. 3, 155. Al-Suyūṭī, Tadrīb al-rāwī, 2:54; Al-Luknāwī, Ẓafar al-Amānī, 514. Al-ʿIrāqī, Fatḥ al-Mugīth, 155. Ibn Ḥajar in his al-Muʿjam al-mufahras notes that although he was alive when Ibn Umayla

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ijāza could provide him, however, seems to have proved too tempting for Ibn Ḥajar to resist. In the massive catalog of the authorities from whom he had taken hadith, al-Majmaʿ al-muʾassis, following the section cataloging the first generation of his masters, in which he delineates his shortest chains of transmission, he attaches a list of a total of ninety-seven authorities from whom he could transmit through global ijāzas with some specification. He notes in the opening of this section apologetically that it is technically not part of the book, but is simply an addendum, as he stated in the introduction that he would not use the global ijāza. As might be expected, this section includes numerous very short chains of transmission including a global ijāza issued by the great Syrian scholar Ibn Kathīr who died in 774/1372, when Ibn Ḥajar would have been barely a year old.151 Like Ibn Ḥajar, for most scholars the global ijāza’s ability to create short chains of transmission proved more compelling than concerns about its inferiority as a mode of transmission. The global ijāza allowed individuals who did not have the benefit of receiving ijāzas as children to establish chains of transmission as short as those who were lucky enough to have relatives who obtained ijāzas for them while still infants. Even for those who had received some ijāzas as children, it allowed them to establish additional elevated chains of transmission. To make use of a global ijāza one could simply establish which scholars had issued global ijāzas in the early years of his life and through virtue of having been alive at that time transmit based upon these ijāzas. Sharaf alDīn al-Dimyāṭī who was born in 613/1216, for instance, transmitted based on the global ijāza that the prominent transmitter al-Muʾayyad al-Ṭūsī (d. 617/1220) issued when he was less than four years old, thus furnishing him with a chain of transmission links shorter than he would otherwise have had.152 One common way in which scholars used the global ijāza was to locate an elderly individual who, due to his or her old age, could be included in a global ijāza issued long ago, and then based on this have him or her issue them ijāzas

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and al-Ṣalāḥ Ibn Abī ʿAmr issued ijāzas to the people of Egypt, he does not transmit anything through these ijāzas as he prefers to avoid their weakness and transmits only on ijāzas in which he is specifically mentioned. He says he does this out of respect for Ibn al-Ṣalāh who considered the global ijāza weak. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Muʿjam al-mufahras bi-tajrīd asānid al-kutub al-mashhūra wa al-ajzāʾ al-manthūra, ed. Muḥammad Shakūr Maḥmūd (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1418/1998) 24. In his al-Majmʿa al-muʾassas, he makes a similar statement also noting that the experts among his shaykhs (mutqinī mashāyikhī) did not give any weight to the global ijāza. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Majmaʿ al-muʾassas li-l-muʿjam almufahras, ed. Yūsuf al-Marʿashlī (Beirut: Dār al-Maʿrifa, 1413/1992) 1:78, 2:589–2:658. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Majmaʿ al-muʾassas, 2:605. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-kāmina, 2:417.

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or take hadith from him or her in the oral/aural mode. Ibn Ḥajar notes a case, for example, in which some scholars of hadith discover a man named Yūnus b. Ḥamza (d. 718/1318) they believe to be extremely elderly. They attempt to find his name in audition notices, but are unsuccessful and decide to resort to transmitting from him based on global ijāzas. Unfortunately, the elderly man did not know the exact year in which he was born and so the scholars were forced to estimate his birth date in order to establish which global ijāzas he could use. Ibn Ḥajar notes, however, that out of caution they estimated his birthdate conservatively, but that he may have been older and thus capable of transmitting based on still older global ijāzas.153 The global ijāza was one of the most successful attempts to enhance the ijāza’s ability to stretch the chain of transmission and provide links to earlier generations of transmitters closer to the Prophet and the sacred era of the founding generation. It seems to have stretched the scholarly community’s imagination and tolerance for deviation from its ideals of oral transmission just close enough to the breaking point to gain popularity. There were other attempts to enhance the ijāza that were perhaps more creative and daring, but ultimately never gained wide acceptance. In the twelfth/eighteenth century, ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nāblusī (d. 1143/1733) wrote a treatise arguing that an ijāza could be granted in a dream by a long dead scholar, or even the Prophet himself.154 In this treatise, al-Nāblusī suggests that receiving an ijāza in a dream was not essentially different from receiving hadith through other non-oral/aural modes of transmission in which the recipient does not physically see the authority granting the ijāza, such as in the case of an ijāza through correspondence. He argues that just as the ijāza can be used to transmit hadith across geographical distance through correspondence and connect people separated by physical distance, so too can it be used to transmit material from the world of the unseen to this visible world. Al-Nāblusī cites a wide range of evidence to support this position. He cites, for example, the precedent of a number of scholars, such as Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 638/1240) and Muḥammad b. ʿIrāq (d. 933/1526), who transmitted hadith they received directly from the Prophet in dreams, arguing that it follows that if one can receive hadith in a dream, then one can also receive an ijāza.155 As further support for his position he draws analogy to a number of accepted modes of transmission. He suggests, for instance, that it is accepted by most scholars that if one finds a manuscript in the hand of 153 154 155

Ibid., 4:486. ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nāblusī, Rawḍ al-ānām fī bayān al-ijāza fī al-manām, Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections, Garrett no. 295Y. Ibid., f. 275b.

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a now deceased scholar, then he may cite that manuscript on his authority, if one is absolutely sure it is his hand. In such a case, however, one must cite the source in such a way that makes this defect in transmission clear, such as by saying, “I found this written in the hand of so and so.”156 In the same way, if one is absolutely sure that he has seen a scholar or even the Prophet in a dream and he issued him an ijāza, then one may transmit and cite hadith based on this ijāza, so long as he makes it known that the transmission occurred in a dream.157 He recognizes that there is, of course, an inherent weakness in any hadith received while dreaming and for this reason, it is not permissible to use any hadith received in a dream for legal purposes.158 A hadith received in a dream can, however be used for other purposes. Similar to the argument scholars made in the defense of weak musalsal hadith described in Chapter Two, al-Nāblusī invokes the concept of faḍāʾil al-ʿamāl, that is the principle that it is acceptable to transmit and use weak hadith for the purposes of virtuous deeds. The virtue in this case, according to him, “is purely the blessings (baraka) provision and success (imdād wa tawfīq) from God Most High. In this regard, it is no different whether one sees the Prophet or one of the scholars and hadith specialists.”159 What al-Nāblusī seems to mean here is that the virtue of such a direct connection to the Prophet or later scholars, which would not be possible through conventional means of transmission, justified accepting dream ijāzas, even if such a connection was inherently weak. While it never became very common, some scholars would occasionally claim to have received ijāzas from long-dead transmitters in dreams. Al-Zabīdī, for instance, reports that ʿAlī b. Aḥmad al-Ṣaʿīdī al-ʿAdawī (d. 1189/1775), who was a leading Mālikī jurist at al-Azhar, claimed to have received an ijāza from the Prophet himself in a dream.160 Significantly, al-Zabīdī gives no indication that he was at all skeptical of this claim or found it dubious. On the contrary, his biography of al-ʿAdawī is decidedly reverent. Other scholars would theorize that it was possible to issue an ijāza to anyone, no matter how far in the future, by issuing an ijāza to whoever read their handwriting, seemingly stretching the ijāza almost indefinitely. While this never became common it is not entirely unheard of. Ibn Ḥajar notes seeing such an ijāza written in the hand of Ibn Kathīr at the end of a manuscript.161 I have also seen such an ijāza composed

156 157 158 159 160 161

Ibid., 274a. Ibid., 274b. Ibid., 276a. Ibid., 276a. Al-Zabīdī, Al-Muʿjam al-mukhtaṣṣ, 488. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Majmaʿ al-muʾassas, 607.

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by Ibn Qāḍī al-Salt (d. 1040/1630) in a manuscript of al-Zarkashī’s al-Tanqīḥ lialfāẓ al-Jamiʿ al-Ṣaḥīḥ held at Princeton.162 Ultimately, the global ijāza gained wide acceptance, unlike the ijāzat al-maʿdūm, dream ijāza and other attempts to modify the ijāza to cultivate elevation, because it combined the ability to stretch chains of transmission with just enough semblance of ‘normal’ transmission to be considered valid, if not fully embraced by all. For this reason, it retained its popularity throughout the late medieval and early modern periods, and was still in use in the twentieth century.163

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This chapter has endeavored to trace the evolution of the ijāza over the longue durée. It demonstrates that scholars developed the ijāza as a means of preserving the idiom of oral/aural transmission, when the canonization of hadith and the proliferation of hadith texts meant that the ideal of oral/aural transmission was no longer feasible or necessary for them to maintain. The ijāza provided scholars with a means of preserving the chain of transmission, and they conceived of this as an act of worship and devotion in itself. It gave scholars a tool to create vast networks of transmission connecting them to essentially the entirety of Islamic intellectual output and its authors. From another perspective, the ijāza allowed these scholars to create and transmit social and religious capital and maintain the social hierarchy inherent in the chain of transmission. Because of the significant spiritual and social functions the ijāza performed, by the sixth/twelfth century, it had become a core element of scholarly culture and members of the scholarly community invested significant amounts of time requesting and collecting ijāzas. They acquired these ijāzas in a variety of ways. Correspondence was one common mode of obtaining ijāzas. Indeed, al-Silafī received so many ijāzas through correspondence that he composed a separate catalog of all the scholars from whom he had received ijāzas but had never met.164 When a scholar or student set out on a journey to pursue his studies, collect hadith, or perform pilgrimage, his friends and colleagues in his hometown

162 163 164

Al-Zarkashī, al-Tanqīḥ li-alfāẓ al-Jamiʿ al-Ṣaḥīḥ, Garrett MS 417y, Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections. Yūsuf al-Nabahānī, Hādī al-murīd ilā ṭuruq al-asānid, 63–63. Al-Silafī, al-Wajīz fī dhikr al-majāz wa al-mujīz. Alī b. Manṣūr Al-Iskandarānī’s Tuḥfat ahl al-ḥadīth fī īṣāl ijāzāt al-qadīm bi-l-ḥadīth is another example of a work composed entirely based on transmission through ijāza. Al-Iskandarānī, Tuḥfat ahl al-ḥadīth fī īṣāl ijāzāt alqadīm bi-l-ḥadīth, ed. ʿĀmr Ḥasan Ṣabrī (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 1425/2004).

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would often send with him an ijāza request for themselves and their families to circulate among the scholars they met in their travels.165 Students could, of course, also request and receive ijāzas through face-to-face encounters with the scholars they met throughout their careers. Some scholars might also seek ijāzas from the same authority on more than one occasion, in order to “renew” their connection.166 Composing an ijāza, of course, took time and scholars were not always willing to spend the time it took to compose a written ijāza for a student. Indeed, frustrated with the amount of time he was spending writing ijāzas, the sixth/twelfth-century scholar Abū al-Najm al-Armanī (d. 532/1137) is reported to have complained, “Everyone wants an ijāza—I don’t have any ijāzas left to give.”167 In some cases a scholar unwilling to spend the time to it would take to compose a written ijāza would simply grant a petitioner an ijāza verbally. Such a verbal ijāza, of course, depended on the recipients’ word and was of a lesser value than a written one. Depending on how generous one was with his time, and the status of the person requesting the ijāza, a scholar might invest significant amounts of time composing quite long and often flowery ijāzas.168 Scholars might also exchange ijāzas with other senior scholars and it was not uncommon in such cases for them to spend the time to compose long, often elaborate ijāzas sometimes even in verse. Not every ijāza was long or eloquent though. Most ijāzas were quite brief consisting of only the most minimal and essential information. In some cases, scholars would compile and present the various ijāzas they had received over their career in albums.169 Whatever their form, as documents of the history of hadith transmission and community of transmitters ijāzas were highly valued and were often carefully preserved as well as sought out and referenced by later generations of scholars. The Egyptian historian al-Sakhāwī, for example, notes that ijāza documents were an important source for his biographical dictionary of the men and women of the ninth/fifteenth century.170 Indeed, of a survey of a total of 500 biographical

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166 167 168 169 170

Such a document was referred to as an istidʿāʾ. It consisted of a request to issue ijāza to all those listed therein, and could sometimes include as many as a hundred individuals. The transmitters, would then compose a statement of ijāza below this request, or in the pages following it, to all individuals named above. Such an istidʿāʾ, might consist of tens of ijāzas for the individuals named in it. Al-Zabīdī, al-Muʿjam al-mukhtaṣṣ, 250. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 20:48. Al-Sakhāwī, Al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmīʿ fī ahl al-qarn al-tāsʿi, ed. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf Ḥasan ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1423/2003) 1:226. Collection of ijāzāt and other Arabic Texts, Garrett 651y, Princeton University Library. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 1:6.

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entries contained in this work, one or more ijāzas is mentioned or discussed in 96, nearly a fifth of all entries. This includes a number of entries of nonscholarly elites, which would mean that the rate of occurrence in the entries of scholars would be somewhat higher.171 Al-Sakhāwī was not alone in this regard. In his Siyar al-Dhahabī mentions or discusses the ijāza even more frequently, occurring in 145 out of 500 randomly selected entries.172 The ijāza played a central role in the preservation of the model of the oral chain of transmission after the ideal of actual oral/aural transmission became untenable. Towards this end it served both spiritual and social functions. It served as a conduit for the transmission of the spiritual blessings connections to the Prophet and his heirs was believed to bestow. It also allowed scholars to maintain the hierarchy of oral/aural transmission and the established conventions of constructing authority associated with it, without investing the time that oral transmission required. The collection of ijāzas was an important means through which competitors in the field of scholarship amassed social and religious capital and distinguished themselves from their peers. In the words of one scholar an ijāza was “a large piece of capital (raʾs māl kabīr).”173 The sources do indeed preserve cases of individuals who were willing to pay exorbitant sums to acquire ijāzas.174 In addition to being valued as a means of conveying baraka and preserving the social hierarchy associated with hadith collection and transmission, the ijāza was a means of facilitating the cultivation of elevation, which as was discussed in Chapter One, was believed to be a means of drawing closer to the blessed era of the Prophet and founding generations. The ijāza would continue to function in these ways into the twentieth century when, as will be detailed in Chapter Six, radical shifts in the larger culture and its institutions and the emergence of new types of social capital caused its popularity to recede. 171 172 173 174

Al-Sākhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, volume one entries 1–500. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 21:5–22:369. Ibn Khayr al-Ishbīlī, Fihrist, 16. Al-Bayhaqī’s grandson (d. 523/1128) is reported to have only issued an ijāza in exchange for a ṭassūj worth of gold (equivalent to roughly two grains of wheat or a quarter dāniq), which Ibn ʿAsākir noted was an exorbitant sum. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 19:503. Another authority is reported to have charged twenty dinars for an ijāza of the Musnad of Aḥmad for which he had an unusually short chain of transmission. Ibid., 17:599.

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The High and the Low: Men, Women and the Social Aspect of Elevation The impact of the evolution of the elevated chain of transmission was not limited to the realms of thought and spirituality that were discussed in the previous chapter, but also had significant social ramifications. In addition to the intellectual justifications scholars put forward to justify and explain the continued cultivation of short chains of transmission there was an underlying social logic that propelled its continuation. The status bestowed on those who were fortunate to survive long enough to attain short chains of transmission, meant that hadith collectors vied with each other to collect and present the shortest chains of transmission and senior transmitters who possessed the most elevated chains of transmission were highly sought after. In addition to bestowing spiritual cachet on those who possessed it, in the terms of Bourdieu, the short chain of transmission functioned as a form of social capital. It was a means by which hadith scholars and collectors competed with the other agents in their field. As one medieval hadith scholar put it, the short chain of transmission was “one of the things that distinguish a hadith scholar from his peers.”1 The possession of elevation was described as “an indication of a scholar’s high aspirations, nobility and good opinion.”2 Possession of a short chain of transmission was one of the elements that could build a hadith scholar’s reputation. It is not a surprise then that the possession of short chains of transmission regularly features among scholars’ virtues in biographical dictionary entries. Hadith scholars are described, for example, as “expert, accurate, uninterested in the world, elevated in chain of transmission and pious.”3 Or similarly, “he was sought out from far away for what he combined in terms of short chain of transmission, vast knowledge, proper creed, good nature and total dedication to the seeking of knowledge.”4

1 Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-ʿAlāʾī, Bughyat al-multamis fī subāʿiyyāt ḥadīth al-imām Mālik b. Anas, ed. Ḥamdī ʿAbd al-Majīd al-Salafī (Beirut: ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1985/1405), 38. 2 Al-Sakhāwī, Fatḥ al-Mughīth bi-sharḥ alfiyyat al-ḥadīth, ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Khuḍayr, Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh Āl Fuhayd (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Minhāj, 1426/2005), 3:352. 3 Al-Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ, ed. Shuʿayb al-Arnāʿūṭ, et al. (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1412–1419/1992–1998), 22:45. 4 Ibid., 14:418.

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Conversely, possessing low chains of transmission was considered a flaw. The early authority Yaḥyā b. Maʿīn (d. 233/847) is reported to have likened one who possessed low chains of transmission to having “boils on the face.”5 In the same vein, Ibn Abī Ḥātim (d. 327/937) is cited as having categorized the scholar who did not seek out short chains of transmission among one of the four types of people “from whom one should not expect any good.”6 Indeed, when assessing a scholar, his failure to obtain a short chain of transmission could be counted among his flaws. Abū Ṭāhir al-Silafī, for example, wrote about a contemporary, “He was an erudite shaykh, but his chain of transmission was low.”7 As late as the nineteenth century, the renowned Iraqi scholar Abū Thanāʾ al-Alūsī would criticize some of his contemporaries for failing to acquire quality chains of transmission.8 All other things being equal, a scholar with a short chain of transmission would have some level of advantage over those who did not. A hadith scholar who was fortunate enough to have elevated chains of transmission would be preferred and sought out by students over similarly qualified scholars whose chains of transmission were not elevated. In fact, guidebooks for students of hadith explain to the beginning student that they should start by hearing hadith from those who possessed the shortest, most elevated chains of transmission in their locality.9 The creation of a short chain of transmission, of course, largely depended on fortune. It was dependent on a person taking hadith from a transmitter with an elevated chain of transmission while still young and then surviving to old age. As the years passed, naturally, fewer and fewer members of a generation of transmitters remained and the more elevated, rare and desirable the chains of transmission of those who did survive became. Eventually, only a handful of transmitters of a given generation, for example those could claim to have only six links between themselves and the Prophet, would remain. Then eventually it might happen that only one person was known to remain from an entire generation of transmitters. The sources describe such a person as having “become the terminus of elevation (intahā ilayhi ʿulūww al-isnād).”10 More commonly, 5 6 7 8 9 10

Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Jāmiʿ li-akhlāq al-rāwī wa ādāb al-sāmiʿ, ed. Maḥmūd al-Ṭaḥḥān (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Maʿārif, 1403/1989), 1:123. Ibid, 1:123. Abū Ṭāhir al-Silafī, al-Wajīz fī dhikr al-majāz wa al-mujīz, ed. Muḥammad Khayr al-Dīn alBiqāʿī (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1412/1991), 142. Bashir Nafi, “Abu Thanaʾ al-Alusi: An Alim, Ottoman Mufti, and Exegete of the Qurʾan,” IJMES, 34.3 (2002), 482. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Jāmiʿ li-akhlāq al-rāwī, 1:126. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī bi-l-wafāyāt ed. Aḥmad al-Arnaʾūṭ and Turkī Muṣṭafā (Bei-

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only one transmitter from a generation was known to remain in a region or a city. We find it said about transmitters, for example, that “he became the terminus of elevation in Spain.”11 The sources preserve numerous transmitters who were recognized as the last living persons to transmit with elevation from a famous authority or to transmit a particular collection of hadith with an elevated chain of transmission. This distinction was referred to as tafarrud. The sources preserve references to numerous transmitters who were recognized as the last living fount of elevation from a particular generation or transmitters (tafarrada bi-ʿulūw).12 Or alternately as “the last person in the world [to transmit with elevation] (tafarrada fī al-dunyā).”13 For younger generations of scholars and hadith collectors those elderly transmitters fortunate enough to have outlived almost all of their peers in their region, city, or even the world, provided the opportunity to establish an unrivaled degree of proximity to the Prophet and the luminaries of the sacred past. These aged transmitters were described as “bridging the gap between grandparents and grandchildren (alḥaqa al-aḥfād bi-l-ajdād).”14 When such a rare transmitter died, the “door of elevation was closed.”15 Never again could such a level of elevation and proximity to the Prophet be achieved. Upon such a loss, the people of the world or region or city were said to “descend by a degree.”16

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13 14

15 16

rut: Dār Iḥyā al-Turāth, 1420/2000), 7:230, 18.95; al-Maqrīzī, al-Sulūk li-maʿrifat duwal alMulūk, ed. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1418/1997), 1:481, 2:67; al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 12:142, 13:524, 15:423, 15:441, 18:345, 20:119, 20:290, 21:117, 22:34; ʿAbd al-Ḥayy b. Aḥmad al-ʿAkarī Ibn ʿImād, Shadharāt al-dhahab fī akhbār man dhahab, ed. Maḥmūd Ārnāʿūṭ (Damascus: Dār Ibn Kathīr, 1986/1406), 4:83, 5:103, 5:228, 5:360. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 15:473. Al-Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī, 3:183, al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 14:134, 15:443, 16:395, 17:61, 17:151, 17:403, 17:458, 17:598, 19:539, 20:266, 20:332, 21:133, 21:180, 22:105, 22; 115, 23:330, 23:234, 23:299; Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Fāsī, Dhayl al-taqyīd fī ruwāt al-sunan wa al-asānīd, ed. Kamāl Yusūf al-Ḥūt (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1410/1990), 1:142, 1:206, 1:425, 1:285, 1:318; Ibn Ḥajar, alDurar al-kāmina fī aʿyān al-miʾa al-thāmina (Hyderabad: Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif al-ʿUthmāniyya, 1348–1350/1929–1931), 1:426, 2:122, 4:188, 5:125, 5:142, 5:258, 5:518, 6:196, 6:200; al-Sakhāwī, alḌawʾ al-lāmiʿ li-ahl al-qarn al-tāsiʿ (Beirut: Maktabat Dār al-Ḥayat, 1385/1966), 1:147, 2:184, 6:27, 7:46, 7:81, 7;142, 9:111, 9:258, 9:263, 10:53. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 15:443, 17:498, 17:458, 17:598, 17:668, 20:211; al-ʿAkarī, Shadharat al-dhahab, 1:36, 5:154, 7:723. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib al-āthār fī al-tarājim wa al-akhbār (Beirut: Dār al-Jīl, 1398/1978), 1:298, 1:596; Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-kāmina, 1:165, 4:124; al-Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī, 7:53, 19:15; ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī, Fahras al-fahāris, 1:405, 2:554. 2:853; al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh alIslām, 30:181, 35:286, 43:307. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 21:492. Al-Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī, 8:142, 18:103, 22:122; al-Fāsī, Dhayl al-Taqyīd, 1:36, 1:317, 1:416; Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-kāmina, 1:166, 5:31; al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 4:114, 9:112, 10:53; al-ʿAkarī,

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The cachet and appeal of proximity to the Prophet bestowed on those transmitters who possessed it a kind of celebrity among scholars and collectors of hadith. The more elevated the chain of transmission they possessed the more alluring and sought after they became. Such a transmitter became a destination in themselves and would be described as, “the destination of the journey in his time.”17 Having journeyed to hear hadith from such celebrity transmitters became a badge of honor in the society of scholars. Younger generations of hadith collectors undertook journeys, in many cases covering vast distances, to meet and hear hadith from these men and women, thereby earning themselves the right to transmit through one of the shortest chains of transmission in the world. They also earned the cachet and bragging rights of having undergone the risks and hardships of medieval travel in the name of hadith and elevation. One such fifth/eleventh-century journeying hadith collector proudly recounted, “I urinated blood twice while traveling to collect hadith.”18 Traveling for weeks or even months to hear from an aged hadith transmitter posed its own risks and in a surprising number of cases unfortunate travelers arrived at their destinations only to find that the elderly transmitter to whom they had journeyed had just died. In fact, this seems to have become something of a literary topos, and the sources preserve so many cases of this type that one scholar even compiled a collection of such accounts under the title, “Sorrows for those who journeyed to a hadith transmitter only to find him dead (al-Ḥasarāt fī man raḥala ilā muḥaddithin fa-wajadahu qad māt).”19 Like celebrities in other contexts, the sources describe these stars of hadith transmission as having handled their fame with varying degrees of grace. Some are described as having been patient and generous with the mobs of hadith collectors that petitioned them for an audition. These transmitters are reported to have graciously sat and entertained local and traveling students as they read hadith to them. Others are described as having grown weary of the unceasing requests for auditions. In order to avoid his many petitioners one elderly eighth/fourteenth-century transmitter is reported to have become a recluse and bricked up his front door, arranging for a neighbor to lower his necessi-

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18 19

Shadharāt al-dhahab, 7:101, 8:62, 8:462; ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī, Fahras al-fahāris, 1:405, 2:715. Al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām, 32:269, 34:268, 43:322, 44:409; Al-Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī, 2:61, 7:210, 20:104, 27:188, 29:90; Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-kāmina, 1:244, 1:97; Muḥammad Amīn b. Faḍl Allāh al-Muḥibbī, Khulāṣat al-athar fī aʿyān al-qarn al-ḥādī ʿashar (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, n.d.), 1:95. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 19:363. Muḥammad b. ʿAzzūz, al-Ḥasarāt fī man raḥala ilā muḥaddithin fa-wajadahu qad māt (Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 1426/2005).

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ties in a basket from her window that overlooked his courtyard. Some eager young collectors, however, convinced the neighbor to give them access to her window so they could read hadith out of it to the shaykh below.20 Another seventh/thirteenth-century transmitter, thought to be the last transmitter in the world with a five-link chain of transmission, was constantly besieged by hadith collectors and on one occasion became so frustrated with a student who had followed him on his way home walking alongside him without his permission reading from a collection of his hadith, that he lost his patience and beat him with his cane.21 Another sixth/twelfth-century transmitter is said to have become so annoyed with his constant petitioners that he used to curse his own father for having taken him to hear hadith as a child.22 The allure and cachet the possession of short chains of transmission bestowed on one could lead to not only fame, but also fortune, leading some ascetics, referencing language found in the Quran, to describe the short chain as one of the “adornments of the life of this world” that should be avoided.23 To be sure, for many transmitters the fame and social capital that their short chains of transmission gave them were a means to capital of a more tangible variety. In theory, most hadith scholars strictly forbade the taking of payment in return for hadith transmission.24 The idea behind this prohibition was that a transmitter accepting payment might fabricate hadith to please his customers. With the stabilization of the hadith canon, however, the anxiety over hadith fabrication diminished. Most scholars, in theory, remained wary of accepting payment for the transmission of hadith.25 In practice, however, the sources paint a vivid picture of a trade in elevated chains of transmission that flourished from the fifth/eleventh century to the tenth/sixteenth century. Some transmitters are reported to have accepted payment in exchange for granting an audition only out of necessity. ʿAbd al-Munʿim b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 596/1199), for example, was once a wealthy man, having owned one hundred and eighty slave girls and did not accept anything in exchange for transmission. Later in his life, however, he lost his fortune, became destitute and was forced to demand a dinār in exchange for auditions of the juzʾ of Ibn ʿArafa.26 Another impoverished eighth/fourteenth-century shaykh is reported to have not wanted to 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-kāmina, 3:90. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 23:150. Ibid., 21:352–353. Al-Sakhāwī, Fatḥ al-Mughīth, 3:350. Ibid., 2:25–256. ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Laknawī, Ẓafar al-amānī, ed. ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Abū Ghudda (Aleppo: Maktab al-Maṭbūʿāt al-Islāmiyya, 1416/1995), 107–108. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 21:260.

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charge for auditions, but been forced to do so by his wife.27 Others are reported to not have charged for auditions of hadith, but demanded payment for the transmission of other texts.28 Some transmitters, however, willingly used their elevated chains of transmission to their financial advantage. Payment for transmission could be quite substantial; some transmitters are reported to have charged one hundred or even two hundred dinars for an audition.29 With an average Mamlūk gold dinar weighing 3.33 grams, this was a considerable sum, and some transmitters are reported to have become wealthy through their trade in chains of transmission.30 The famous transmitter Ibn Ṭabarzad (d. 607/1210), for example, is said to have amassed a considerable fortune through hadith transmission and then used this as capital to establish a business.31 The payment demanded by these transmitters was beyond some collectors’ means and the sources preserve anecdotes of young collectors’ attempts to avoid payment. Al-Dhahabī informs us of a group of young fourth/tenthcentury hadith collectors who pay a transmitter for a specific number of students to have an audition, but conspire for a colleague who could not afford to pay admission to sit in the vestibule of the house while they raise their voices while reading so he could hear the session from outside. The shaykh discovered their subterfuge, however, and ordered his slave girl to take a large mortar and pestle to the door and crush herbs to drown out their voices so the eavesdropper could not hear the remainder of the audition.32 In another case, a group of seventh/thirteenth-century students agree to pay a transmitter upon completion of a text. When the audition of the text was complete, however, they

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Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-kāmina, 4:467. Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, Ṭabaqāt ʿulamāʾ al-ḥadīth, 4:65. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 17:599, 16:403. To illustrate, the sixth/twelfth century Spanish hadith scholar Saʿd al-Khayr (d. 541/1146) is reported to have given the Qāḍī al-Māristān a small amount of the luxury incense aloeswood (ʿūd), with the hope that in exchange he would give his small son a hadith audition. Due to the small amount of the aloeswood, the slave girl who received the gift for the Qāḍī forgot to tell him about the gift. Later when Saʿd alKhayr asks qāḍī al-Māristān if he received the gift, he says he did not. Saʿd al-Khayr tells him he left it with his slave girl. When Qāḍī al-Māristān asks her about it she says she forgot due to the insignificance of its quantity. The Qāḍī was insulted by the miniscule amount of the aloeswood and throws it, swearing he will only give the young boy an audition in exchange for an outrageous five amnāʾ (roughly sixty pounds) of aloeswood. He repeatedly attempts to get the Qāḍī to break his oath and expiate. Saʿd al-Khayr, however, refuses though and the boy never hears hadith from him. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 20:159–160. Jere Bacharach, “Note on a late hoard of Mamluk Dinars,” ‘Atiqot, 14 (1980), 116. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 21:510. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 16:328.

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deceived the transmitter, telling him that there was another folio and they will return the following day to finish the audition and pay him, but then never return to pay for the audition.33 Other collectors, upset with the demands of transmitters for payment, would attempt to shame transmitters by mentioning the prohibition of withholding knowledge from those who seek it. Some transmitters, however, recognized that it was not, in fact, knowledge that was sought. When blamed for demanding payment in exchange for granting an audition the sixth/twelfth-century transmitter Ibn Bayān (d. 510/117) retorted, “you haven’t come here for knowledge or hadith, if that were the case, then there are many in this neighborhood who have heard hadith from me, so go hear it from one of them. No, you have come for my short chain of transmission and whoever wants that must put a gold dinar in my scale pan.”34 In addition to charging for private audition sessions, transmitters with elevated chains of transmission in some contexts had employment opportunities at endowed educational institutions. The foundation deed (waqfiyya) of the Dār al-ḥadīth al-Ashrafiyya, founded in Damascus in the year 632/1235, for example, stipulates that: When a transmitter possessing elevation of audition (shaykh lahu ʿulūw samāʿ) of the kind that one travels for comes—and he may stay at the Dār al-Ḥadīth—he will be given two dirhams every day. When finished, he will be given thirty dinars each worth seven dirhams.35 A salary of sixty dirhams a month plus a thirty dinār, or two hundred and ten dirham, bonus was substantial. To put this in perspective, the highest paid employee of the institution received a salary of ninety dirhams a month.36 The same foundation document gives preference to potential employees with elevated chains of transmission stipulating that if there are two candidates for a paid position, one more knowledgeable and one with preferable chains of transmission, the latter should be given the position.37 As with other types of capital, the social and religious capital and resultant opportunity that elevation bestowed on one, motivated some, who did not possess elevation, to engage in various deceptions in order to enjoy its benefits. From the fourth/tenth to the tenth/sixteenth centuries, the sources provide 33 34 35 36 37

Ibid., 22:360. Ibid., 19:258. Eerik Dickinson, “Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ al-Shahrazūrī and the Isnād,” 490. Ibid., 490. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-kāmina, 4:458.

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us with numerous cases of individuals who were caught forging documents testifying to supposed short chains of transmission. Audition notices (samāʿāt or ṭibāq) were the most common target for forgery of this type. An audition notice, as was discussed in detail in Chapter Two, is essentially an attendance register documenting the names of the transmitting authority, the auditors in attendance, and often the date and place. These notices were used as proof to establish who had, in fact, attended an audition session. These notices were generally composed on blank folios or margins of the manuscript upon completion of the audition session. The sources document numerous reports of many individuals who obtained audition notices for sessions with long-dead transmitters and then falsified them, making it appear that they had attended a session that would give them a desirable chain of transmission. In his letter of advice to Muḥammad b. Rāfiʿ al-Sallāmī (d. 774/1372), al-Dhahabī even lists the forging of audition notices as one of the flaws that were common in his day among unscrupulous hadith collectors.38 In some cases the forgery consisted of the culprit scratching out a name in the notice and then writing his own name in the blank created.39 One of source describes how forgers treated such falsified documents with oil in order to conceal the freshness of the ink.40 In the sixth/twelfth century, Baqāʾ b. Shākir (d. 601/1204) is said to have forged scores of documents using this method.41 In a number of cases, the culprits are reported to have used an audition notice of a deceased relative with a partially shared name, scratching out the part of the name that differed from their own and writing their name in its place.42 In other cases, the culprits simply added their names to a list of auditors in an existing notice of audition.43

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Al-Dhahabī, Waṣiyat al-Dhahabī li-l-Sallāmī, 17. Ibn Nuqṭa, Ikmāl al-Ikmāl, ed. ʿAbd al-Qayyūm ʿAbd Rabb al-Nabī (Mecca: Jāmiʿat Umm al-Qurā, 1410/ 1989), 4:416; Al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām, 29:233, 30:182; al-Dhahabī, Mizān al-Iʿtidāl, 1:157; Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān al-Mizān, 1:313; Al-Samʿānī, al-Taḥbīr fī al-muʿjam al-kabīr, ed. Munīra Nājī Sālim (Baghdad: Riʾāsat Dīwān al-Awqāf, 1395/1975), 2:265; Al-Khaṭīb alBaghdādī, Tārīkh Madīnat al-Salām, 11:45. Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān al-mizān, 2:41. Ibn Nuqṭa, Ikmāl al-Ikmāl, 4:194. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 19:592; Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 1:65. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 19:242, 22:109; al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām, 35:49, 35:79: al-Khaṭīb alBaghdādī, Tārīkh Baghdād, 7:310; Ibn al-Najjār, Tārīkh Baghdād wa dhuyūluhu, 21:92, 21:118, 22:121; Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Ḍuʿafāʾ wa al-matrūkūn, ed. ʿAbd Allāh al-Qāḍī (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1406/1985), 2:15; Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam fī tārīkh al-mulūk wa al-umam, ed. ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1412/1992), 15:275, 17:247; Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān al-Mizān (Hyderabad: Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif al-ʿUthmāniyya, 1390/1971), 1:311, 2:293, 2:570, 2:672, 3:521, 3:525, 4:158, 5:135, 5:144, 5:267, 6:71; al-Silafī, Muʿjam al-safar, ed. ʿAbd Allāh ʿUmar al-Bārūdī (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1413/1993), 317. The famous hadith scholar al-Samʿānī’s

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Another commonly employed method was to forge a notice not for themselves but for an elderly person, supposedly establishing that decades ago they had heard from an important, now long-dead, transmitter, thereby giving them a valuable and rare chain of transmission. Based on this forged notice the culprit could then read hadith to this elderly person, and compose an audition notice, which after the supposed transmitter died would serve as proof that they possessed a rare and desirable chain.44 In one rare case preserved by alDhahabī, a scholar finds a name in an audition notice that is the same as his and assumes this identity.45 The ijāza (license to transmit), a non-oral mode of transmission that was treated in Chapter Three, was another target for forgers attempting to fraudulently establish evidence of their supposed short chains of transmission.46 In one case preserved by al-Dhahabī, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad al-Sayyidī attempted to transmit based on an ijāza that had been issued to an older deceased brother who had the same first name and kunya. His deception was discovered, however, and after being admonished and warned that his deceit would earn him the wrath of God, he admitted to his deception and was disgraced.47 While some who did not possess short chains of transmission engaged in deception and forgery to create the appearance of elevation and the social capital it gave them, those who actually did possess elevation worked to transmit it to their families, attempting to ensure that their children and young relatives would also enjoy the spiritual, social and other benefits elevation bestowed on them. They did this primarily by creating a huge age gap between the auditors and the authority giving the audition, taking their children and relatives at a tender age, sometimes while still newborns, to hear hadith from the most elderly transmitters with the highest degrees of elevation possible. In some cases, they would even send their young children on journeys in the charge of other hadith collectors in order to audit hadith with elderly transmitters in distant locations.48 If these children survived, they would have the advantage of a chain of transmission that was several links shorter than their peers who did not have such an early start. Scholars, and other urban elites, considered this taking of young children to hear hadith constitutive of the proper upbring-

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son Abū Muẓaffar for example, reported to have added his name to numerous audition notices and was criticized for this. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 22:109. Ibn Nuqṭa, Ikmāl al-Ikmāl, 2:522. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 16:556. Ibid., 23:17. Ibid., 23:267–268. Al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām, 47:207.

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ing of young children, and the sources often refer to taking young children to auditions as “taking care of them (iʿtanā bihi).”49 They say of a transmitter, for example, “his father took care of him in Aleppo, then later [as an adult] he heard hadith on his own.”50 On the other hand, it could be said of a scholar who was old enough to have had a short chain of transmission but did not have anyone to “take care of him” as a child, “If they had only taken care of him, he would have had an [elevated] chain of transmission.”51 Among these scholarly elites failing to secure auditions for their young children was seen as a form of parental neglect. Al-Dhahabī writes about the father of the seventh/thirteenthcentury transmitter Ṣafiyya bt. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb b. ʿAlī (d. 646/1248), “her father neglected her and didn’t take her to audit anything, but her uncle solicited ijāzas for her.”52 In some cases, scholars’ efforts to cultivate elevation for their descendants and relatives were successful and dynasties of hadith transmitters with elevated chains of transmission were built. Such families are often referred to in the sources as “families of transmission (bayt riwāya).”53 The cultivation of elevation, however, depended on creating a wide gap between reception and transmission, and a transmitter had to live long enough to reach what the sources refer to as “the age of transmission (awān al-riwāya).”54 This age varied, but usually depended on at least fifty years passing after the initial transmission.55 Many, perhaps most, children who were “taken care of” by their families died before reaching this age. Aḥmad b.ʿĪsā (d. 643/1245), the grandson of the famous Ḥanbalī hadith scholar Muwaffaq al-Dīn ʿAbd Allāh b. Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Qudāma, is an example of this. He hailed from a renowned

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Al-ʿAkarī, Shadharāt al-dhahab fī akhbār man dhahab, 3:356, 4:414, 5:149, 7:101, 8:433, 9:67; al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 1:70, 1:78, 2:90, 2:101, 2:102, 2:185, 3:3, 3:248, 4:128, 4:307, 4:315, 5:74, 6:92, 6:170, 7:263, 7:282, 8:297; al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 14:25, 16:277, 18:433, 19:424, 19:588, 20:21, 20:481; Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī bi-l-wafayāt, 15:11, 18:40, 18:199; Ibn Ḥajar, Inbāʾ al-ghumr fi abnāʾ al-ʿumr, ed. Ḥasan al-Ḥabashī (Cairo: Lajnat Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-Islāmī, 1389/1969), 1:112, 2:209. Ibn Ḥajar, Inbāʾ al-ghumr fi abnāʾ al-ʿumr, 1:112. Ibid., 3:289; Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 2:102. al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 23:270. Al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām, 27:269, 36:540, 40:246, 43:54, 43:381, 45:321, 45:329, 46:248, 47:208, 48:138; al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 2:152, 12:57, 7:218, 8:78, 12:42; Ibn Najjār, Dhayl Tārīkh Baghdād, 15:122, 15:153, 15:325, 15:380. Al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām, 44:390; al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 6:270, 8:39, 13:47, 13:430, 14:413, 15.94, 19:421, 22:174, 23:119, 23:264; Ibn al-ʿImād al-Ḥanbalī, Shadharāt al-dhahab fī akhbār man dhahab, ed. ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Arnāʾūṭ (Damascus: Dār Ibn Kathīr, 1406/1986), 3:284, 5:128, 6:178, 7:382, 7:712; al-Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī, 3:54, 4:248, 4:271, 7:179. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, 261–262.

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family of scholars and had audited hadith at a young age with his grandfather and many others. As an adult, he undertook multiple journeys to audit hadith with the authorities of Iraq and elsewhere. Had he lived, al-Dhahabī writes, “he would have been the master of his time … but he died before the age of transmission, only having lived thirty-eight years.”56

1

The Laity and the Randomness of Longevity and Elevation

The randomness of long life and the creation of elevated chains of transmission created opportunities for many individuals to transmit hadith who otherwise would not. Scholars and hadith collectors were not the only ones who attended readings of hadith, nor were they the only ones who believed in the spiritual benefits of a short chain of transmission, nor were they alone in recognizing the social capital it could bestow on their children. Many urban parents who were craftsmen, traders, and soldiers “took care of” their children and sent their young sons, daughters and relatives to hear hadith.57 For some of these children, this was their only brief encounter with the world of hadith and scholarship, yet the randomness of death and long life meant that laypeople who attended hadith sessions as children sometimes lived long enough for their chains of transmission to become elevated and desirable. A person might only have attended a few hadith sessions as a child and thereafter have little or nothing to do with hadith, but then have the good fortune to outlive most of his or her peers and become one of the few people who could still transmit from a long dead authority and be sought out as a transmitter.58 Thus, fate and the allure of the short chains of transmission gave laymen opportunities to participate in the transmission of hadith not only as auditors but as authorities. As al-Dhahabī explains, “in this way many became famous, although they had only heard very little; this was only due to their old age and their elevation,

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Al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām, 47:153. Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī’s younger brother Jamāl al-Dīn is another example of this. Taken to hear hadith from the great authorities of his time, had he lived to old age he would have had many elevated chains of transmission, but he lived only thirty-two years. Al-Subkī, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya al-kubrā, ed. Maḥmūd al-Ṭanāḥī and ʿAbd al-Fattāh al-Ḥilū (Cairo: Hijar lil-Ṭibāʿa wa al-Nashar, 1413/1992), 9:412. For more on the participation of craftsmen and other lay people in hadith auditions, see Chapter Two of Konrad Hirschler’s, The Written Word in Medieval Arabic Lands: A Social and Cultural History of Reading Practices, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2012). Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 17:648.

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while others who were great scholars are hardly known because they died before the age of transmission.”59

2

A Medieval Hadith Rock Star: The Extraordinary Case of Abū ʿAbbās al-Ḥajjār

The case of Abū ʿAbbās al-Ḥajjār (d. 730/1329), one of the all-time most prominent transmitters of al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīh, is a prime example of how the allure and cachet of elevation manifested itself in the social sphere. As a small child, al-Ḥajjār had attended a reading of the Ṣaḥīh, when the famous transmitter alḤusayn b. al-Zabīdī (d. 631/1223) came to Damascus from Baghdad and had his name recorded in the audition notice documenting these sessions. This was the young al-Ḥajjār’s only encounter with the Ṣaḥīḥ, however, and the world of transmission and learning, and, in fact, he never learned to read or write. As an adult, he made his living first as a tailor and then as a stone mason (ḥajjār), eventually becoming a representative for the stone masons’ guild from which he retired and received a thirty-dirham monthly pension from the Bayt al-māl.60 In the year 706/1306, when al-Ḥajjār was seventy-five years old, his apparent old age caught the attention of some local hadith scholars in the neighborhood of Ṣāliḥiyya, where al-Ḥajjār had lived his entire life. As home to a high concentration of hadith scholars and centers for the study of hadith, the children of Ṣāliḥiyya were often taken to attend hadith audition sessions. These scholars who noticed al-Ḥajjār knew that he had been living in Ṣaliḥiyya his entire life and wondered if he might have attended an audition as a child. The possibility that the now elderly al-Ḥajjār had attended a session as a child and would thus possess an elevated chain of transmission aroused their curiosity and they approached al-Ḥajjār and asked him if he recalled attending any hadith auditions as a child. Al-Ḥajjār answered, “there was something like that, but it was so long ago.”61 Not to be discouraged, they asked al-Ḥajjār for his full name and went off to search for him in audition notices recorded in the neighborhood manuscripts. After some research, they found the audition notice for the Ṣaḥīḥ with al-Zabīdī, recorded in the last year of his life. This was an extremely valuable discovery as al-Zabīdī had heard the Ṣaḥīḥ from 59 60 61

Ibid., 17:648. Ibn Ḥajar, Al-Durar, 1:142. Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Dimashqī, “Al-Intiṣār li-samāʿ al-Ḥajjār” in Majmūʿ fīhi rasāʾil li-al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Dimashqī, ed. Abū ʿAbd Allāh b. Mishʿal b. Bānī al-Ḥarayn al-Muṭayrī (Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 1422/2001), 408.

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one of its most prominent transmitters, Abū al-Waqt al-Sijzī (d. 553/1158) as a child, and Abū al-Waqt had also heard as a child and lived to old age, thus creating an unusually short isnād of only five links to al-Bukhārī, and from there as few as three links to the Prophet. Seventy-five years had passed since al-Zabīdī died and only a handful of people who had audited with him were still alive. The rarity and allure of surviving men and women who had heard from al-Zabīdī meant that news of al-Ḥajjār’s discovery quickly spread through the community of hadith scholars in Damascus. A number of scholars soon came to question al-Ḥajjār in an attempt to verify his audition. Al-Dhahabī was among these scholars. He asked al-Ḥajjār a number of questions about his recollection of events that occurred in Damascus when he would have been a small child to establish when he was born, and was satisfied with his answers. Al-Dhahabī then asked him about his memory of attending the audition of the Ṣaḥīh with al-Zabīdī. Al-Ḥajjār replied that he recalled that after the audition sessions he and the other boys would go swim in the river.62 Despite his hazy recollection of his audition, the majority of the Damascene scholarly establishment concluded that al-Ḥajjār had, in fact, attended the audition of al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ with al-Zabīdī.63 As one of the last surviving people of the thousands who had audited the Ṣaḥīḥ with al-Zabīdī, al-Ḥajjār’s chain of transmission was highly sought after and it soon brought him fame and fortune. From his humble origins as an illiterate stonemason, al-Ḥajjār came to enjoy, in the words of Ibn Ḥajar, “unsurpassable honor and generosity.”64 Al-Dhahabī informs us that al-Ḥajjār received between fifty and a hundred dirhams for each reading of al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ.65 Al-Dhahabī also notes that the sultan himself attended sessions with al-Ḥajjār where he dressed him in a robe of honor (khulʿa) and assigned him a monthly salary, and further that al-Ḥajjār became wealthy enough to afford the maintenance of four wives.66 Al-Ḥajjār’s popularity increased after the year 717/1317, when the only other known surviving transmitters who had heard the Ṣaḥīh from Ibn al-Zabīdī, Sitt al-Wuzarāʾ and Fāṭima bt. ʿAbd al-Rahmān b. ʿAmr al-Farrāʾ died, thus making him the last living connection to al-Zabīdī.67 From this point onward, al-Ḥajjār’s

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Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, al-Intiṣār, 408. Ibid., 412. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar, 1:142. Al-Dhahabī, Muʿjam al-shuyūkh al-kabīr, ed. Muḥammad Ḥabīb al-Hayla (Al-Ṭāʾif: Maktabat al-Ṣiddīq, 1408/1988), 1:119. Al-Dhahabī, Muʿjam shuyūkh al-Dhahabī, 1:119; Ibn ʿAzzūz, Ṣafaḥāt mushriqa, 97. Al-Dhahabī, Asmāʾ man ʿāsha thamānīn sana baʿd shaykhihi aw baʿd samāʿihi, ed. ʿAwwād al-Khalaf (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʿir al-Islāmiyya, 2005/1426), 107.

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fame spread beyond Damascus and he became a destination for students seeking to obtain the shortest possible chain of transmission for the Ṣaḥīḥ. He began receiving invitations to oversee recitations of the Ṣaḥīḥ from hadith enthusiasts from all over the Mamlūk realm and went on tour overseeing auditions of the Ṣaḥīḥ in Hama, Baʿlabak, Hims, Kafr Baṭnām, Manṣūra,68 twice in Cairo as well as in other cities.69 As a result of his touring, we are told that he accumulated “much gold and many robes of honor.”70 By the time he died in 730/1329, he is reported to have overseen more than seventy readings of the Ṣaḥīḥ, and al-Sakhāwī estimated that as many as a hundred thousand people attended sessions with him over the course of his career as a transmitter. The fact that he was illiterate and had no knowledge of the text he transmitted was not a barrier to him becoming one of the most prominent transmitters of the Ṣaḥīḥ. That he had an audition notice to attest to his having audited the collection with a prominent transmitter as a child and then outlived all of his cohort of auditors was enough to make him remarkably alluring and to attract hadith collectors from far and wide. Even after his death, al-Ḥajjār’s rare degree of elevation meant that his hadith continued to be sought after. The collection of forty hadith al-Fakhr al-Baʿlī compiled for al-Ḥajjār continued to be transmitted widely for generations after his death. The numerous audition notices recorded on a single manuscript of the collection document that it was still being transmitted in Damascus, Jerusalem, Baalbek and Mecca as late as 798/1396.71 Centuries later al-Ḥajjār remained one of the most prominent nodes in the transmission of the Ṣaḥīḥ, to the extent that even today the vast majority of contemporary chains of transmission for the collection pass through him. Al-Ḥajjār, was perhaps the all-time most prominent male lay transmitter, he was, however, by no means alone. The sources preserve references to numerous other lay transmitters of lesser fame.72

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Ibn ʿAzzūz, Ṣafaḥāt mushriqa, 231. Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Dimashqī, 408; Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-kāmina, 1:142. Al-Subkī notes that his brother Jamāl al-Dīn was taken by their father as a young child to hear from al-Ḥajjār during his tour of Egypt. Al-Subkī, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya al-kubrā, 9:411. Al-Dhahabī, Muʿjam al-shuyūkh, 1:11; Ibn ʿAzzūz, Ṣafaḥāt mushriqa, 97. Fakhr al-Dīn Fakhr ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Muḥammad al-Baʿlī, Arbaʿūn ḥadīth min al-muṣāfaḥāt wa al-muwāfaqāt wa al-abdāl wa al-thulāthiyāt wa al-ʿawālī, Landberg MSS 774, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 1;25, 4:280, 4:293; Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-kāmina, 2:40, 2:349, 4:240; al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 21:417, 21;419, 22:305, 21:250, 22:150; Yūsuf b. Taghrī Bardī, alManhal al-rāwī wa al-Mustawfī baʿd al-Wāfī, ed. Saʿīd ʿ Abd al-Fattāḥ ʿĀshūr (Cairo: AlHayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿAmma lil-kitāb), 3:476, 6:255, 7:64.

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The title folio of a manuscript of the forty hadith al-Fakhr al-Baʿlī compiled of al-Ḥajjār’s most valuable hadith. The numerous audition notices composed on the manuscript begin in 716/316 and continue until 798/1396 and list hundreds of auditors. Fakhr al-Dīn Fakhr ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Muḥammad al-Baʿlī, Arbaʿūn ḥadīth min al-muṣāfaḥāt wa al-muwāfaqāt wa al-abdāl wa al-thulāthiyāt wa al-ʿawālī, Landberg MS 774, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven.

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The Elevated Chain of Transmission and Women Hadith Transmitters

Because women generally lived longer than men, the increasing emphasis on elevation had a more marked effect on the participation of laywomen in hadith transmission and propelled relatively far more women to prominence than it did men. The sources preserve multitudes of examples of women who audited hadith as children and then much later in life, often in their final years, rose to varying degrees of prominence as transmitters. While in the big picture women transmitters were still a tiny fraction in comparison to men, their existence in societies where women had few public roles is a particularly striking manifestation of the power of the concept of elevation. In her study of women hadith transmitters, Sayeed has shown that the increased emphasis on elevation allowed women to once again enter the ranks of hadith transmitters after having been largely excluded for several centuries.73 Sayeed ties this trend to the increasing professionalization of hadith scholarship and transmission that began in the second/eighth century. This professionalization of the field led to an exclusion of women, because gender norms and sexual segregation generally did not allow women access to the close master-student relationships through which men built authority and distinguished themselves as experts in the field of hadith scholarship, and accurate and reliable transmitters.74 From the fifth/eleventh century, however, as the idea of a stable hadith canon took hold, and the rigorous standards of transmission were increasingly perceived as unnecessary for the purposes of continued post-canonical hadith transmission, a space was created for non-specialists, including women, to once again participate in hadith transmission. While, in general, women did not often have access to the intimate master-student relationships upon which scholarly authority was built, they could participate in the transmission of hadith, which did not require such close and prolonged interaction. Moreover, such cross-gender interaction was often between very elderly transmitters and very young children, which was generally not considered problematic. As was noted above, from at least as early as the fourth/tenth century, as the previous rigors of hadith transmission were loosened, scholarly and elite families increasingly began taking their children, including girls, to audit hadith for its perceived spiritual and social benefits. The natural longevity of women meant

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Asma Sayeed, Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Ibid., 123.

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that they often outlived the males in their cohort of auditors, giving them uniquely elevated chains of transmission and making them sought after, and prominent transmitters. These developments are well documented in the literary sources. The sixth/twelfth-century hadith scholar and historian Ibn ʿAsākir, for instance, in the section of his History of Damascus dedicated to the biographies of women, wrote biographies for fifty female hadith transmitters from the first two centuries, but then only two for the third/ninth and fourth/tenth centuries.75 Then, after two centuries in which he hardly noted any female hadith transmitters, they begin to reemerge, and he composed biographies for fifteen women who lived between the fifth/eleventh and sixth/twelfth centuries.76 The same trend can be observed in al-Dhahabī’s Siyar. He wrote biographies for roughly thirty-five women in the Companion and Successor generations, but then only two for the third/ninth and fourth/tenth centuries. Following the third/ninth century, however, women transmitters then reenter the biographical record and al-Dhabhabī composed biographies for fourteen women transmitters in the fifth/eleventh, and sixth/twelfth centuries, and then ten women in the seventh/thirteenth century.77 Women’s participation in hadith transmission continued to increase in the following centuries. In the ninth/fifteen century, the Egyptian hadith scholar al-Sakhāwī composed biographies for hundreds of women who participated in hadith transmission in his biographical dictionary al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ. Across the centuries, in fact, so many women participated in hadith transmission that the contemporary historian Mohammad Akram Nadawi was able to compile a forty-volume biographical dictionary of women hadith transmitters.78

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The Exceptional Case of Karīma al-Marwaziyya

Not unlike their male counterparts, of the many women who audited hadith, only a small minority enjoyed the fortune of living long enough to attain elevation and prominence. A few, however, became quite famous transmitters and established themselves as central links in the community’s networks of transmission. Karīma bt. Aḥmad al-Marwaziyya (d. 463/1070) is, perhaps, the most

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Ibid., 108. Ibid., 108. Ibid., 109. This work has yet to be published, he has, however, published an English translation of the prefatory volume. Mohammad Akram Nadwi, al-Muhaddithat: The Women Scholars in Islam (London: Interface Publications, 2007).

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prominent and well-known of women hadith transmitters. Indeed, Karīma was such a famed transmitter that when Manṣūr al-Samʿānī (d. 489/1096) was asked about her, he said, “how rarely have eyes set on the like of Karīma!”79 Her biographers seem to have known very little about Karīma’s early life, indeed they are only able to estimate her birthdate.80 Her father is noted to have been from the village of Kushmīhan in the neighborhood of the city of Marv, which had a strong tradition of hadith scholarship. Her mother is reported to have been from a prominent family with deep roots in the city.81 The family likely had considerable resources and Robinson suggests they likely lived off the rents produced by the family’s estates.82 At some point in her career, Karīma travelled with her father to visit Jerusalem and Mecca, ultimately settling in the latter city. Sometime before settling in Mecca, probably while still a child, Karīma heard hadith from a number of prominent scholars and transmitters, including Zāhir b. Aḥmad al-Sarkhasī (d. 389/999), ʿAbd Allāh b. Yūsuf al-Bāmuwayh (d. 409/1019), and most notably, Abū Haytham al-Kushmīhanī (d. 389/999), with whom she audited the entirety of al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ. AlKushmīhanī was best known for having taken the Ṣaḥīḥ from al-Bukhārī’s most prominent student and was thus just one degree removed from al-Bukhārī, and although she transmitted other material, it was as a transmitter of the Ṣaḥīh from al-Kushmīhanī that Karīma would become most well-known. Karīma was, of course, one of a multitude who audited the Ṣaḥīḥ with al-Kushmīhanī. She had the good fortune, however, to outlive almost all of them, surviving to the ripe age of one hundred. As a result of her longevity, in the middle of the fifth/eleventh century she could provide hadith collectors with incredible proximity to al-Bukhārī, and from him as few as just three links to the Prophet. In fact, in her later years, Karīma was thought to have the most elevated chain of transmission for the Ṣaḥīḥ in the world and she was known by hadith collectors all over the empire.83 Her residence at Mecca was, no doubt, a factor in

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Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 18:234. Chase F. Robinson, Islamic Civilization in Thirty Lives: The First 1,000 Years (California: University of California Press, 2016), 137. Her biographers note that Karīma’s mother was “of the descendants of al-Sayyārī (awlād al-Sayyārī).” Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 18:234. Al-Suyūṭī notes that this is a reference to their grandfather al-Sayyār, but does not further identify which al-Sayyār. Al-Suyūṭī, Lubb allubāb fī taḥrīr al-ansāb (Beirut: Dār al-Ṣādr, n.d.), 1:145. Perhaps he is either Aḥmād b. Sayyār (d. 268/881), who was a prominent jurist and hadith transmitter in Marv; alternatively, it could the Umayyad governor of Marv and Khurasan, Naṣr b. Sayyār (d. 131/748). Robinson, Islamic Civilization in Thirty Lives, 137. Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil fi al-tārīkh, ed. ʿ Umar ʿ Abd al-Sallām al-Tadmurī, (Beirut: Dār alKitāb al-ʿ Arabī, 1417/1997), 8:227. As noted by al-Qaḍī ʿIyāḍ, her reputation was such that

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her prominence, as it made her accessible to far greater numbers of collectors than if she had lived in her native Marv. Her biographers note that pilgrims to Mecca, from all over the empire, audited the Ṣaḥīḥ with her during the pilgrimage season.84 Ibn ʿAsākir preserves a report indicating that she transmitted hadith, while actually performing the pilgrimage herself, transmitting while at Mina, in the landmark mosque known as Masjid al-Khayf.85 Al-Khaṭīb alBaghdādī famously read the entirety of the Ṣaḥīḥ to her during the pilgrimage season in just five days—one of the all-time feats of speed reading.86 Numerous other prominent scholars are also noted to have audited the Ṣaḥīḥ with Karīma in Mecca during the latter years of her life, between the years 448/1056 and her death in the year 463/1070.87 It is important to note that while Karīma’s longevity and elevation were an essential factor in her prominence, they were not the only factors in her distinction as a transmitter, she was also noted to have been very knowledgeable and methodical in her transmission and reproduction of the text, which added to her popularity. In particular, she is reported to have insisted on personally collating any copies made from her manuscript of the Ṣaḥīḥ. A report attributed to Abū al-Ghanāʾim al-Nirsī (d. 510/1116) describes his experience auditing and copying the Ṣaḥīḥ with Karīma. He narrates, “I sat down at her feet and copied seven folios. I wanted to collate what I had copied from her manuscript by myself, but she said, ‘no, not before you collate it with me.’ So, we collated the text together, and I read [my copy] to her.”88 Karīma’s insistence on meticulously collating the text is rooted in this period’s manuscript

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al-Jayyānī wrote to her requesting an ijāza for the Ṣaḥīḥ all the way from Morocco. Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, al-Ghunya ed. Māhir Zuhayr Jarrār (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1982/1402), 33. Ibn Bashkawāl (d. 578/1183), for example records numerous scholars of Andalusia, who heard hadith from Karīma. Abū Qāsim Khalaf Ibn Bashkawāl, al-Ṣila fī tārīkh aimmat alAndalus, ed. al-Sayyid ʿ Izzat al-ʿ Aṭṭār al-Ḥusaynī (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khānjī, 1374/1955), 1:75, 1:99, 1:132, 1:171, 1:328, 1:417, 1:530. Ibn al-Ābbār’s (d. 732/1331), Continuation of Ibn Bashkawāl’s history, al-Takmila li-Kitāb al-Ṣila, records numerous other Andalusian scholars who audited the Ṣaḥīh with Karīma while performing the pilgrimage. Ibn al-Ābbār, al-Takmila li-Kitāb al-Ṣila, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām al-Harrās (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1415/1995), 1:28, 1:31, 1:37, 1:129, 2:35, 4:177. Ibn ʿAsākir, Tārīkh Dimashq, ed. ʿAmr b. Gharāma al-ʿUmarī (Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, 1415/ 1995), 59:338. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 18:277. The earliest mention of Karīma transmitting hadith, I was able to find, occurred in the year 448/1056. She would have been roughly eighty-three. Al-Dhahabī, Tadhkirat al-Ḥuffāẓ (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1419/1998), 4:13. Jumʿa Fatḥī ʿAbd al-Salīm, Riwāyāt al-Jamīʿ al-ṣaḥīh wa nusukhahu (Doha: Dār al-Fallāh, 1434/2014), 411.

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and oral transmission practices that were discussed in Chapter Two. Suffice it to say here, that the meticulousness of her transmission practices reflects the fact that in her lifetime the manuscript tradition of the Ṣaḥīḥ remained divergent and her manuscript of the collection represented a unique recension of the text that differed somewhat from those of other transmitters of the collection. The uniqueness of her recension is a result of the fact that, as has been noted, Karīma had taken the Ṣaḥīḥ from al-Kushmīhanī, who was one of the primary transmitters of the Ṣaḥīḥ from al-Farabrī (d. 320/932). Al-Farabrī was one of al-Bukhārī’s last close students, having audited the Ṣaḥīh with him multiple times. Upon al-Bukhārī’s death, he reportedly inherited his personal copy and final draft of the Ṣaḥīh that he had dictated to his personal scribe.89 It would seem, however, that al-Bukhārī was still editing this copy when he died. In a report attributed to Abū Isḥāq al-Mustamlī of Balkh (d. 386/997), he narrates that in the year 314/926 he traveled to Farabr to make a copy of alBukhārī’s personal manuscript, which was still in the possession of al-Farabrī. When he began copying the manuscript he noticed that it contained numerous blank sections. In some cases, there were chapter or sections headings, but no hadith below them, and in other places there were hadith without any chapter or sections headings. Al-Mustamlī explains that as a solution to this problem, copyists compiled the material as they saw fit.90 In his commentary on al-Mustamlī’s report, al-Bājī notes that it explains why the copies of alMustamlī, Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥamawyī, al-Sarkhasī, al-Kushmīhanī and Abū Zayd al-Marwazī contained significant differences despite the fact that all of their manuscripts had all been copied from a single source.91 There are sections in these manuscripts, al-Bājī explains, that differ in, among other things, order. That these copies varied was natural according to al-Bājī, because when these four scholars were consulting al-Bukhārī’s manuscript to make their own copies, they encountered marginal notes in the text and editorial notes and addenda on loose leaves of paper stuck between the pages of the manuscript. It was unclear where al-Bukhārī intended this additional material to be inserted in the text and naturally scholars made different choices. Some it would seem, according to Ibn Ḥajar, were not sure where the additional material belonged and inserted the same material in more than one place in the text.92 Some copyists, it would seem, made better editorial decisions than others. According to Ibn Ḥajar, this is why there are sections in some recensions of the Ṣaḥīḥ 89 90 91 92

Ibid., 455. Ibid., 455. Ibid., 456. Ibid., 458.

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in which there are hadith that are difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile with the headings under which they fall.93 This is all to say that Karīma’s careful attention to overseeing the reproduction and collation of her manuscript was necessary to preserve her recension of al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīh, and to avoid introducing any further divergence in the manuscript tradition and is a testament to her meticulousness and knowledge of the manuscript tradition.94 Karīma’s meticulousness, knowledge of the text and its manuscript tradition, and longevity meant that for several generations after her death, her recension was one of the most prized and sought-after recensions of the Ṣaḥīḥ.95 The popularity of Karīma’s recension of the Ṣaḥīḥ would eventually be eclipsed by the recension of Abū al-Waqt al-Sijizī (d. 553/1158), who like her, due to fate and longevity, could provide a more direct connection to al-Bukhārī than those who transmitted Karīma’s recension.96 Yet, Karīma’s recension remained in circulation and was referenced by later scholars and incorporated in later recensions and commentaries.97 Ibn ʿImād notes that some scholars even counted Karīma among those who reached the rank of Ḥāfiẓ, one of the highest ranks a hadith scholar could achieve.98 Even though Karīma’s recension of the

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Ibid., 185. ʿAbd al-Salīm, Riwāyāt al-Jamīʿ al-Ṣaḥīh, 413. Although Karīma’s recension is extant, it has yet to be studied and it is not clear how it differed from other recensions in circulation. Because she also audited the text with al-Sarakhsī, who was also a prominent transmitter of the text, it seems probable, if not likely, that it contained the variants found in his recension, but this requires further research. There exists significant evidence for the continued transmission of her recension in the narrative sources. Abū Qāsim al-Rāfiʿī al-Qazwīnī, al-Tadwīn fī akhbār Qazwīn, ed. ʿAzīz Allāh al-ʿUṭāridī, (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1408/1987), 1:231, 1:318, 3:164; al-Fāsī, Dhayl al-Taqyīd, 2:55; al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 19:353. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī bi-l-wafayāt, ed. Aḥmad al-Arnāʾūṭ and Turkī Muṣṭafā (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth, 1420/2000), 13:27. For a list of distinguished scholars who transmitted from Karīma see Muḥammad b. ʿAzzūz, Ṣafaḥāt mushriqa min ʿināyat al-marʾa bi-ṣaḥīḥ al-imām al-Bukhārī (Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 1423/2002), 128–146. Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil fi al-tārīkh, 8:227. Sharaf al-Dīn al-Yūnīnī (d. 701/1301), for instance, incorporated Karīma’s recension in his highly influential collated recension of the Ṣaḥīḥ, which served as the basis for the most authoritative printed edition of the collection. Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-ʿIraqī’s (d. 806/1404) recension of the Ṣaḥīh likewise incorporates Karīma’s recension. A number of commentaries on the Ṣaḥīḥ also reference Karīma’s recension, for example Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ in his Mashāriq al-anwār, Ibn Ḥajar’s Fatḥ al-Bārī, al-ʿAynī’s ʿUmdat al-qārī, and alQastalānī’s Irshād al-Sārī among others. ʿAbd al-Salīm, Riwāyāt al-Jamīʿ al-Ṣaḥīh, 418. Ibn ʿImād, Shadharāt al-dhahab fī akhbār man dhahab, ed. ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Arnāʾūṭ (Beirut: Dār Ibn Kathīr 1496/1986), 10:9.

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A folio of an extant manuscript of Karīma’s recension of the Ṣaḥīḥ, documenting the transmission of the text from her to the seventh/thirteenth-century scholar Rashīd al-Dīn Yaḥyā b. ʿAlī b. ʿAbd Allāh al-ʿAṭṭār (662/1264). H. Şemsi-Fatih Güneren MS 49, Süleymaniye Library, Istanbul, Turkey.

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Ṣaḥīḥ was ultimately surpassed, her memory as a female scholar and transmitter of hadith lived on. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, who, as was noted above, read the Ṣaḥīḥ to Karīma in Mecca, named his daughter after her and al-Samʿānī reports that she too was a scholar and among other things, is noted to have copied and transmitted the entirety of her father’s monumental history of Baghdad.99 In a discussion of the legality of praying behind a woman, the nineteenthcentury Medinese hadith scholar, Fāliḥ al-Ẓāhirī (d. 1328/ 1910) cites Karīma as an example of a woman he would accept as an imam and follow in the ritual prayer, saying, “If the female transmitters of hadith Quraysh al-Ṭabariyya or ʿĀʾisha al-Maqdasiyya or Karīma al-Marwaziyya, were present I would pray the ritual prayer behind them without any doubt or uncertainty.”100 Considering that most scholars have considered it impermissible for a woman to lead men in prayer, this statement is quite a witness to Karīma’s status. The survival and influence of Karīma’s recension and the high regard with which she is remembered in the tradition is a testament to the roles women could play in the transmission of hadith. While Karīma was exceptional in many ways, she was by no means the only learned woman who studied, taught and transmitted hadith. Her contemporary, ʿĀʾisha bt. Ḥasan al-Warkāniyya (d. 460–466/1068–1074) was another fifth/eleventh-century learned transmitter of hadith, whom ʿAbd al-Karīm alSamʿānī described as “a pious scholar who preached to women.”101 The following century saw one of the all-time most well-known women scholars and transmitters, Shuhda al-Kātiba (d. 574/1178–1179). Shuhda was educated by her father and was taken by him to hear hadith as a young girl, ultimately surviving to become a prominent transmitter from whom Ibn ʿAsākir, al-Samaʿānī, Ibn al-Jawzī and other prominent scholars took hadith.102

5

The Question of Learning among Women Hadith Transmitters

The generations of women who followed Kārīma and Shuhda continued to participate in hadith transmission. It is important to note, however, that not all female hadith transmitters were learned. Like many male transmitters, such

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Al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām, ed. ʿUmar al-Tadmurī (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1993/ 1413), 36:158. Al-Kattānī, Fahras al-fahāris, 2:942. Al-Dhahabī, among other things notes about her that she heard the Āmālī of Ibn Manda from him, and made her own copy of the text. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 18:302. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 20:542–543.

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as al-Ḥajjār, many, probably even most, women hadith transmitters were not learned people, but instead were laywomen, who nonetheless became soughtafter transmitters due to their longevity and the resultant short chains of transmission they possessed. Previous scholarship on women hadith transmitters has tended to conflate the participation of laywomen in hadith transmission with their participation in learning and scholarship.103 While there is no doubt that in their roles as transmitters of hadith these women were part of the larger sphere of the scholarly community, there is very little evidence to suggest that the majority of these women transmitters participated in actual learning and scholarship. Instead, their participation in hadith transmission belongs to the piety of hadith scholars, their religious imagination and the preservation of hadith transmission and the community’s connection to the Prophet, that was discussed in the previous chapters. Indeed, the biographies of even some of the most prominent women hadith transmitters contain no indication of their engagement in learning or scholarship, but instead focus on their roles as transmitters and links to the figures of the sacred past of the community. Sayeed has suggested that because women transmitters, like Zaynab bt. al-Kamāl (d. 740/1339), who heard hadith and received ijāzas to transmit as a child, and then as an elderly woman became a prominent transmitter, it can be inferred that she must have studied and learned those texts in the time in between.104 The intent of Zaynab’s childhood hadith auditions was not, however, educational, but rather it was intended to provide her with the perceived spiritual benefits of hearing the hadith and being connected to the luminaries of the scholarly tradition and through them to the Companions and the Prophet. It should not then be surprising that the available biographical data for her contains no evidence to support the assumption that she must have studied and learned the texts she audited as a child. There is substantial documentary evidence for Zaynab’s participation in hadith transmission, and this likewise provides no support for Sayeed’s inference. In fact, these documents contain significant evidence to the contrary. The corpus of Damascene audition notices Muʿjam al-samāʿāt al-Dimashqiyya contains thirty-eight notices documenting audition session in which hadith was read to Zaynab.105 In almost

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Here I refer primarily to Nadwi’s, al-Muhaddithat, and Sayeed’s, Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam. Other briefer studies have also put forward this thesis, including Omaina Abou-Bakr’s “Teaching the Words of the Prophet: Women Instructors of the Hadith (Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries)” Hawwa 1, no. 3 (2003). Sayeed, Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge, 164. Stefan Leder, Yasīn Muḥammad al-Sawwās, et al., (eds), Muʿjam al-samāʿāt al-Dimashqiyya: ṣuwar al-makhṭūṭāt al-munatakhaba min sinat 550–750 (Damscus: al-Maʿhad al-

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all of the one thousand three hundred other notices in the corpus, the names of the male scholars who participated in the session are preceded by the various standard scholarly honorifics, such as “the scholar (al-ʿālim)” “the leading authority (al-imām),” “the preserver of tradition (al-ḥāfiẓ),” “the hadith master (al-muḥaddith).” In not a single notice, in contrast, is Zaynab given a scholarly honorific. Instead, when she is given honorifics by those who composed these audition notices, she is called “the pious (al-ṣāliha),”106 “the worshiper (al-ʿābida),”107 “the ascetic (al-zāhida),”108 and tellingly—“the long-lived (almuʿammara)”109 In some cases the context makes it clear that it was not an oversight that Zaynab was not given any scholarly honorifics, but rather that it was an intentional choice on the part of the scholar who recorded the notice because he did not consider them appropriate for her. In a notice recorded in the year 727/1327, in which a juzʾ of the hadith of Ādam b. Abī Iyās ʿAbd al-Raḥman al-Khurasānī was read to both Zaynab and Aḥmad b. ʿAbd Allāh alMaqdisī, the latter is given the honorifics “the leading authority, the scholar (al-imām al-ʿālim).”110 Zaynab, on the other hand is simply recorded as “the mother of ʿAbd Allāh, Zaynab.”111 Then, following Zaynab’s name, the name of the scholar who acted as the reader for the audition session is recorded preceded by the honorifics “the leading authority, the distinguished, the preserver of tradition (al-imām al-bāriʿ al-ḥāfiẓ).”112 The juxtaposition here makes it clear that the scholar recording the notice did not consider Zaynab a member of the scholarly community who merited scholarly honorifics. That Zaynab was requested to attend these and other audition sessions, not for her knowledge of the texts being read, but for the short chain of transmission she possessed is further demonstrated by the fact that the majority of these sessions took place when she was in her eighties. Only four of Zaynab’s audition sessions took place before she was eighty.113 Indeed in the earliest notice in which she appears, she was seventy-five years old, but significantly in this session she was not transmitting alone, but was in a group of ten elderly transmitters to

106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113

Faransī l-l-Dirasāt al-ʿArabiyya, 1996), 15, 34, 36, 37, 39, 40, 61, 63, 66, 73, 74, 144, 145, 146, 212, 275, 304, 349, 350, 352, 356, 372, 378, 425, 429. Ibid., 40, 61, 73, 74, 144, 146, 212, 304, 372, 429. Ibid., 304. Ibid. 304. Ibid., 36.173, 304, 349, 372, 378. Ibid., 287. Ibid., 287. Ibid., 287. Ibid., 15.

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whom hadith was read.114 She only began to transmit with frequency in her eighties,115 and eleven of her audition sessions occurred when she was in her nineties.116 That Zaynab only began to transmit frequently in her eighties leaves little doubt that it was solely her longevity that propelled her to prominence. It also casts serious doubt on the suggestion that her audition sessions were of an educational nature, for if she did in fact study the material she had audited as a child, why does she only begin do ‘teach’ it at such an advanced age?117 Seventy-five is a highly unlikely age at which to begin a teaching career. Not only is the assumption that Zaynab had knowledge of the texts she transmitted unfounded, it is an unnecessary one to make, as knowledge of the content of a text was not was not considered necessary to transmit it. Indeed, as was shown above, one of the all-time most prominent transmitters of al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ was an illiterate stone mason, who had no knowledge of the texts he transmitted, nor could he even read them. He nonetheless became the most prominent transmitter of his time, simply because he lived into extreme old age, was the last living person of his generation of transmitters and there was an extant audition notice documenting that he heard the text as a young boy. As will be demonstrated below, the preponderance of evidence indicates that this was the case for the vast majority of women who engaged in hadith transmission.

6

The Case of Women Hadith Transmitters in al-Sakhāwī’s al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ

One of the richest narrative sources available on the lives and careers of women hadith transmitters is al-Sakhāwī’s biographical dictionary of the ninth/fifteenth century, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ. The first eleven volumes of al-Sakhāwī’s published work consist of biographies of men. These volumes are supplemented by a volume containing the biographies of one thousand and seventy-five women, titled the Book of Women (kitāb Muʿjām al-nisāʾ). Of these one thousand and seventy-five biographies, three hundred and twenty-seven women participated, to varying degrees, in hadith transmission. A close analysis of the biographies of the women hadith transmitters in al-Ḍawʾ yields an abundance of evidence demonstrating that the vast majority of them were laywomen 114 115 116 117

Ibid., 275. Ibid., 36, 37, 39, 40, 61, 65, 73, 74, 145, 146, 212, 287, 349, 352, 356, 372, 393. 34, 63, 65, 66, 144, 304, 425, 429. Sayeed, 165.

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The top three audition notices on this folio of a collection of Ibn Shadhān’s hadith were recorded in 728/ 1328 when Zaynab bt. AlKamāl was eighty-two years old. Al-Ḥasan b. Aḥmad b. Shadhān, Musnad ʿan kull shaykh min mashā ʾikh Abī ʿAlī al-Ḥasan b. Ahmad b. Ibrāhīm b. Shadhān, Landberg MS 678, Beinecke Manuscript and Rare Book Library, Yale, New Haven, 18b.

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who owed their careers almost exclusively to their longevity and their resultant elevation. In fact, upon analysis, less than one percent of these biographies contain any evidence of learning or scholarship. A comparison of a thousand randomly selected biographies of male scholars and hadith transmitters with those of female transmitters demonstrates that in stark contrast to their male counterparts, the biographies of women only very rarely contain references to the activities that defined the careers of male scholars.118 Of these thousand randomly selected male biographees, three hundred and sixty-three are reported to have had some engagement in hadith transmission. The overwhelming majority of these biographies contain various references to learning, scholarship and teaching. Perhaps the most essential of the activities attributed to these biographees is study. Study features in these biographies various ways. One of the more common ways al-Sakhāwī refers to a biographee’s engagement in study is to note that he worked or busied himself with learning (ishtaghala).119 For instance, he notes about ʿAbd al-Wahhāb b. ʿAbd Allāh Ibn Ghuzayl (d. 886/1481) that he “worked on law with al-Tāj b. Bahādar and al-Taqī b. al-Qāḍī Shuhba and on Arabic with al-ʿAlā ʾ al-Qābūnī.”120 Similarly, he remarks about ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad al-ʿUmarī (d. 816/1413) that “he busied himself with studying and read much on his own (ishtaghala wa akthara min al-muṭalāʿ).”121 Significantly, al-Sakhāwī takes note of biographees’ engagement in study even when it was limited. He notes about numerous biographees for instance that they “studied a bit (ishtaghala yasīra),”122 or that “they studied a little (ishtaghala qalīla).”123 Remarkably, al-Sakhāwī does not refer a single female biographee in these terms, neither noting that a female biographee engaged in prolonged study, nor even that they studied briefly. Noting that a biographee “read (qaraʾ)” is another common way al-Sakhāwī

118 119

120 121 122 123

By random, here I simply mean that I began at the biography numbered 1000 and continued until 10075, so as to compare an equal number of men and women. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 5:33, 5:38, 5:41, 5:44, 5:48, 5:50, 5:58, 5:65, 5:71, 5:79, 5:80, 5:81, 5:81, 5:81, 5:83, 5:75, 5:86, 5:86, 5:89, 5:92, 5:93, 5:93, 5:95, 5:96, 5:97, 5:101, 5:103, 5:110, 5:111, 5:112, 5:120, 5:125, 5:133, 5:136, 5:140, 5:146, 5:148, 5:157, 5:158, 5:160, 5:162, 5:162, 5:164, 5:165, 5:168, 5:169, 5:171, 5:173, 5;181, 5:187, 5:189, 5;192, 5:194, 5:196, 5:198, 5:201, 5:203, 5:206, 5:210, 5:211, 5:214, 5:215, 5:223, 5:224, 5:228, 5:230, 5:233, 5:234, 5:237, 5:241, 5:243, 5:244, 5:244, 5:247, 5:254, 5:257, 5:259, 5:265, 5:267, 5:278, 5:282, 5:285, 5:288, 5:290, 5:292, 6:5. For a discussion of this term see George Makdisi’s The Rise of Colleges, 86. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 5:91. Ibid., 5:54. Ibid., 5:142, 5:151, 5:169, 5:189, 5:203, 5:216, 5:236, 5:245, 5:251, 5:255, 5:264, 5:267, 5:268, 5:281, 5:288. Ibid., 5:108, 5:170, 5:184, 5:192, 5:207, 5:213, 5:215, 5:253, 5:257, 5:289, 6:4.

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refers to biographee’s engagement in study.124 He notes, for example, about ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Maqdisī (d. 890/1485) that he “read in his youth, but then became interested in earning money and left it.”125 Another common way alSakhāwī refers to learning and studying is mentioning that the biographee “took from (akhadha ʿan)” a teacher or scholar, or a subject of study or specific text.126 Yet another is to note that the biographee attended the lessons of a scholar.127 In some cases al-Sakhāwī notes that the biographee engaged in advanced study, or attended a seminar with a scholar in which a text was discussed in depth (baḥatha ʿalā).128 None of these different references to studying and learning, however, occur in the biographies of women who engaged in hadith transmission. Memorizing various texts and then demonstrating this by reciting them from memory for an authority (ʿarḍ) is an activity that features in the beginning stages of the careers of many of these male scholars.129 A handful of women transmitters are also noted to have memorized various core texts. Umm Hānī Maryam bt. Nūr al-Dīn (d. 871/1467) is an example of an exceptional woman hadith transmitter, who is also noted to have memorized texts and engaged in learning. Born to a family of distinguished scholars on both her maternal and paternal sides, al-Sakhāwī notes that her maternal grandfather took her to hear a considerable amount of hadith as a small child, and that her childhood edu-

124 125 126

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128 129

Ibid., 5:211, 5:215, 5:217, 5:218, 5:230, 5:234, 5:237, 5:239, 5:251, 5:253, 5:254, 5;256, 5:258, 5:265, 5:268, 5;270, 5:271, 5:289, 5:290, 5:292, 6:5. Ibid., 5:258. Ibid., 5:54, 5:59, 5:61, 5:70, 5:74, 5:75, 5:75, 5:75, 5:80, 5:93, 5:97, 5:101, 5:110, 5:117, 5:139, 5:141, 5:141, 5:141, 5:142, 5:144, 5:146, 5:147, 5:149, 5:151, 5:154, 5:155, 5:159, 5:163, 5:166, 5:169, 5:170, 5:171, 5:175, 5:177, 5:189, 5:195, 5:201, 5:204, 5:206, 5:208, 5:209, 5:210, 5:211, 5:214, 5:215, 5:221, 5:222, 5:223, 5:226, 5:229, 5:234, 5:239, 5:242, 5:243, 5:246, 5:252, 5:254, 5:275, 5:282, 5:289, 5:290, 5:292, 6:3, 6:5. Makdisi treats this term in his The Rise of the Colleges, 113. Ibid., 5:32, 5:40, 5:51, 5:62, 5:65, 5:70, 5:89, 5:96, 5:97, 5:115, 5:117, 5:125, 5:133, 5:137, 5:138, 5:141, 5:144, 5:148, 5:160, 5:162, 5:165, 5:195, 5:202, 5:206, 5;210, 5:213, 5:216, 5:231, 5:238, 5:239, 5:246, 5:250, 5:253, 5:260, 5:261, 5:266, 5:270, 5:271, 5:273, 5:276, 5:278, 5:281, 5:290, 5:291, 6:3. Ibid., 5:55, 5:66, 5:96, 5:98, 5:161, 5:177, 5:178, 5:201, 5:218, 5:222, 5:224, 5:229, 5:230, 5:234, 5:248, 5:270, 5:280, 5:284, 5:290, 5:291, 6:5. Ibid., 5:78, 5:79, 5:79, 5:83, 5:85, 5:86, 5:89, 5:92, 5:93, 5:93, 5:94, 5:95, 5:96, 5:96, 5:101, 5:110, 5:115, 5:115, 5:116, 5:117, 5:131, 5:133, 5:136, 5:136, 5:137, 5:143, 5:144, 5:147, 5:148, 5:149, 5:150, 5:151, 5:154, 5:155, 5:157, 5:158, 5:159, 5:160, 5:161, 5:165, 5:166, 5:167, 5:168, 5:169, 5:174, 5:175, 5:177, 5:178, 5:181, 5:182, 5:182, 5:184, 5:186, 5:188, 5:189, 5:190, 5:191, 5:192, 5:194, 5:196, 5:198, 5:200, 5:201, 5:203, 5:205, 5:207, 5:209, 5:210, 5:213, 5:214, 5:216, 5:217, 5:218, 5:218, 5:221, 5:222, 5:224, 5:229, 5:230, 5:231, 5:233, 5:237, 5:238, 5:239, 5:241, 5:242, 5:243, 5;244, 5:245, 5:247, 5:248, 5:250, 5:252, 5:253, 5:254, 5:256, 5:257, 5:258, 5:262, 5:264, 5:265, 5:267, 5:268, 5:270, 5:274, 5:275, 5:277, 5:278, 5:282, 5:283, 5:284, 5:285, 5:286, 5:287, 5:288, 5:289, 5:290, 5:291, 5:292, 6:3, 6:5.

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cation included, among other things, memorizing the Quran, the Mukhtaṣar of Ibn Abī Shujāʿ in Shāfiʿī fiqh and al-Mulḥa in Arabic grammar.130 Bayram bt. Aḥmad al-Dayrūṭiyya is another of the handful of women to whom al-Sakhāwī attributes the memorization of texts. He notes that she had memorized the Quran and mastered its seven canonical recitations. Further he notes that she had memorized the ʿUmda, the Forty Hadith of Nawawī, the Shāṭibiyyatayn, the Burda, the ʿAqīda of al-Ghazālī and “other things.”131 Sitt al-ʿAysh ʿĀʾisha bt. ʿAlī (d. 840/1437) is another exceptional woman who al-Sakhāwī remarks had a prodigious memory and “knew much of the Sīra and could recall some of the Prophet’s expeditions in their entirety.”132 He further notes that she knew most of the hadith contained in the collection attributed to Abū Ṭālib b. Ghaylān and others.133 Significantly, however, he follows his description of her scholarly achievements, which by comparison would not be very unusual for a male scholar, by noting that she was an exception among women, remarking that “eyes have rarely seen women like her.”134 The formation of intimate master-student relationships often over the course of many years, consisting of, among other things, intensive study (mulāzama), is another standard feature in the biographies of male scholars.135 To illustrate, ʿAbd Allāh Ibn Hishām (d. 855/1451) is noted to have dedicated himself completely (lāzamahu mulāzama tāmma) to al-Muḥibb b. Naṣr Allāh and extensively studied fiqh, hadith and other disciplines with him.136 In contrast, none of the women for whom al-Sakhāwī composed biographies are noted to have developed such relationships. As Sayyeed has suggested, this is likely due to the taboo of such intimate contact between unrelated men and women.137

130 131 132 133

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136 137

Ibid., 12:149. Ibid., 12:15. Ibid., 12:74. He also reports that she had memorized a large body of poetry, especially from the Dīwān of al-Bahāʾ Zuhayr, Ibn Ẓafar’s Salwān al-muṭāʿ, and Ibn al-Furāt’s Maṣāriʿ al-ʿushshāq. Ibid., 12:74. Ibid., 12:74. Zaynab bt. ʿAlī (d. 893/1488) is another woman al-Sākhāwī reports memorized core texts including the Quran, the Mukhtaṣar of Ibn Abī Shujāʿ, and al-Mulḥa in grammar. He likewise notes that Amat al-Khāliq bt. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-ʿAqabī (d. 833/1430) committed to memory some of al-Minhāj and all of the Alfīyya of Ibn Mālik, and “some other things as well.” Ibid., 12:9. There are a handful of other exceptional women whose biographies contain references to the memorization of core texts. Ibid., 12:15, 12:74, 12:100. Michael Chamberlin discusses this term and concept in his Knowledge and Social Practice in Medieval Damascus, 1190–1350, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 118. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 5:51. Sayyeed, 179.

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The demands placed on women by family life, marriage and child rearing were no doubt also a barrier to such devotion to learning.138 Not every student, of course, succeeded in their studies. Indeed, many of alSakhāwī’s male biographees neither completed nor excelled in their studies. In fact, those biographees who did succeed were exceptional and al-Sakhāwī generally remarks on their success. He employs a variety of terms to indicate biographees’ success in their scholarship. In some cases he simply notes that the biographee excelled (bara ʿ).139 In other cases, he remarks that the biographee distinguished themselves through their learning and knowledge (tamayaza).140 About some biographees, he notes that they became experts in their fields (mahara).141 Some, although they did not excel or distinguish themselves, achieved a degree of proficiency and engaged in the culture of learning and scholarship, and al-Sakhāwī likewise often takes note of their achievements. About such scholars, he notes that they “participated (shāraka).”142 For example, he notes about ʿUthmān b. Ibrāhīm al-ʿAlawī that “he studied a bit of knowledge and participated in a weak manner (wa qaraʾ shayʾ min al-ʿilm wa shārak mushāraka ḍaʿīfa).”143 Some of those male biographhees, who were successful in their studies, are noted to have received a permission to teach or issue fatwas.144 For instance, he notes about ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad al-Kanānī (d. 854/1450), that “he continuously studied until Ibn al-Mulaqqin endorsed him to teach and issue fatwas (lāzam al-istighāl ḥattā adhina lahu Ibn alMulaqqin).”145 In some cases, like this one, the endorsement was a general one, in others cases, the endorsement could be to teach a specific work or discipline. For instance, he notes about ʿAlī b. ʿUmar al-Talwānī (d. 844/1440) “al-ʿIzz b. Jamāʿ endorsed him to teach his above-mentioned commentary (his commentary of Jamʿ al-jawāmiʿ titled al-Ghurar al-lawāmiʿ), as well as all other books of jurisprudence, long, short and medium in length.”146 Not a single woman

138 139 140 141 142 143 144

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Ibid., 179. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 5:140, 5:142, 5:145, 5:151, 5:156, 5;170, 5:191, 5:198, 5:204, 5;212, 5:216, 5;223, 5;246, 5:254, 5:256, 5:259, 5:267, 5:285, 5:286, 5:287, 5:291, 6:5. Ibid., 5:159, 5:164, 5:194, 5;195, 5:207, 5:214, 5:215, 5:224, 5:226, 5;229, 5:237, 5:243, 5:244, 5:262, 5:274, 5:288, 5:291, 6:5. Ibid., 5:61, 5:65, 5:79, 5:86, 5;139, 5:175, 5:178, 5;183, 5;108, 5:211, 5:269, 5:278, 5:292. Ibid., 5:211, 5:212, 5:217, 5:237, 5:257, 5:259, 5:265, 5:272, 5:274, 5:189. Ibid., 5:111. Ibid., 5:40, 5:46, 5:83, 5:91, 5:94, 5:120, 5:136, 5:143, 5:144, 5:146, 5:148, 5:152, 5:161, 5:161, 5:163, 5:164, 5:167, 5:169, 5:171, 5:181, 5:196, 5:219, 5:235, 5:239, 5:245, 5:254, 5:262, 5:270, 5:275, 5:276, 5:287, 5:289, 5:291, 6:4, 6:5. Ibid., 5:46. Ibid., 5:235.

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hadith transmitter, however, is noted to have received any sort of endorsement to teach or issue legal opinions. Various references to teaching are another standard feature in the biographies male scholars.147 Given the paucity of references to women engaging in study and learning, it is perhaps not surprising that in sharp contrast, female biographies yield only a handful of references to women who engaged in teaching. Berkey has already shown that the biographical dictionaries and chronicles “of the Mamluk period yield not a single instance of the appointment of a woman to a post in a madrasa, or to an endowed post in any educational institution.”148 Even outside of endowed posts only a few of al-Sakhāwī’s biographees engaged in teaching. The most notable woman teacher for whom al-Sakhāwī composed a biography is Fāṭima bt. al-Shams, who studied the recitation of the Quran with her father and became an expert in the field. Al-Sakhāwī notes that, “a number of men and women benefited from her in that field.”149 One woman is noted to have been an expert at teaching girls (mutqina fī taʿlīm al-banāt).150 Khadīja bt. ʿAlī Ibn alMulaqqin (d. 873/1468) is noted to have “explained to women matters related to menstruation and the like (kānat tufīd al-nisāʾ fī bāb al-ḥayd wa naḥwihi).”151 Another biographee is reported to have taught her niece writing and calligraphy.152 Zaynab bt. ʿAlī (d. 892/1497), who was noted above, was employed as a tutor for the household of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn b. al-Jayʿān.153 On the whole, however, there is very little evidence for the participation of these women biographees in teaching hadith or other scholarly disciplines. Indeed, in one of the few cases that mention women teaching, it is embroidery that the biographee is noted to

147

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149 150 151 152 153

Ibid., 5:28, 5:40, 5:49, 5:51, 5:52, 5:53, 5:59, 5:59, 5:60, 5:61, 5:62, 5:63, 5:63, 5:66, 5:67, 5:69, 5:72, 5:75, 5;78, 5:79, 5:81, 5:82, 5:83, 5:86, 5:87, 5:89, 5:89, 5:94, 5:97, 5:101, 5:105, 5:110, 5:114, 5:117, 5:118, 5:119, 5:120, 5:120, 5:122, 5:125, 5:127, 5:132, 5:133, 5:136, 5:139, 5:142, 5:145, 5:146, 5:149, 5:159, 5:164, 5:165, 5:167, 5:169, 5:169, 5:171, 5:171, 5:178, 5:181, 5:182, 5:183, 5;186, 5:188, 5;189, 5:189, 5:191, 5:193, 5:195, 5:196, 5:199, 5;202, 5:204, 5:205, 5:207, 5:208, 5:211, 5:213, 5:216, 5;221, 5;221, 5;223, 5;224, 5:228, 5;229, 5:231, 5:235, 5:238, 5:242, 5:243, 5:244, 5:246, 5:248, 5;254, 5:255, 5:257, 5;259, 5;266, 5:269, 5:273, 5:274, 5:276, 5:278, 5:279, 5:282, 5:285, 5:289, 5:291, 5:292, 6:4, 6:5, 6:6. Jonathan Berkey, “Women and Islamic Education in the Mamluk Period” in Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 145. One woman biographee is, however, noted to have overseen the endowment her father established. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ, 12:43. Ibid., 12:100. Ibid., 12:140. Ibid., 12:28. Ibid., 12:20. Ibid., 12:43.

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have taught, rather than a book or scholarly discipline.154 In addition to teaching, some of those men who were successful in their studies would go on to author texts in the various fields of their scholarship.155 Of the three hundred and twenty-seven women reported to have engaged in hadith transmission, on the other hand, not a single woman is noted to have authored a scholarly work of any kind. In fact, the only works al-Sakhāwī attributed to women are collections of hadith compiled for them by male scholars as vehicles for auditing a selection of their elevated hadith.156 Whether they continued their studies to a level advanced enough to engage in teaching and authorship, al-Sākhāwī notes the madhhab affiliation of the vast majority of his male biographees. Of these thousand randomly selected biographies of male scholars, three hundred and sixty-three are reported to have had some engagement in scholarship, and of these, the overwhelming majority, some three hundred and fifty-five are attributed a madhhab affiliation.157 In striking contrast, only three women are attributed a madhhab affiliation.158 Sitt ʿAysh ʿĀʾisha bt. ʿAlī is one of these three exceptional women, in addition to noting that she was a pious woman, who had a prodigious memory, he notes that she “could read and write,” and could read the books of law and understand them. As was noted above, however, he follows his description of her scholarly achievements by noting that she was a rare exception among women, remarking that “eyes have rarely seen women like her.”159 Significantly, those laymen who were on the periphery of the scholarly community, who associated with scholars and engaged in hadith transmission, but were

154 155

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157 158

159

Ibid., 12:96. Ibid., 5:33, 5:34, 5:49, 5:61, 5:63, 5:75, 5:78, 5:80, 5:87, 5:101, 5:105, 5;107, 5:120, 5:136, 5:139, 5:142, 5:152, 5:159, 5:161, 5:166, 5;168, 5:170, 5:170, 5:178, 5:179, 5:187, 5;189, 5;199, 5:202, 5;211, 5:216, 5:218, 5:220, 5:223, 5:226, 5;231, 5:232, 5:244, 5;249, 5:252, 5:257, 5:259, 5:261, 5:262, 5:272, 5:280, 5:292, 6:6. For example, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Aqfahsī (d. 821/1418) composed a collection of forty hadith for the niece of the prominent Damascene scholar Ibn Kathīr, Sitt al-Quḍāt bt. ʿAbd alWahhāb Ibn Kathīr (d. 801/1399) based on the hadith she received permission to transmit while still a small child. al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 12:54. Other examples of this can be found in the following biographies, 12:27, 12:41, 12:54, 12:76, 12:116. According to Brown, the absence of any evidence of scholarly writing in these women’s biographies is not unusual, rather in the entire history of Islam, only two collections of hadith are known to have been composed by women authors. Brown, Hadith, 49. Ibid., 5:28–6:7. The three Women are Bayram bt. Aḥmad al-Dayrūṭiyya, whom he refers to as al-Mālikiyya, Umm Hānī Maryam bt. Nūr al-Dīn who he refers to as al-Shāfiʿiyya (d. 871/1466), and Sitt al-ʿAysh ʿĀʾisha bt. ʿAlī, who he refers to as al-Ḥanbaliyya 12:15, 12:148, 12:74. Ibid., 12:74.

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not themselves learned are, like their female counterparts, also not attributed a madhhab affiliation.160 ʿAlī b. Aḥmad al-Ṭabarī (d. 840/1436), who was a custodian in the grand mosque of Mecca, and also a carpenter, is an example of this. Al-Sakhāwī does not attribute him a madhhab affiliation and notes about him, “he was an even-tempered, blessed carpenter, he used to make beautiful wooden boxes in his house, and is among those who heard the final sessions of al-Shifāʾ with al-Taqī b. Fahd.”161 Not only do al-Sakhāwī’s biographies of women strongly indicate that the vast majority of female transmitters were laypeople, but they also suggest that most were probably not literate. Only twenty-three women transmitters are explicitly noted to have been literate. That al-Sakhāwī does not explicitly note that these women transmitters were literate does not, of course, necessarily mean that they were illiterate. There are significant indications, however, that al-Sakhāwī took note of these women’s literacy precisely because he considered them exceptional. By way of contrast, al-Sakhāwī almost never takes note of male biographees acquiring simple literacy, seemingly because he did not consider it exceptional for elite males.162 On the other hand, he seems to have considered it noteworthy that women learned simple reading and writing, or even that that they attained a degree of literacy. Indeed, in the biography of Faṭima bt. al-Badr, al-Sakhāwī states precisely that, “she learned some writing and reading (taʿallamat al-kitāba wa al-qirāʾa mā tayassar).”163 In several other 160 161 162

163

Ibid., 5;33, 5:36, 5:41, 5:42, 5:43, 5:52, 5:142, 5;172, 5:212, 5:217, 5;226, 5:230, 5:232, 5:235, 5:244, 5:248, 5:263, 5:280, 5:283, 6:7. Ibid., 5:159. Ibid., 3:51. There are exceptions to this where al-Sakhāwī does make note of men learning basic reading and writing, but in these few cases, he seems to note them, precisely because they were exceptional. He takes note, for instance, of an enslaved male of African origin who was taught to read and write by his master, for instance, because this was likely to some degree exceptional. Ibid. 10:153. In other cases, al-Sakhāwī refers to males learning the skill of “writing,” the context, however, makes it clear that he is using the word in a technical sense, meaning that they learned calligraphy, the secretarial arts or other forms of technical writing. There are a number of references to men learning various forms of technical writing. In some cases, ‘writing’ means calligraphy. For example, he notes about Aḥmad b. ʿAlī Qarṭāyī “He learned to write with al-ʿAlā b. ʿAṣfūr and was and excelled at calligraphy and its arts. Until he became a master of the mansūb script, especially in the way of Yāqūṭ. (katab ʿalā al-ʿAlā) b. ʿAṣfūr fa baraʿ fi al-kitāba wa fanūnihā ḥattā fāq fī al-mansūb lā siyamā fī ṭarīqat Yaqūṭ.” Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmi ʿ, 2:29. In other cases alkitāba refers to the secretarial or administrative arts. For instance, “he mastered writing and was in charge of sultanic works, and distinguished himself in accounting and composing the diwān.” Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 2:42. “he excelled at writing and continued to climb the ranks until al-Manṣūr made him a wazīr.” Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 2:268. Ibid., 12:97.

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cases, the only thing al-Sakhāwī remarked about female biographees is simply that they learned to read and write.164 Conversely, it is telling that al-Sakhāwī does not describe a single woman as illiterate, while he does make a point of noting that a number of male biographees were illiterate or could not read and write well (lā yuḥsin al-kitāba).165 This would seem to suggest something about the expectations his society had of the two sexes with regards to their literacy.

7

Longevity, Elevation and Women Transmitters

There is then a preponderance of evidence indicating that most women hadith transmitters were laypeople who attained prominence as transmitters solely due to their having received hadith at a young age and then surviving long enough to acquire a degree of elevation. The patterns that emerge in the biographies of al-Sakhāwī’s female hadith transmitters demonstrate the central role longevity played in the careers of women transmitters. Almost without exception, al-Sakhāwī’s female hadith transmitters were taken by relatives to audit hadith with an elderly transmitter, while they were still very young girls. Or alternately, a relative or acquaintance requested for them permission to transmit on a transmitter’s authority, while they were very young.166 Then, after either auditing hadith or receiving permission to transmit as children, or both, there is no evidence to suggest that, in all, but exceptional cases, they had anything to do with learning or scholarship; they only reemerge in the world of hadith transmission, when they had outlived most of their peers and their

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The only thing he notes about Faṭīma bt. al-Atābak Azbak al-Ẓāhirī, for instance, other than the names of her parents, was that she “learned to read and write.” Ibid., 12:84. In the same vein, he notes that Zulaykhā bt. Ibrāhīm was, “pious and could read a bit of the Quran” Although this may mean she learned to recite a bit of the Quran. Ibid., 12:36. There is evidence suggesting that even for the daughters of the scholarly elite, basic literacy was noteworthy, as is illustrated by the biography al-Sakhāwī’s teacher Ibn Ḥajar’s daughter, Zaynab Khātūn (d. 833/1430), about whom the only information he records is that, “she learned to read and write and was then married to the commander Shāhīn al-Karkī.” Ibid., 12:48. Ibid., 1:260, 1;25, 4:280, 4:293. The later mode of transmission was acquired through what is known as an istidʿāʾ, that is a document requesting ijāza, not for a specific person, but for multiple individuals that was circulated among prominent transmitters, who would then write a short note granting those mentioned in the document permission to transmit. Such documents, which are discussed in more detail in Chapter Three, were quite often circulated for the children of elite families.

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chains of transmission had become comparatively elevated and valuable.167 The majority of the women who went on to transmit lived well beyond what was likely the average life expectancy. Of the women who received hadith and then went on to transmit, it is possible to determine the birth and death dates of seventy-three.168 Remarkably, of these the seventy-three women hadith transmitters, the average lifespan is seventy-nine.169 There can be little doubt that this was far longer than the average lifespan in the ninth/fifteenth century. Not all of these women, of course, attained prominence. The majority of these women were, in fact, relatively minor transmitters. Significantly, among those women who do obtain prominence as transmitters there is a strong correlation between their longevity and the degree of prominence they achieve. AlSakhāwī indicates a transmitter’s relative prominence in a number of ways. He might note, for example, how sought out they were, or whether those who sought them out were students (al-ṭalaba), relatively minor scholars (alfuḍalāʾ), or leading authorities (al-aʾimā). Another indication of a transmitter’s relative prominence, is how much those who sought them out for transmission chose to audit with them. In other words, whether they chose to only read a small amount of hadith to them, or if they valued them enough to invest the time to read a considerable amount of hadith with them. In the same vein, a further indication of a transmitters prominence is how frequently they were asked to transmit hadith. Conversely, noting that a transmitter who was not sought out for audition at all, but was only asked to issue ijāzas indicates that collectors did not consider that transmitter’s chains of transmission valuable enough to invest the time to audit hadith with them. Of the seventy-three women for whom it is possible to establish both a birth and a death date, the youngest woman to transmit hadith died at the age of forty-eight. Remarkably, she is the only woman in this group of transmitters to have died in her forties.170 Those women who died in their fifties were slightly more sought after, but still only six of them transmitted hadith.171 Significantly, none of these women transmitters who died in their fifties became prominent, nor were any of them sought out for oral transmission, but they were only requested to issue ijāzas. Eight women transmitters died in their sixties—none of them became prolific or

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Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 12:95, 12:98, 12:100. Ibid., 3, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 15, 18, 21, 23, 26, 28, 29, 32, 34, 36, 37, 38, 40, 45, 48, 49, 50, 53, 54, 56, 65, 67, 69, 70, 74, 76, 79, 80, 81, 83, 85, 86, 90, 91, 94, 95, 96, 97, 100, 109, 110, 11, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 119, 121, 123, 143, 148, 150, 152. Ibid., 12:23, 12:23, 12:49, 12:95, 12:98, 12:100, 12:109, 12:79, 12:26. Ibid., 12:13. Ibid., 12:67, 12:79, 12:90, 12:110, 12:114, 12:143.

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prominent transmitters.172 Four of these women transmit a relatively small amount of hadith.173 One transmits orally, but only very little.174 Three of these women who died in their sixties do not transmit orally at all, but only issue ijāzas.175 It is only among the twenty-two women who live into their seventies, that we begin to find indications of prominence.176 None of these women, however, achieved more than a modicum of prominence, but fourteen of them are reported to have engaged in some oral transmission.177 Six of these women were not sought out for oral transmission, but were only requested to issue ijāzas.178 Two of them are, however, sought out for audition by leading scholars. Significantly though, both of these women are exceptional because they hail from very prominent scholarly families. The first of these is Jūwayriyya (d. 863/1459), the daughter of the renowned Egyptian scholar of hadith, al-Ḥāfiẓ al-ʿIrāqī.179 The second is Sitt al-ʿAysh ʿĀʾisha bt. ʿAlī al-Ḥanbaliyya, who was discussed above.180 Both were taken to hear hadith as children from numerous prominent transmitters, by their families, who also requested numerous ijāzas for them. Although their chains of transmission would not have been particularly elevated, they were likely both sought out by leading scholars due to the certainty of the connection they could provide to their esteemed families, as the transmission of sons or daughters from their fathers was highly prized.181 The breadth of transmission their families networks afforded them, likely added to their allure. The fact that Sitt al-ʿAysh, was herself a fairly accomplished scholar was probably a further factor in her popularity. Remarkably, the largest number of al-Sakhāwī’s women transmitters, whose age it is possible to establish, lived into their eighties. There are twenty-eight of these female octogenarian hadith transmitters.182 It is only among the women who lived into this age-range that we begin to find transmitters who are noted 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182

Ibid., 12:15, 12:28, 12:67, 12:67, 12:61, 12:110, 12:117, 12:150. Ibid., 12:15, 12:28, 12:53, 12:110. Ibid., 12:15. Ibid., 12:67, 12:117, 12:150. Ibid., 12:3, 12:8, 12:13, 12:18, 12:26, 12:26–27, 12:36, 12:40, 12:40, 12:45, 12:48–49, 12:50, 12:54, 12:65, 12:74, 12:83, 12:85, 12:96, 12:100, 12:115, 12:121, 12:121. Ibid., 12:8, 12:26–27, 12:36, 12:40, 12:40, 12:48–49, 12:50, 12:54, 12:65, 12:85, 12:96, 12:115, 12:121, 12:121. Ibid., 12:3, 12:13, 12:26, 12:45, 12:83, 12:100. Ibid., 12:18. Ibid., 12:73–74. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, 315. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 12:6, 12:7, 12:7, 12:7, 12:10, 12:12, 12:15, 12:23, 12:23, 12:28, 12:29, 12:37, 12:38, 12:38, 12:54, 12:56, 12:69, 12:70, 12:81, 12:86, 12:91, 12:94, 12:97, 12:111, 12:113, 12:116, 12:119, 12:123.

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to have been prominent. Eight of these octogenarian women become prolific transmitters, were highly sought after, and transmitted large bodies of material.183 Three of these women were recognized as the last living member of their generation of transmitters.184 Telling of the role their age played in their careers as transmitters, al-Sakhāwī notes that several of these women only become prominent at the ends of their lives, when they had outlived most of their generation of transmitters.185 Transmitters, whether men or women, who lived into their eighties were rare and would generally become, at least, somewhat prominent. Indeed, there are only three women in this group who are reported to have only transmitted a small amount of hadith.186 Of these three less prominent transmitters, one of them only lived to the age of eighty-one.187 Another lived to be eighty-six and had audited hadith as a young girl with a number of important transmitters and as a result had elevated chains of transmission, but was extremely hard of hearing. Nevertheless, desirous of the degree of elevation she could provide him, al-Sakhāwī notes that he screamed one hadith in her ear in order to establish an oral chain of transmission from her.188 Demonstrative of the primary role that longevity played in the career of these transmitters, al-Sakhāwī indicates that under normal circumstances he considered it exceptional that a transmitter who lived well into his or her eighties was not sought out by hadith collectors; Fāṭima bt. Khalīl al-Maqdisī (d. 838/1435), was such an exception. Fāṭima was born sometime before 750/1349 into a family of Ḥanbalī scholars in Cairo, who requested numerous ijāzas for her from some of the leading transmitters of the day. She then survived to be the last living transmitter from many of them (tafarradat bi-l-riwāya ʿan al-kathīr minhum).189 She was not entirely ignored by hadith collectors, al-Sakhāwī notes that al-Qibābī compiled for her a collection of hadith through her chains of transmission, and she transmitted it and some other material, but she was not a highly sought after and prolific transmitter. For al-Sakhāwī it was deplorable for such a long-lived transmitter to have been largely ignored by the collectors around her, and as a result blames her contemporaries for their laziness and failing to take more hadith from her.190

183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190

Ibid., 12;12, 12:122–123, 12:38, 12:69, 12:97, 12;116, 12:119, 12:123. Ibid., 12:7, 12:119, 12:23. Ibid., 12:37, 12:38, 12:123. Ibid., 12:6, 12:7, 12:81. Ibid., 12:81. Ibid., 12:7. Ibid., 12:86. Ibid., 12:86.

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Only six of these women transmitters lived into their nineties, and predictably, all of these nonagenarians became prolific transmitters.191 Four of them are noted to have been sought out for audition by the leading authorities of their day,192 and four are also noted to have been the last surviving member of their generation.193 Not surprisingly, one of the least prominent of these transmitters is also one of the youngest in her cohort, surviving to approximately ninety.194 Even if a transmitter survived into his or her nineties and had a high degree of elevation, other factors could interfere with them attaining prominence. Umm Hānī Maryam bt. Nūr al-Dīn, who was mentioned above, ironically is the only woman in this group who had any learning, but nonetheless she does not become a very prolific transmitter, in spite of surviving to ninety-three, because very few of the manuscripts she had audited were still extant. Still al-Sakhāwī notes that he searched for manuscripts containing her auditions notices and read to her all of the extant manuscripts with her notices of audition he could find.195 ʿĀʾisha bt. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Hādī (d. 816/1413) is the most prominent woman in this group and a prime example of the prominence that unusual longevity and elevation could bestow.196 Born in the year 723/1323 into a prominent family of Ḥanbalī scholars in Damascus, when she was still a small child, her father took her to audition sessions with a number of the leading authorities of the day, including al-Ḥajjār, who was discussed above.197 Her father likewise solicited ijāzas for the young ʿĀʾisha from numerous prominent transmitters.198 This gave her a wide network of connections to esteemed transmitters and hadith collections. She was not, of course, alone, many others had heard and received ijāzas from these same authorities. ʿĀʾisha, however, was destined to outlive every other person who had also received hadith from the authorities she had taken hadith from as a small child.199 Or as al-Sakhāwī notes, she lived “until she became the lone survivor from those who had heard or received ijāzas from her shaykhs in all of the lands.”200 She would live to the age of ninety-three and as a result became one of the most prominent transmitters of the ninth/fifteenth century. Hadith collectors traveled from all 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200

Ibid., 12:21, 12:34, 12:49, 12:76, 12:95, 12:148. Ibid., 12:34, 12:49, 12:76, 12:95. Ibid., 12:21, 12:49, 12:76, 12:95. Ibid., 12:21. Ibid., 12:148. Ibid., 12:76. Ibid., 12:76. Ibid., 12:76. Ibid., 12:76. Ibid., 12:76.

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over to hear from her. The renowned Egyptian hadith scholar Ibn Ḥajar traveled to Damascus from Cairo to take hadith from her and audited the Ṣahīḥ and fifteen other collections with her.201 Sayeed suggests that ʿĀʾisha’s prominence as a transmitter was due, at least in part, to her having studied hadith with her father and others “teachers” and that her family was committed to the education of its daughters.202 The sources, however, provide no indication that she ever acquired any education, nor that her prominence was due to anything but the uniquely elevated chains of transmission she possessed as a result of outliving all of her contemporaries. The sources provide no indication that her relationship with the authorities from whom she took hadith was an educational one. On the contrary, her encounters with all of her sources took place when she was still a very young child. Indeed, ʿĀʾisha’s audition with her most prominent source of hadith, al-Ḥajjār, who significantly was himself illiterate and definitely not a teacher, took place when she was only four years old.203 Most of her other sources of hadith were dead by the time she was ten, making it highly improbable that the aim of these encounters was anything but pure transmission for purposes of piety.204 Further evidence that that her longevity and elevation was the catalyst that drove her career as a transmitter and propelled her to prominence, can be found in the fact that she is not sought out to transmit until she was in her seventies, in fact most of those who took from ʿĀʾisha were not even born until she was in her seventies.205 Some were not even born until she was in her eighties, and would have still been children when she died, making it highly unlikely that these were educational master-student relationships.206 Instead, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we can only conclude that her prominence was solely the result of her longevity and unique degree of elevation. The case of the longest-lived woman transmitter for whom al-Sakhāwī wrote a biographical notice, ʿIṣmat bt. Muḥammad al-Abraqūhī (after 833/1429), demonstrates well the primary role longevity played in a woman’s career as a hadith transmitter, and further serves to illustrate that longevity alone— even without having directly received hadith—could result in a woman gaining some fame as a transmitter. ʿIṣmat’s case is remarkable because she became a transmitter without ever actually auditing hadith or receiving an ijāza issued

201 202 203 204 205 206

Ibid., 12:76. Sayeed, 171–172. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 12:76. Sayeed, 172. Sayeed, 174. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 5:133, 5:209.

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specifically to her. She is reported, however, to have lived to the extreme oldage of one hundred and twenty-two. Upon learning of her extreme longevity, some scholars read hadith to her, in spite of her not possessing a conventional chain of transmission based on what is known as the global ijāza (ijāza ʿāmma), which is a permission to transmit issued by a transmitter to all living Muslims in a given time. As was discussed in Chapter Three, although theoretically this was considered a rather weak mode of transmission, it was used fairly frequently. Based on this, she could transmit hadith from any authorities who issued such global permissions after the year of her birth in 711/1312, thus establishing an extremely elevated connection to hadith transmitters that had been dead for a century.207 While the portrait of women hadith transmitters that emerges in al-Sakhāwī’s biographies is limited to the ninth/fifteenth century, it is mirrored in earlier biographical sources. Ibn Ḥajar’s biographical dictionary of the eighth/fourteenth century, for instance, paints an overwhelmingly similar portrait of women participation in hadith transmission. Although more difficult to survey than those in al-Sakhāwī’s dictionary because the biographical notices of women are not contained in a single section, but rather are dispersed alphabetically throughout the main body of the dictionary, Ibn Ḥajar’s work contains biographies of numerous women who participated in hadith transmission. From a randomly selected sample of one hundred biographies of these women, ninety-seven seem to have been laywomen and contain no indication whatsoever of learning or scholarship.208 Three women are reported to have had relatively minor learning, one is simply noted to have been literate.209 The narrative sources contain fewer biographies for women hadith transmitters of the seventh/thirteenth century, however, a survey of the biographees who died between the years six hundred to six hundred and fifty-eight in al-Dhahabī’s Siyar yields eight women who engaged in hadith transmission.210 Consistent with the data available for the following centuries, of these eight women who engaged in transmission, not a single one of them is noted to have any engagement in learning or scholarship, instead their biographies are entirely focused on their roles as transmitters. 207 208

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Al-Sakhāwī notes that extreme longevity ran in her family and that her father lived to the age of one hundred and fourteen. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 12:78. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-kāmina, 1:49, 1:492, 2:96, 2:97, 2:103, 2:239–240, 2:349, 2:248, 2:249, 2:250, 2:251, 2:252, 2;253, 2:254, 2:255, 2:258, 2:259, 3:2, 3:3, 3:4, 3:5, 4:257, 4:258, 4:259, 4:260, 4:261, 4:262, 4:263, 4:264, 4:265, 4:266, 4:267. Ibid., 2:349. One of these is noted to have memorized and taught the Quran, and another is simply described as having been in the habit of reciting the Quran frequently. 3:2, 4:260. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 21:434, 21:482, 21:499, 22:23, 22:85, 23:92, 23:233, 23:270.

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The View of Women’s Hadith Transmission from the Documentary Evidence

Audition notices are the richest source of documentary evidence we have for the participation of women in hadith transmission. The corpus of Damascene audition notices recorded between the years 550/1155 and 750/1349 corroborates the view of women’s roles in hadith transmission that emerges from the narrative sources, but provides a far more detailed perspective of their participation in hadith transmission in this period. Recorded upon completion of audition sessions, these documents contain details including, the place where the session was held, the date of transmission, and the names of readers, auditors and transmitters. In total, the corpus contains one thousand three hundred audition notices, documenting one hundred and eight audition sessions in which one or more women acted as a transmitter. The locations where sessions in which women transmitted hadith are one of the more interesting details this data provides that is not generally found in the narrative sources. In total, eighty-four notices record the location in which the session was held. These notices demonstrate that women acted as transmitters in a range of locations, from gardens to madrasas. Interestingly, these notices indicate that the transmitter’s gender seems to have played some role in the selection of the venue for the session. They document that forty-three, slightly more than half, of these audition sessions took place in domestic locations. Thirty-five are noted to have been held in the house of the woman transmitting.211 Five took place in the home of the person acting as reader for the session.212 Three sessions were held in the home of a relative of the transmitter.213 By comparison, men transmitted significantly less frequently in domestic spaces. In the same number of randomly selected notices, in which men acted as the transmitter, and the location is noted, only twenty occurred in domestic spaces.214 Most of the sessions held in a domestic setting, in which one of the transmitters were women, not surprisingly, were fairly small gatherings. Eleven sessions, were quite intimate gatherings attended by between two and five attendees.215 Six sessions were attended by between six to ten attendees.216 211

212 213 214 215 216

Stefan Leder, Yasīn Muḥammad al-Sawwās et al., (eds), Muʿjam al-samāʿāt al-Dimashqiyya: al-ṣuwar, 13, 19, 34, 40, 44, 45, 63, 65, 66, 73, 74, 76, 77, 78, 144, 146, 197, 250, 304, 306, 311, 375, 407, 409, 429. Ibid., 36, 49, 74, 415. Ibid., 42, 84, 504. Ibid., 25–54. Ibid., 13, 40, 42, 44, 49, 144, 400, 402, 415, 429, 504. Ibid., 34, 73, 74, 250, 401, 402.

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Fifteen sessions were attended by between eleven and fifteen attendees.217 One of these sessions was attended by eighteen, and another by nineteen.218 Three of these sessions were attended by between twenty and twenty-seven attendees.219 One session held in the home of Zaynab bt. al-Kamāl, four years before her death, was attended by a whopping sixty-one attendees.220 This session was perhaps so well attended, although it was held in her house, because her advanced age caused those who attended to believe it might be their last opportunity to hear from her. While it was less common for women to transmit in public settings, their participation was by no means limited to domestic venues. A total of twenty sessions with women transmitters were held in institutions. Four of the sessions, in which women acted as transmitters in public settings, were held in mosques.221 Thirteen sessions occurred in madrasas.222 Three session were held in Sufi monasteries (ribāt).223 Surprisingly, only one session was held in an institution specifically identified as dedicated to the teaching and transmission of hadith (dār al-ḥadīth).224 Not surprisingly these sessions held in institutions are generally attended by many more auditors than those held in private domestic spaces. Although two sessions were attended by just two auditors, the majority of the sessions were attended by between nine to thirty-nine auditors.225 One session was attended by one hundred and-five auditors.226 This session, held in the Muẓaffarī mosque in 721/1321, was likely so well attended because it was something of a special event, as it involved not just one transmitter—but ten— including both men and women, all of whom were advanced in years. While such a large group of transmitters was unusual, and clearly attracted a crowd, audition sessions involving multiple transmitters were not uncommon. In fact, the majority of the sessions held in institutions involving women, twelve out of twenty, involved multiple transmitters. The second largest audition session in

217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224

225 226

Ibid., 36, 42, 45, 65, 84, 146, 197, 311, 375, 376, 409. Ibid., 65, 304. Ibid., 306. Ibid., 63. Ibid., 19, 42, 102, 173, 285. Ibid., 37, 39, 61, 66, 74, 110, 146, 145, 146, 287, 349, 378, 463. Ibid., 77, 152, 372. Ibid., 145. A number of sessions are noted to have taken place in the “al-madrasa alḌiyāʾiyya,” or simply the “al-Ḍiyāʾiyya.” Only in one notice is there a reference to the Dār al-hadith al-Ḍiyāʾiyya. These may be references to the same institution that was of mixed use. 37, 39, 61, 66, 74, 145, 146, 287, 349, 378. Ibid., 19, 37, 39, 42, 61, 66, 74, 110, 102, 145, 146, 285, 287, 348, 349, 463, 722. Ibid., 285.

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which women participated as transmitters, in fact, involved thirteen transmitters, two men and eleven women, and attracted sixty-one auditors.227 These sessions involving multiple transmitters had the advantage of providing the auditors with a broad network of connections to the text being transmitted through multiple paths of transmission. Most sessions in which women transmitted in institutions, however, were considerably smaller gatherings in which between two and five transmitters participated.228 Interestingly, one of the more popular locations where women transmitted in these notices were the pleasure gardens on the outskirts of Damascus. Gardens were perhaps popular sites for women to transmit for the same reasons that domestic settings were popular, they were more private settings and thus more suited to women transmitters in a society with generally conservative views regarding gender segregation. A total of fifteen sessions in which women acted as transmitters were held in private gardens.229 Ten of the twenty-six total sessions in which Karīma bt. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Qurayshiyya (d. 641/1243), for example, acted as transmitter, were held in her private garden East of the suburb Ṣāliḥiyya in the area of al-Maytur.230 Most of these sessions, were fairly intimate gatherings attended by between two and five auditors. Born in 546/1151, Karīma’s father was a prominent hadith scholar and took his young daughter to hear some small collections of hadith from a number of prominent and elderly hadith transmitters, all of whom would be dead before she reached the age of twelve.231 Her father also requested ijāzas for her from some of the leading transmitters of the day, including the famed transmitter of the Ṣaḥīḥ Abū al-Waqt al-Sijzī. As al-Dhahabī notes in his biography of her, Karīma outlived every other person who had taken hadith from the sources she took hadith as a child. It is not exactly clear when her elevation was first noticed, but the earliest recorded notice for her is dated 629/1232—she would have been eighty-three.232 The largest session held in her garden occurred in 639/1242,

227 228 229 230

231 232

Ibid., 42. Ibid., 26, 37, 39, 61, 66, 145, 249, 285, 287, 372. Ibid., 13, 193–195, 400–409. Another three notices identify the location only as al-Maytur, these was session likely took place in her garden as well, as the garden was located in that area. Leder, al-Sawwās et al., (eds), Muʿjam al-samāʿāt al-Dimashqiyya: al-ṣuwar, 195. According to Badrān this was a garden district east of Ṣāliḥiyya. ‘Abd al-Qādir b. Aḥmad b. Muṣṭafā Badrān, ed. Zuhayr al-Shāwīsh, Munādamat al-aṭlāl wa musāmarat al-khiyāl (Beirut: al-Maktab alIslāmī, 1405/1985), 211. Al-Dahahabī, Siyar, 23:92. Among them are Abū Yaʿlā al-Hubūbī (d. 555/1160), Abū Muḥammad al-Dārānī (d. 558/1163), and Ḥassān b. Tamīm al-Zayyāt (d. 556/1161). Leder, al-Sawwās et al., (eds), Muʿjam al-samāʿāt al-Dimashqiyya: al-ṣuwar, 402.

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and was attended by twenty-four auditors.233 Two short hadith collections were read in these sessions, the Musnad of ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar compiled by alṬarsūsī (d. 273/886),234 and the Ḥadith Luwayn of Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad b. Sulaymān al-Maṣṣīṣī (d. 246/860).235 The first consists of ninety-seven hadith, the second consist of one hundred and twenty. Both could probably be read in the span of a couple hours or perhaps less. It is unclear how these sessions were arranged, but one can imagine that leaving the city and spending the day reading hadith in a garden was a pleasant way to spend a day, and perhaps those that went to visit Karīma in her garden outside Damascus, also thought of themselves as engaging in the tradition of traveling to hear hadith. Karīma clearly enjoyed her garden and she continued to transmit it in until just before she died in the year 641/243 at the ripe age of ninety-five.236 The documentary evidence confirms the correlation between longevity and the relative prominence women transmitters found in the narrative sources discussed above. Because audition notices contain the exact dates on which the auditions took place, however, they give a much more detailed and quantifiable view of this relationship than the provided by narrative sources. By far the most prominent of the women transmitters in the Damascus Corpus of audition notices is Zaynab bt. al-Kamāl. In total Zaynab transmitted in thirtyeight of these sessions.237 Significantly, the earliest of the sessions took place in 721/1321, when Zaynab was seventy-five years old.238 Of all the sessions in which she transmitted, however, only four took place before she was eighty.239 Seven sessions took place between her eightieth and eighty-fifth birthdays.240 The majority of the sessions, in which she transmitted, a total of twenty-two sessions, took place after 731/1331, when she would have been eighty-five, and her death in 740/1339.241 The case of one of the more prolific transmitters after Zaynab bt. al-Kamāl, Zaynab bt. Makkī (d. 688/1289), provides further evidence

233 234 235 236 237

238 239 240 241

Ibid., 407. Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm al-Ṭarsūsī, Musnad ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar, ed. Aḥmad Rātib ʿAramūsh (Beirut: Dār al-Nafāʾis, 1393/1973). Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad b. Sulaymān al-Maṣīṣī, Juzʾ fīhi ḥadīth Luwayn, ed. Masʿad b. ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Saʿdanī (Riyadh: aḍwāʾ al-Salaf, 1417/1998). Al-Dhahabī, 23:93. Leder, al-Sawwās et al., (eds), Muʿjam al-samāʿāt al-Dimashqiyya: al-ṣuwar, 15, 34, 26, 37, 39, 40, 61, 63, 66, 65, 73, 74, 144, 145, 146, 212, 285, 287, 304, 306, 250, 349, 352, 356, 372, 378, 425, 429. Ibid., 285. Ibid., 15, 74, 285, 350. Ibid., 37, 39, 73, 74, 145, 287, 378. Ibid., 34, 26, 40, 61, 63, 66, 65, 144, 146, 212, 287, 304, 306, 250, 349, 352, 356, 372, 425, 429.

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of the central role longevity played in propelling the careers of women hadith transmitters. Zaynab was born in the year 594/1198 in Ṣāliḥiyya and while still a small child she was taken to auditions with Ḥanbal b. ʿAbd Allāh, the prominent transmitter of the Musnad, ʿUmar b. Ṭabarzad (d. 607/1210), and others.242 Then, after her childhood auditions, Zaynab only emerges to transmit in her first audition session in the year 680/1281, when she was eighty-six years old.243 She then continued to regularly transmit, transmitting in a total of ten sessions in the Damascus corpus. She, in fact, continued to transmit right up until the year of her death at the age of ninety-four.244 Most of the other women who participated in transmission sessions in the Damascene corpus were not very prolific transmitters, and only acted as transmitter in a few sessions, but these women too only begin transmitting at an advanced age. Sitt al-Fuqahāʾ (d. 726/1326), for instance, transmitted in three sessions, the first of these was in 722/1322 when she was eighty-five years old. She then transmitted two more times in the following two years.245 Sitt al-ʿArab bt. Yaḥya b. Qāymāz (d. 684/1285) transmitted twice, the first time in 678/1279 at seventy-nine years old, then again in 680/1281 at eighty-one.246 While the majority of the women who transmitted in this corpus of notices had their first session in their seventies or eighties, a small minority of women began transmitting in their sixties.247 The Ayyubid princess Faṭima bt. al-Malak Abū ʿAbbas Aḥmad b. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Ayyūbī (d. 678/1280), for instance, transmitted in her first session at the age of sixty-two.248 These are, however, exceptional cases, and the majority of the documentary evidence thus confirms what the narrative sources indicate, that lay female transmitters, like their male counterparts, were only sought out for transmission when they had reached an advanced age and their chains of transmission had become elevated and rare. The language used to describe the women transmitters who appear in this corpus of audition notices closely parallels that encountered in the documentary sources that was discussed above. The honorifics given to these women transmitters, without exception, reference their piety, and confirms that the overwhelming majority of women transmitters were laypeople. The adjective most frequently attributed to women transmitters in these notices is “pious 242 243 244 245 246 247 248

Taqī al-Dāin al-Fāsī, Dhayl al-Taqyīd fī ruwāt al-sunan wa al-asānīd, ed. Kamāl Yūsuf (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1410/1990), 2:371. Leder, al-Sawwās et al., (eds), Muʿjam al-samāʿāt al-Dimashqiyya: al-ṣuwar, 294. Ibid., 110, 463. Ibid., 350, 336, 77. Ibid., 250, 295. Ibid., 19, 42. Ibid., 375.

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(ṣāliḥa).”249 This is followed in frequency by “the source of transmission (almusnida).”250 More rarely they are called “the worshiper (al-ʿābida),”251 “the ascetic (zāhida),”252 “honorable ( jalīla),”253 and “noble (aṣīla).”254 Tellingly, in five audition notices women transmitters are referred to as “long-lived (muʿammira).”255 Significantly, however, they are never described with the scholarly honorifics that male transmitters are regularly given in this corpus of notices. In some notices, which document sessions in which both male and female transmitters participated, the contrast in the language used is stark and seems to be quite deliberate. A notice documenting a session held in the year 727/1327 in which two transmitters participated, for instance, the male transmitter is identified as “the erudite, leading scholar,” while his female counterpart is only identified with her name.256 In another notice, the male transmitter is referred to as “the unique preserver of tradition (al-aḥad al-ḥāfiẓ),” while his sister, who also acted as a transmitter in the session, is only identified by her name without any honorifics, scholarly or otherwise.257 Likewise, in a notice recording a session held in Damascus in the year 700/1301, involving a male transmitter and his wife, he is called “the erudite hadith scholar,” while his wife is recorded as “the pious mother of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān.”258 Demonstrative of the passive role these laywomen played in these sessions, they are never noted to have performed the function of reader in these auditions, but instead they are always passive participants to whom the text was read, thereby providing the auditors a conduit to their exceptionally elevated chains of transmission and their perceived spiritual power.259

249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259

Ibid., 13, 19, 40, 42, 44, 49, 61, 73, 74, 110, 144, 152, 173, 197, 212, 234, 304, 306, 311, 317, 319, 336, 356, 372, 429, 504. Ibid., 13, 19, 40, 42, 77, 145, 306, 311, 319, 336, 348, 372, 429, 463, 504. Ibid., 304. Ibid., 304. Ibid., 304. Ibid., 49, 152, 189, 356, 375, 376. Ibid., 173, 372, 378, 415, 463. Ibid., 287. Ibid., 14. Ibid., 42. In the catalog, it is erroneously noted that Karīma bt. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb acts as the reader and transmitter for two notices. Leder, al-Sawwās, Muʿjam al-samāʿāt al-Dimashqiyya: alṣuwar, 70. Upon consulting the images of the notice, however, one discovers that this is a mistake. In fact, the reader for the first notice was one Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Nāblusī, and for the second Muḥammad b. Yūsuf al-Birzālī. Leder, al-Sawwās, Muʿjam al-samāʿāt al-Dimashqiyya: ṣuwar, 195.

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Women and Hadith Transmission beyond the Tenth/Sixteenth Century

Women continued to participate in hadith transmission well beyond the tenth/ sixteenth century. Our sources for this period are, however, far sparser than for the preceding period. As was discussed in Chapter Two, there seems to have been significant shifts in the culture of hadith transmission following the tenth/sixteenth century. The sources produced in this period take far less interest in hadith transmitters and their activities than they had in previous centuries. Hadith transmission had been one of the primary interests of authors of biographical dictionaries since the emergence of the genre, following the tenth/sixteenth century, however, there are far fewer references to hadith transmission in the narrative sources. There is also a major rupture in the practice of recording audition notices, and they become increasingly scarce in this period, to the extent that one only rarely encounters notices recorded after the tenth/sixteenth century. The view we have of women transmitters is thus much foggier in this period than it was in the preceding centuries. Nevertheless, the sources do preserve traces of women’s participation in hadith transmission beyond the tenth/sixteenth century. In the eleventh/seventeenth century, Quraysh al-Ṭabariyya (d. 1107/1696) became a prominent transmitter in Mecca, and would ultimately be remembered as one of “the seven pillars of hadith transmission in the Ḥijāz” between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.260 Like many of the women transmitters of previous centuries studied above, Quraysh’s father, ʿAbd al-Qādir, was a scholar and a close student of the influential Egyptian Shāfiʿī scholar Shams al-Dīn al-Ramlī (d. 1004/1596), as well as the Indian scholar ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Ibrāhim al-Ḥuṣrī.261 Quraysh’s father requested an ijāza for her from the latter of these two scholars, allowing her to cite a very elevated and prestigious chain of transmission from al-Ḥuṣrī to the Egyptian scholar al-Sinbāṭī (d. 931/1542), to Ibn Ḥajar, al-ʿAynī, and alBulqīnī among others.262 Her father also issued her an ijāza enabling her to cite an elevated chain of transmission leading back to the prominent Egyptian scholar Zakariyya al-Anṣārī (d. 926/1520) through his student al-Ramlī.263 Quraysh was not, however, only a transmitter, but was a scholar in her own right. Indeed, her student al-Shams al-Budayrī described her as “the pious eru-

260 261 262 263

Al-Kattānī, Fahras al-fahāris, 2:941. Ibid., 2:941. Ibid., 2:941. Ibid., 2:941.

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dite scholar possessing profound insight (al-ṣāliḥa, al-ʿallāma al-fahhāma).”264 Al-Budayrī, reported reading with her portions of the six canonical hadith collections, the Muwaṭṭāʾ, the famous Musnads, including those of al-Shāfiʿī, and Aḥmad, he also notes that she granted him an ijāza and that she herself composed a lengthy document for him attesting to this ijāza.265 As was noted above, the nineteenth century scholar Fāliḥ al-Ẓāhirī counted Quraysh among three women he would accept as his imam and follow in ritual prayer.266 Amat Allāh bt. al-Shāh ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Dihlawī (d. 1357/1939) is another example of a prominent woman hadith transmitter active beyond the tenth/ sixteenth century.267 Born in Medina in 1251/1836, her father (d. 1296/1879) hailed from a scholarly family of Dehli, where he studied the school of the renowned scholar Shah Walī Allāh. Following the rebellion of 1857 against the British, he was forced to emigrate and ultimately settled in Medina.268 In Medina he established himself as one of the city’s leading scholars and hadith transmitters. Her father oversaw his children’s education and trained Amat Allāh and her siblings in hadith and other Islamic disciplines. She audited the Six Canonical Books and many other works with him. He also requested ijāzas for her from all the hadith transmitters he encountered, including, among others, his teacher Muḥammad ʿĀbid al-Sindī (d. 1257/1842).269 After her father’s death, Amat Allāh eventually replaced her father as one of the most prominent transmitters of Medina. Al-Kattānī notes that in imitation of her father, she sometimes even sat in the same place her father used to sit while transmitting hadith, where she too would transmit, but from behind a curtain.270 Al-Marʿashlī notes that often when hadith collectors would visit her house in Medina, she would have a portion of the Ṣaḥīḥs of al-Bukhārī and Muslim read, as well as the beginning of the Muṣannaf of Ibn Abī Shayba, the Awāʾil of al-ʿAjlūnī and the Musalsalāt al-Watariyya.271 Surviving to the age of one hundred and three, generations of hadith collectors took hadith from her including some of the most prominent transmitters of the twentieth century, among them Yāsīn al-Fadānī272 and ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī.273 The latter notes that 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273

Ibid., 2:941. Ibid., 2:942. Ibid., 2:942. Al-Marʿ ashlī, Nathr al-jawāhir wa al-durar, 259. Al-Ziriklī, al-Aʿlām, 4:33. Al-Marʿ ashlī, Nathr al-jawāhir wa al-durar, 259. https://www.ahlalhdeeth.com/vb/showthread.php?t=333752. Last accessed 7/14/18. Al-Marʿ ashlī, Nathr al-jawāhir wa al-durar, 259. Ibid., 259. https://twitter.com/alkatani_dar/status/805740521549340672. Last accessed 7/14/18.

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when he visited the Hijaz in 1933, he found no one worthy of taking hadith from other than Amat Allāh and Bahāʾ al-Dīn al-Afghānī (d. 1365/1946).274 Long-lived women continued to play a role in the transmission of hadith even in the twenty-first century. In the early years of the century, hadith collectors traveled to a small village in the Hadhramawt valley to take hadith from a woman hailing from a scholarly family named Ṣafiyya al-ʿĀmīdiyya, who was thought to be more than a hundred years old at the time and thus could offer an unusual degree of elevation.275 Likewise, in the first decade of the century, hadith collectors sought out Fāṭima al-Sharīfa al-Sanūsiyya (d. 2009), the last queen of Libya, and daughter of the scholar and freedom fighter Aḥmad alSharīf al-Sanūsī (d. 1933), who was one of the last living people who could transmit from her father and through him to the vast network of their revered scholarly family.276

10

Conclusion

Following the fourth/tenth century, the concept of elevation occupied an increasingly important place in the religious imagination of Muslim scholars who transmitted hadith. This interest in the creation of the shortest possible links to the Prophet, and the men and women who were seen to be the carriers of his legacy, created opportunities for elderly lay transmitters, both men and women, to participate in hadith transmission. The cultivation of very elevated chains of transmission that could bridge generations depended to a large degree on young boys and girls taking hadith from elderly transmitters. The desire to issue young girls and boys ijāzas and take them to audit hadith was motivated in part by the hope that one day they might themselves possess elevated chains of transmission and the social and religious capital that it would furnish them. It was also motivated by a desire to provide them with a connection to the Prophet through the luminaries of the Islamic scholarly tradition and their baraka. This practice remains alive in Muslim scholarly communities even now. In July of 2018, I met the well-known Egyptian hadith scholar shaykh Maḥmūd Saʿīd Mamdūḥ (b. 1952) at a gathering of scholars interested in Islamic manuscripts at a villa in the suburbs of Cairo. A friend present at 274 275 276

https://www.ahlalhdeeth.com/vb/showthread.php?t=333752. Last accessed 7/14/18. Jonathan Brown, Hadith, 49. https://www.facebook.com/196023023765580/photos/ ‫بسند‬-‫الد ّنيا‬-‫في‬-‫لي‬-‫إسناد‬-‫أعلى‬ 778760298825180/‫نصف‬-‫في‬-‫الأ برار‬-‫الأطهارالش ّرفاء‬-‫البيت‬-‫بآل‬-‫صحيحمسلسل‬-/. Last accessed 7/14/18.

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the gathering mentioned to the shaykh that my daughter was named after the renowned transmitter of the Ṣaḥīḥ, Karīma al-Marwaziyya, who was discussed above, and suggested that the shaykh issue Karīma, who was two and a half years old at the time, an ijāza in the hope that she might one day take after her namesake. The shaykh granted this request and issued Karīma, as well as the children of all those present, an ijāza connecting them to the many authorities from whom he had taken hadith, chief among them his primary teacher ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Ṣiddīq al-Ghumārī (d. 1993). Al-Ghumārī, was a very active hadith transmitter hailing from a prominent Moroccan family of hadith scholar and through him my two-year-old Karīma was now connected to a vast network of hadith transmitters spanning the generations back to the Prophet, including, among many others, the lay transmitter al-Ḥajjār and many of the laywomen hadith transmitters studied in this chapter. The participation of laypeople in the transmission of hadith studied in this chapter was very much the product of the increased significance given to the short chains of transmission in the culture of hadith scholars. As was seen in the previous chapters, alongside the social transformations studied in this chapter, the increasing significance of the concept of elevation would bring about a profound transformation of the protocols and methods of hadith transmission. It would also, give rise to new genres of hadith literature that catered to the new aims and concerns of continued hadith transmission that are studied in the following two chapters.

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chapter 5

Brevity, Breadth and Elevation: The Forty-Hadith and ʿAwālī Genres The genres of forty-hadith and ʿawālī were two of the most enduringly popular genres of post-canonical hadith literature. For centuries, both of these genres were some remarkably productive outlets for the concerns and interests of post-canonical hadith culture, and scholars produced thousands of works in each genre. Over the course of their careers, hadith scholars, such as alKhāṭīb al-Baghdādī, Ibn ʿAsākir and Ibn Ḥajar, produced tens of works in each of these genres. Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī of Damascus (d. 909/1503) alone produced 400 forty-hadith collections and perhaps as many ʿawālī collections.1 Both the forty-hadith and ʿawālī genres were shaped by post-canonical hadith culture’s concern with cultivating and presenting short chains of transmission. As was discussed in Chapter One, interest in the short chain of transmission had both pious and social elements. Socially, the short chain of transmission was a means for scholars to compete with and distinguish themselves from their peers. In terms of piety, it was a manifestation of the belief that collecting short chains of transmission was an act of pious emulation of the revered forefathers of the community. Further, the short chain of transmission was believed to be a spiritual conduit to the Prophet and to God—the shorter the chain the closer the connection to them. The approaches the two genres take in expressing these concerns are different, but they employed many of the same themes, criteria and devices. The overlap in these two genres concerns and themes created many parallels in their development, making it advantageous to treat the genres together. The first part of this chapter traces the development of the forty-hadith genre over the span of a millennium and contextualizes its function in post-canonical hadith culture. The second part of the chapter follows the development and function of the complex of genres and subgenres that can be categorized as ʿawālī.

1 Konrad Hirschler, A Monument to Medieval Medieval Syrian Book Culture, Chapter One, Forthcoming.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004386938_007

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The Prophet’s Promise: The Forty-Hadith Genres and Elevation

Although the vast majority of hadith critics considered it weak, the hadith “Whoever of my community preserves forty hadith of my tradition, I will be his intercessor [with God] on the day of judgment,” inspired scholars to compose thousands of forty-hadith collections.2 ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Mubārak (d. 181/797) is most often reported to have been the first scholar to compose a collection of forty hadith.3 The earliest extant forty-hadith works, however, such as that of Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Ḥasan b. Sufyān al-Nasawī (d. 303/915), date to the late third/ninth century. These works employ full chains of transmission and are organized topically with one or more hadith on a variety of topics such as ritual purification, prayer, commercial transactions, and so forth.4 The compilers of these early forty-hadith works were motivated by the pious desire to be among those mentioned by the Prophet in the hadith and receive his promised intercession, as well as by the pragmatic desire to provide their audiences with a small and easily digestible collection of hadith on topics of general benefit for the believer. Scholars composed collections of forty-hadith on a vast array of topics ranging from marriage to jihād to the merits of the city of Jerusalem and even Qazwīn.5 One author even composed 40 separate forty-hadith collections on a variety of topics, including circumambulating the Kaʿba, grey hair, and the use of a toothbrush.6 These topical and content-based forty-hadith works, of which al-Nawawī’s Forty-Hadith is the most famous example, are currently the most well-known strain of the forty-hadith genre. Significantly, most works of this topical variety do not cite full chains of transmission; instead, they cite an abbreviated isnād generally consisting of only the name of the companion who transmitted the hadith from the Prophet.

2 There is currently no complete bibliography of this literature, but Sahl al-ʿŪd’s al-Muʿīn ʿalā maʿrifat kutub al-Arbaʿīn is a start. Sahl al-ʿŪd, al-Muʿīn ʿalā maʿrifat kutub al-Arbaʿīn ilā sayyid a-mursalīn (Riyhad: Dār ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1425/2004). 3 Muhamad b. Jaʿfar al-Kattānī, al-Risāla al-mustaṭrafa fī bayān mashhūr kutub al-sunna almusharafa, ed. Muḥammad al-Muntaṣir b. Muḥammad al-Zamzamī al-Kattānī (Beirut Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 1421/2000), 103. 4 Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Ḥasan b. Sufyān al-Nasawī, Kitāb al-Arbaʿīn, ed. Muḥammad b. Nāṣir al-ʿAjmī (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 1429/2008). 5 Al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām, 11:381. 6 ʿAbd al-Qādir Al-ʿAydarūs, al-Nūr al-sāfir ʿan akhbār al-qarn al-ʿāshir, ed. Maḥmūd Arnāʾūṭ (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1421/2001), 1:383.

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The Forty-Hadith Genre as a Tool for the Cultivation of Elevation

Although they are the most well-known strain of forty-hadith works, topical collections were not the only type of forty-hadith collection the Prophet’s promise of intercession inspired. Scholars were also inspired by the promise of intercession to use the forty-hadith format as a vehicle for collection and transmission. In the formative period, many collectors of hadith were highly mobile, often traveling great distances to hear from the most authoritative transmitters of their day. Moreover, even active collectors, who did not travel extensively, might hear hadith from hundreds or even thousands of transmitters over the course of their careers. The forty-hadith format provided scholars with a standard and easily-transmitted selection of their own or another transmitter’s most desirable hadith that could be transmitted with a relatively minimal investment of time, thus facilitating transmission either to or from large numbers of individuals. Although less well-known than the topical strain of the genre, this use of the forty-hadith as a tool for presenting and auditing a selection of valuable chains of transmission was hugely popular, as is witnessed by the thousands of works produced in the genre for nearly a millennium. There are indications that scholars were using the forty-hadith format as a vehicle to expedite transmission as early as the third/ninth century and perhaps earlier. The biographers of the famous third/ninth-century compiler of hadith, al-Tirmidhī, preserve an early example of this use of the forty-hadith format. They note that while sojourning in Mecca, al-Tirmidhī arranged to visit and hear hadith from a prominent transmitter. Before the appointment, he copied a few folios of this transmitter’s hadith to read with him. When he was preparing to meet with him, however, al-Tirmidhī accidentally put blank paper in his bag instead of the folios he had copied. When the shaykh began to recite the hadith for al-Tirmidhī, he soon realized that the pages al-Tirmidhī was holding were blank and understandably assumed that al-Tirmidhī was attempting to deceive him. Al-Tirmidhī explained his mistake, and in his defense offered that although he did not have a copy with him, he had memorized the hadith the shaykh had just recited and proceeded to recite them from memory. Satisfied that al-Tirmidhī had made an honest mistake, and impressed with his memory, the shaykh then agreed to transmit to al-Tirmidhī a selection of forty of his most valuable hadith.7 In his al-Jāmiʿ li-akhlāq al-rāwī, al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī preserves an even earlier second/eighth-century anecdote indicative of the early use of the forty-

7 Al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām, 20:461.

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hadith format as a tool for transmission. In his exposition on the proper conduct for a traveling collector of hadith, he explains that when one arrives at his destination, he should immediately begin auditing the local transmitters’ most valuable hadith. In support of this position, al-Khaṭīb offers the cautionary tale of two second/eighth-century hadith collectors who had traveled more than a hundred miles on foot from the city of Wāsiṭ to the city of Kufa in order to hear hadith from an elderly transmitter named Manṣūr. Upon arriving in Kufa one of the two students, no doubt dusty, dirty and tired from his long journey, went to the bathhouse to clean up, while his travel companion, on the other hand, immediately went to meet Manṣūr and heard forty-hadith from him. The following day the student who chose to take a bath before going to hear hadith awoke early and made his way to the home of Manṣūr, only to find mourners on his doorstep and to learn that the man he had traveled more than a hundred miles to hear hadith from had died during the night.8 These anecdotes suggest that from as early as the second/eighth century the forty-hadith format was in some use as a tool to transmit brief selections of valuable hadith in short audition sessions, such as the session with Manṣūr in Kufa on the last night of his life. By the fifth/eleventh century, there is ample evidence that the utility of the forty-hadith format as a tool for presenting and transmitting an easilyaudited selection of hadith had made it a fixture of the culture. Students and scholars regularly compiled collections of forty-hadith to be used in situations, where time or other circumstances did not allow for the transmission of longer selections of hadith. This is precisely how al-Kaylānī (d. 595/1198) explains the impetus for composing his forty-hadith collection. In the introduction to the work he writes that he compiled the collection because he was overwhelmed with visiting collectors who had traveled to audit with him, and composed the work as a vehicle to meet the needs of “collectors of hadith who were passing through.”9 Scholars not only compiled forty-hadith works to transmit their own hadith expeditiously, but they also used the format to compile other transmitters’ best hadith in order to audit with them through a minimal investment of time. In Chapter Six it is shown that scholars compiled mashyakha works for transmitters to encapsulate and acquire a broad selection of his or her hadith. Scholars used the forty-hadith genre in this way as well. The brevity of the genre, in comparison to the mashyakha, however, made it a better vehicle for

8 Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Jāmiʿ li-akhlāq al-rāwī, 2:263. 9 ʿAbd al-Razzāq b. ʿAbd al-Qādir Al-Kaylānī, al-Arbaʿūn al-Kaylāniyya, ed. Zuhayr al-Shāwīsh (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1421/2000), 7.

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quickly compiling a short sample of a transmitter’s most desirable hadith. After selecting forty of a transmitter’s best hadith, a collector could then read the selection to him or her and thereby acquire a sample of their most valuable chains of transmission with only a short amount of time invested. In other words, the forty-hadith format was an alternative to other transmission-based genres that were more difficult to compose and required more time to transmit. The forty-hadith collection Ibn Ḥajar compiled for the transmitter al-Marāghī (d. 816/1413) is a prime example of this. As a young man, al-Marāghī received an ijāza from al-Ḥajjār, the renowned eighth/fourteenth-century transmitter, who at the end of his life possessed the most elevated chain of transmission in the world for of al-Bukhārī’s Ṣahīḥ. Al-Marāghī then survived to an advanced age and was ultimately recognized as the last living person who could transmit from al-Ḥajjār. He was also recognized as the last living person who could transmit from al-Dhahabī, al-Mizzī, and others. Rather than invest the time to read the entirety of the Ṣaḥīḥ and the other collections alMarāghī could transmit with elevation, Ibn Ḥajar selected forty hadith through his elevated chains of transmission back to al-Ḥajjār, and the others, and then read these to him, and thereby acquired his uniquely elevated chain of transmission with a minimal investment of time.10 The forty-hadith collection the ninth/fifteenth-century scholar al-Ṣalāḥ al-Aqfahsī (d. 821/1418) composed for Ibn Kathīr’s niece Sitt al-Quḍāt (d. 801/1398) is a further example of this use of the genre. Sitt al-Quḍāt had received numerous ijāzas as a child through her family’s scholarly networks and thus as an elderly woman she possessed highly elevated chains of transmission. After selecting forty of Sitt al-Quḍāt’s hadith, al-Aqfahsī then read this selection and attached himself to her elevated chains.11 In some cases, transmission-based forty-hadith collections were extracted from a famous hadith collection that a shaykh was known to transmit with a rare degree of elevation. The case of the forty-hadith collection composed for Ḥanbal b. ʿAbd Allāh (d. 606/1209) is an instructive example of this type of forty-hadith collection. Ḥanbal was born, unsurprisingly, into a family of Ḥan-

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Ibn al-ʿImād, Shadharāt al-dhahab, 9:177; Ibn Qāḍī Shuhba, Ṭabaqāt al-shāfiʿiyya li-Ibn Qāḍī Shuhba, ed. al-Ḥāfiẓ ʿAbd al-ʿAlīm Khān (Beirut: ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1407/1986), 4:7. Ibn Ḥajar, Inbāʾ al-ghumar, 3:23. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 12:57. Also, it is worth noting that Ibn Ḥajar was not the first to compose a forty-hadith work for al-Ḥajjār. Before he composed this forty-hadith work al-Ḥajjār’s own contemporary, Fakhr al-Dīn Ibn al-Bukhārī, composed a forty-hadith collection from him. Al-ʿĀlāʾī, Ithārat al-fawāʾid, 2:515. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmʿi li ahl al-qarn al-tāsiʿ (Beirut: Maktabat al-Ḥayāt 1386/1966), 12:57.

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balīs and was taken by his father at a tender age to hear the Musnad of the revered founder of his family’s school of law, Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, from one of its most authoritative transmitters. Because he audited it as a small child, as an adult Ḥanbal could transmit the Musnad with a highly elevated chain of transmission, which it would seem was made even more desirable by the novelty of the fact that the collectors who heard the Musnad from him could cite a chain of transmission for the Musnad of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal from Ḥanbal. The Musnad is, of course, a voluminous work, containing many times as many hadith as Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ, fifty volumes in its printed edition, and required a significant investment of time to transmit orally. Thus, when the hadith community of Aleppo heard that Ḥanbal was a guest in their city but would only be spending one night there, they quickly selected forty-hadith from the Musnad to read with Ḥanbal in the short time that they had with him, thereby establishing a link to those hadith through his short chain of transmission for the Musnad.12 This use of the forty-hadith genre was widespread. The forty-hadith Ibn Ḥajar selected from the Ṣaḥīḥ of Muslim, and those al-ʿIrāqī extracted from Ibn Ḥibbān’s Ṣaḥīḥ are two further prominent examples of this type of forty-hadith collection.13 Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī’s selection of forty hadith from al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ is another.14 This use of the genre as a vehicle for quickly transmitting a selection from a larger collection was not limited to well-known collections. Scholars also compiled selections of forty hadith extracted from lesser-known hadith collections. The forty-hadith selected from the Muʿjam al-shuyūkh of Taqī al-Dīn al-Subkī (d. 756/1355) is an example of this. This forty-hadith collection was selected by the author’s son Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī from the much longer Muʿjam al-shuyūkh that Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad b. Aybak al-Dimyāṭī (d. 740/1339) had composed for Tāj al-Dīn’s father as a vehicle to quickly transmit some of the more elevated hadith from his father’s Muʿjam. This selection of forty hadith then became a vehicle for conveying that elevation for several generations of the family. In one of the initial sessions in which the text was transmitted, Tāqī al-Dīn al-Subkī’s very young daughter Sāra (d. 805/1402) attended as the text was read to her father and then several generations later in the year

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Kamāl al-Dīn Ibn al-ʿAdīm, Bughyat al-Ṭalab fī akhbār Ḥalab, ed. Suhayl Zakkār (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1989/1409), 6:2979. Ibn Ḥajar, Arbaʿūn muntaqā min Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, MSS in Majmūʿ 51, al-Ẓāhiriyya, Damascus, Syria, f. 107–124; Al-ʿIrāqī, Ṭarḥ al-Tathrīb fī sharḥ al-taqrīb (Beirut: Dār al-Iḥyā li-Turāth alʿArabī, n.d.), 102. Konrad Hirschler, A Monument to Medieval Medieval Syrian Book Culture, Forthcoming.

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802/1399, based on her attendance of this reading, her maternal granddaughter Rajab bt. al-Shihāb Aḥmad al-Qalījī (d. 869/1464) was brought to her at just three years old to hear the text read in her presence.15 As an elderly woman in the year 866/1461 just three years before she died, Rajab in turn sat and had this forty-hadith collection that her great-uncle had selected from her greatgrandfather’s Muʿjam al-shuyūkh read in her presence with prominent scholars and their children in attendance. By using the forty-hadith collection in this way, these attendees attached themselves to Rajab’s elevated chain of transmission with far less time expended than it would have taken to audit the entirety of al-Subkī’s Muʿjam with her.16 In the case of the forty-hadith taken from al-Subkī’s Muʿjam it was al-Dimyāṭī who compiled the selection, in other cases, it was the author of the Muʿjam himself that compiled the selection of forty hadith. Abū ʿAlī al-Bakrī (d. 656/1258), for instance, selected and transmitted forty hadith from his own Muʿjam. He composed this selection at the request of hadith collectors, who wanted to hear hadith with him, but did not want to spend the time hearing the entirety of his lengthy Muʿjam.17 This function of the forty-hadith format as an instrument for expedited transmission continued to be employed to transmit hadith during brief encounters to some extent into the modern period. Al-Alūsī (d. 1270/1853), for instance, in his travelogue notes that when he briefly encountered Muḥammad Afandī al-Daghistānī during a journey, it was a forty-hadith collection that the two decided to read.18

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The Forty-Hadith Genre and Elevation

To some extent, the brevity of the forty-hadith genre meant that since it emerged, authors selected only their most valuable and rare chains of transmission. By the sixth/twelfth century, however, the brief and selective nature of the genre had merged with the increasing emphasis on the short chain of transmission and a number of subgenres appeared that were explicitly intended to encapsulate a selection of the author’s most elevated chains of transmission

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Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmʿi, 12:34. Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī, Arbaʿūn ḥadīthan min masmūʿāt al-Subkī, Taymūr MS 426, Dar al-Kutb al-Miṣriyya, Cairo, Egypt, F2. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 23:327. Maḥmūd Abū Thanāʾ Al-Alūsī, Gharāʾib al-ightirāb wa nuzhat al-albāb fī al-dhahāb wa aliqāma wa al-iyyāb (Baghdad: Maṭbʿat Shāhbandar, 1327/1909), 132.

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appeared. This subgenre of forty-hadith works explicitly focused on presenting a scholar’s most elevated chains of transmission, seems to have first appeared in the sixth/twelfth century. Collections of hadith cited through chains of transmission consisting of a specific elevated number of links, which are discussed in more detail later in this chapter, had existed since the fourth/tenth century. In the early sixth/twelfth century, this theme was combined with the forty-hadith genre and quickly gained popularity. By the middle of the century, numerous link-themed forty-hadith collections had been produced. Some of the earliest of these collections compiled forty hadith transmitted through chains of transmission with seven links (subāʿiyyāt). The seven link forty-hadith works of Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Mālikī (d. 547/1152), Abū Saʿd Muḥammad b. Yaḥyā al-Naysābūrī al-Shāfiʿī (d. 548/1153),19 ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad b. Faḍl alFurāwī (d. 549/1154) and numerous others are examples of this.20 Remarkably, collectors of hadith were able to continue composing forty-hadith collections with only seven links for more than a century after they first emerged. The Damascene hadith scholar Jamāl al-Dīn Ibn al-Ẓāhirī (d. 696/1297), for instance, composed a collection of forty-hadith with only seven links for the daughter of the Ayyubid Sultan al-Malik al-ʿĀdil’s daughter Muʾnisa Khātūn (d. 693/1293).21 Even later, Ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd (d. 707/1307) was still able to compile a collection of forty-hadith he transmitted with just seven links.22 These link-themed forty-hadith collections remained popular for several centuries. By the early eighth/fourteenth century, nine links had become the measure of quality, and scholars produced numerous forty-hadith collections of their nine-links chains of transmission (tusāʿiyyāt). In the latter half of the century, scholars were producing forty-hadith collections presenting their tenlink chains of transmission (ʿushāriyyāt), which according to al-ʿIrāqī, writ-

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Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-ʿAlāʾī, Ithārat al-fawāʾid, 2:471. Ibid., 2:488. Seven links, while very short, was not the shortest chain of transmission possible in the sixth/twelfth century, a number of collections of six link chains of transmission from this period exist. These were, however, very rare, and this rarity seems to explain why we do not find collections of forty-hadith with six links from this period. See for example Zāhir b. Ṭāhir b. Muḥammad al-Shaḥḥāmī, al-Aḥādīth al-khumāsiyyāt wa sudāsiyyāt, MS, 8:691, Al-Maktaba al-Markaziyya, Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Al-Safadī, Aʿyān al-ʿAṣr, 2:735. Muʾnisa, was not the only member of the Ayyubid family to have a forty-hadith work composed for her. Al-Malik al-Kāmil who had received an ijāza from the famous hadith scholar al-Silafī also had a forty-hadith composed for him. AlSuyūṭī, Ḥusn al-muḥāḍara fī tārīkh Miṣr wa al-Qāhira, ed. Muḥammad Abū Faḍl Ibrāhīm (Cairo: ʿĪsā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1387/1967), 2:34. Muḥammad Rashād Khalīfa, Madrasat al-hadith fi Miṣr (Cairo: Al-Hayʾa al-ʿĀmma liShuʾūn al-Maṭābiʿ al-Amīriyya, n.d.), 69.

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ing in the late eighth/fourteenth century, was the shortest chain of transmission one could realistically claim to have at the time.23 As late as perhaps the early tenth/sixteenth century, al-Qalqashandī (d. 922/1516) could still cite fortyhadith through ten-link chains of transmission.24 By the close of the tenth/sixteenth century, there was a serious decline in the popularity of the link-themed subgenre of forty-hadith collections. In comparison to the heyday of the ninth/fifteenth and early tenth/sixteenth century, in which numerous ten-link forty-hadith collections were produced, by the late tenth/sixteenth century link-themed collections had become exceedingly rare. Scholars took little interest in compiling link-themed collections longer than ten links. In fact, I have been able to locate only one eleven-link collection and one twelve-link collection from this period, and both were composed by the same author.25 The decline of the link-based forty-hadith sub-genre was, like the decline of the other post-canonical hadith genres, in part a result of the larger general decline in interest in the oral/aural collection and transmission of hadith. It seems to be also related to the fact that one of the unspoken aims of these collections was to allow the author to demonstrate that he could establish chains of transmission equal in length to one of the authors of the canon and there are exceedingly few, if any, chains of transmission in the canon longer than ten links.26 By compiling a collection of ten-link chains of transmission authors of the early late ninth/fifteenth and tenth/sixteenth centuries could demonstrate their relationship to the authors of the canon, even if at the latter’s lowest point. As Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ pointed out this was, of course, as much possible due to the lowliness of some chains of transmission found in the canon as the elevation of later hadith collectors.27 This could only be maintained for so long, and it seems to have reached its breaking point in the tenth/sixteenth century. The link-themed forty-hadith subgenre was but one of a myriad of way scholars adapted the forty-hadith format to suit their interest in elevation. As was discussed in Chapter One, from the fifth/eleventh century, scholars had developed categories for articulating the proximity of a chain of transmission in

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Al-ʿIraqī, al-Arbʿūn al-ʿushāriyya, MS, Ḥadīth 1578, Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, Cairo, Egypt; Ibn al-Jazarī, Arbaʿūn ḥadīth ʿushāriyya, Taymūr MS 23253, Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya. Cairo, Egypt. Al-ʿAydarūs, al-Nur al-Sāfir, 1:104. Al-Marʿashlī, Muʿjam al-maʿājim, 1:573. Al-Sakhāwī, Fatḥ al-Mughīth, 3:347. Ibn al-Salāḥ, Maʿrifat anwāʿ ʿulūm al-ḥadīth, Nūr al-Dīn ʿItr (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1406/1986), 260.

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relation to the canon including, agreement (muwāfaqa), substitution (badal), equivalence (musāwa) and hand-shaking (muṣāfaḥa). In essence, these categories refer to chains of transmission that arrive at one of the transmitters from whom an author of the canon, such as al-Bukhārī, took a hadith with fewer links than if one were to transmit the same hadith through al-Bukhārī. By the sixth/twelfth century, scholars were producing forty-hadith collections using these criteria. The renowned sixth/twelfth-century hadith scholar Ibn ʿAsākir was one of the first to employ this theme in a forty-hadith collection and he ultimately produced multiple works in the subgenre. One of these he compiled for his shaykh al-Furāwī titled Arbaʿūn ḥadīthan min al-musāwāt. Each hadith cited in this collection meets the criteria of musāwa, meaning that it is transmitted through a chain of transmission as short as one found for the same hadith in one or more of the canonical collections.28 In another collection he compiled in the subgenre, Ibn ʿAsākir cites forty-hadith through chains of transmission as short as those Bukhārī and Muslim cited for the same hadith in their Ṣaḥīḥs.29 The canonical collections were compiled three centuries before Ibn ʿAsākir was born and this was a truly impressive demonstration of the quality of his chains of transmission. In point of fact, after presenting the second hadith in this collection he remarks with pride, “whoever takes this hadith from me it is as if he took it from Bukhārī, Muslim and Abū Dawūd.”30 The brevity of this subgenre facilitated scholars compiling multiple works in it, and Ibn ʿAsākir and many others after him, compiled multiple forty-hadith works presenting hadith in these categories.31 After Ibn ʿAsākir, this sub-genre remained a popular means for scholars to present and transmit their own and others’ relationship to the canon for centuries. In the seventh/thirteenth century, Ibn Ḥājib (d. 630/1223),32 Ibn alẒāhirī,33 al-Qāḍī Dānyāl (d. 690/1291),34 and al-Dimyāṭī (d. 705/1305)35 are a

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Ibn ʿAsākir, Arbaʿūn ḥadīthan min al-musāwāt mustakhraja ʿan thiqāt al-ruwāt, ed. Abū ʿAlī Ṭaha Bū Surayj (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Malik Fahd, 1420/1999). Ibn ʿAsākir, Al-Arbaʿūn al-abdāl al-ʿAwālī, ed. Muḥammad Nāṣir al-ʿAjmī (Beirut: Dār alBashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 1425/2004). Ibid., 61. In addition to these works, al-Dhahabī notes that Ibn ʿAsākir also composed a collection of forty muṣāfaḥāt hadith for his travel companion Abū Saʿd al-Samʿānī (d. 562/1113). AlDhahabī, Tadhkirat al-ḥuffāẓ, 4:84. Ibn al-Mustawfī, Tārīkh Irbil, ed. Sāmī b. Sayyid al-Khammās al-Ṣaqqār (Baghdad: Wazārat al-Thaqāfa, 1980/1400) 2:644. Al-Ziriklī, al-Aʿlām (Beirut: Dār al-ʿIlm lil-Malyāyīn, n.d.), 1:221. Al-Ṣafadī, Aʿyān al-ʿAṣr, 4:52. Al-Wādī Āshī, Barnāmaj al-Wādī Āshī, 149.

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few of the scholars who produced works in this sub-genre. In the following century, the desire to establish chains of transmission that could be compared favorably to the canon continued to drive production in the subgenre. As time passed, it, of course, became increasingly difficult for scholars to establish chains of transmission that compared to those of the canon. Still, several eighth/fourteenth-century scholars like al-Dhahabī,36 al-Āmidī (d. 778/1376),37 al-Birzālī and al-Mizzī among others were still able to scrape together enough muwāfaqāt and abdāl hadith to continue producing works in the subgenre. The rivalry with the authors of the canon that the categories of muwāfaqāt, abdāl, and musāwāt were built upon, however, necessarily had a limited lifespan. Scholars could not continue to rival even the longest chains found in the canon indefinitely. The march of time and the natural growth of chains of transmission meant that by the late nine/fifteenth century, the hadith required to produce works in this subgenre were becoming increasingly rare. Although, in the late ninth/fifteenth century, Ibn Ṭūlūn was still able to produce a collection of forty muwāfaqāt, and another of forty abdāl, by the end of the tenth/sixteenth century, however, it had become nearly impossible for scholars to continue to establish chains of transmission that could rival any of those found in the canon.38 Following the tenth/sixteenth century, declining interest in oral/aural hadith transmission and the impossibility of establishing the chains of transmission short enough to keep producing works in this subgenre led to its extinction. Not all elevation-themed forty-hadith works had such specific criteria. In addition to the two technically-themed forty-hadith subgenres discussed above, scholars also produced collections of forty hadith with chains of transmission that could be considered short by more general standards. These general collections remained popular far longer than the technical subgenres and remained productive into the twentieth century. The popular work al-Lawāmiʿ al-laʾālī fī al-arbaʿīn al-ʿawālī compiled by the prominent twelfth/eighteenthcentury Kurdish scholar resident at Medina Ibrāhīm al-Kūrānī (d. 1101/ 1690) is a prime example.39 The well-known collection composed by the Damascene hadith scholar Ismāʿīl b. Muḥammad al-ʿAjlūnī (d. 1162/1748) comprising forty-hadith cited through his most prized chains of transmission to forty dif-

36 37 38 39

Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 2:517. Al-Wādī Āshī, Barnāmaj al-Wādī Āshī, 1:292. Al-Kattānī, Fahras al-fahāris, 1:473. Muḥammad b. Muḥammad Ibn al-Mayt al-Budayrī, Al-Jawāhir al-ghawālī fi dhikr alasānid al-ʿAwālī, MS 317819, Maktabat al-Azhar, Cairo, Egypt, 16.

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ferent books of hadith is another late example of this subgenre.40 The enduring popularity of the subgenre is further evidenced by the forty hadith collection composed by the famous twentieth-century Moroccan hadith scholar Aḥmad al-Ghumārī titled al-Arbaʿūn al-mutatāliya bi-l-asānid al-ʿāliyya.41 The multiple forty-hadith collections compiled by ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī, that he transmitted during his journeys in the central Islamic lands and elsewhere, is another testament to the subgenre’s long-lasting popularity.42

4

Forty Hadith, Forty Shaykhs, Forty Towns

Since its emergence as a distinct discipline within the constellation of Islamic scholarship, hadith collection was a formative and central element of the culture of hadith scholars. The journey to collect hadith was a revered aspect of the culture and books were composed extolling its many merits.43 While for the early collectors of hadith collecting across a wide geographical realm had been a practical matter, for post-canonical hadith collectors taking hadith from a vast array of geographically diverse human sources was both a pious and competitive endeavor. Though it was no longer needed for the preservation of the Prophet’s traditions, post-canonical hadith collectors emulated the founders of their discipline and traveled to collect hadith. They did this both out of fidelity to their culture and out of pietistic emulation of the revered founding generations of their culture. As has been noted earlier, in addition to presenting the quality and elevation of chains of transmission, scholars distinguished themselves from their peers by demonstrating the breadth of the human sources from whom they could transmit hadith. Since the sixth/twelfth century, the presentation of forty-hadith taken from forty shaykhs from forty different places, known as a geographical forty-hadith work (arbaʿūn buldāniyya), was a popular vehicle for scholars to do this. Compiling forty-hadith collected from forty different authorities in forty cities, an arbaʿūn buldāniyya was an impressive but digestible means for a scholar to present the breadth of his travels to collect hadith. In the introduction to his arbaʿūn buldāniyya

40 41 42 43

Ismāʿīl b. Muḥammad al-ʿAjlūnī, al-ʿIqd al-thamīn fi arbaʿīn ḥadīthan min Sayyid al-mursalīn, ed. Muḥammad Muṭīʿ al-Ḥāfiẓ (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir, 1417/1997). Al-Marʿashlī, Muʿjam al-maʿājim, 2:516. Al-Kattānī, al-Arbaʿūn, MS 1843, Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, Cairo, Egypt. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Riḥla fī ṭalab al-ḥadīth, in Majmūʿ fihi rasāʾil fī ʿulūm al-ḥadīth, ed. Al-Sayyid Ṣubḥī Badrī al-Samarāʾī (Medina: al-Makataba al-Salafiyya, 1389/1969).

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Ibn ʿAsākir comments on this function of the subgenre, “Only a person who has traveled broadly throughout the lands and spent his resources in order to encounter the shuyūkh is able to compose such a work.”44 The renowned sixth/twelfth-century collector and transmitter of hadith Abū Ṭāhir al-Silafī is generally recognized as the first to have compiled a geographically-themed forty-hadith work.45 Al-Silafī began his career as a collector in his native Isfahan and then traveled widely collecting hadith throughout the eastern and central Islamic lands, roaming for eighteen years before eventually settling in Alexandria and establishing himself as one of the foremost transmitters of hadith of the sixth/twelfth century.46 To memorialize the breadth of his travels in the pursuit of hadith, al-Silafī composed multiple voluminous works presenting the breadth of authorities from whom he took hadith while journeying. Among these works was his Muʿjam al-safar a general biographical dictionary of the men and women he had taken hadith from during his journeys, as well as a biographical dictionary composed of only those he had taken hadith from in Baghdad.47 His geographically-themed forty-hadith collection functioned as a brief alternative to these larger works, which performed essentially the same function, but were much more time consuming to both copy and transmit. The utility of al-Silafī’s innovation was almost instantly appreciated and imitated by his contemporaries. In the introduction to his own geographicallythemed forty-hadith collection al-Silafī’s contemporary Ibn ʿAsākir, in fact, notes that he composed his work upon the request of a friend who had seen al-Silafī’s Arbaʿūn buldāniyya and wanted Ibn ʿAsākir, who had also traveled broadly collecting hadith, to compose a collection to rival it.48 Ibn ʿAsākīr obliged his friend and used the format al-Silafī had invented compiling fortyhadith he had taken from forty different shaykhs in forty different cities. He

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Ibn ʿAsākir, Kitāb al-arbaʿīn al-buldānīyya ʿan arbaʿīn min arbaʿīn li-arbaʿīn fī arbaʿīn, ed. Muḥammad Muṭīʿ al-Ḥāfīz (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1412/1992), 20. Abū Ṭāhir al-Silafī, al-Arbaʿūn al-buldāniyya, ed. Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Musʿad b. ʿAbd alḤamīd al-Saʿdanī (Riyadh: Maktabat Aḍwāʾ al-Salaf, n.d.). ʿAbd al-Qādīr b. Muḥammad al-Nuʿaymī in his al-Dāris fī akhbār al-madāris expresses uncertainty as to whether it was al-Silafī or Ibn ʿAsākir who invented this sub-genre. Ibn ʿAsākir, however, makes it clear that he was following al-Silafī’s lead. ʿAbd al-Qādīr b. Muḥammad al-Nuʿaymī, al-Dāris fī tārīkh al-madāris, ed. Ibrāhīm Shams al-Dīn (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1410/1990) 1:75. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 21:16. Abū Ṭāhir al-Silafī, Muʿjam al-Safar, ed. ʿAbd Allāh ʿUmar al-Bārūdī (Beirut: Dār al-fikr, 1414/1993). Ibn ʿAsākir, Kitāb al-Arbaʿīn al-buldāniyya, 19.

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smugly notes, however, that his work was an improvement on al-Silafī’s, because in his work each of the forty hadiths was transmitted by a different companion of the Prophet, thus making it a collection of forty-hadith transmitted by forty different companions of the Prophet, which he took from forty shaykhs from forty different towns. Ibn ʿAsākir even remarks with satisfaction that it might also be observed that each of the forty-hadith was on a different topic.49 Al-Silafī and Ibn ʿAsākir’s works were hugely influential. For centuries after them, the subgenre remained a popular means for scholars to present the geographical breadth of their sources in a brief and digestible form. The geographically-themed subgenre provided scholars who had traveled and collected hadith a vehicle for presenting the breadth of the men and women they had met and taken hadith from in the course of their travels and the resultant cultural capital they had obtained from them in a concise and easily transmittable form. The prestige scholars derived from having composed an arbaʿūn buldāniyya work was so compelling that a number of authors bent the criteria of the genre in order to be able to compose such a work. Ibn Qāḍī Shuhba (d. 851/1447) informs us of a seventh/thirteenth-century scholar who had not actually traveled widely enough to compile an arbaʿūn buldāniyya and had to content himself with compiling a collection of forty shaykhs from forty different places he had met among the pilgrims at Mecca during the hajj.50 Al-Dhahabī likewise reports with dismay that Manṣūr b. Salīm al-Hamadānī’s (d. 673/1275) desire to compose an arbaʿūn buldāniyya work led him to indulge in the shortcut of basing his collection upon shaykhs that he had taken hadith from in the small villages and areas around his hometown.51 Ibn Fahd al-Makkī (d. 885/1480) preserves an account of an eighth/fourteenth-century scholar who endeavored to compose an arbaʿūn buldāniyya, but although he undertook a journey every year either to perform the pilgrimage or to collect hadith, he was only able to compile a collection of hadith taken from 36 different towns and cities. Ibn Fahd notes that he had planned a trip to Tunisia to hear hadith that would have given him the requisite 40, but he died before being able to undertake the journey.52 As a tool for the cultivation and presentation of the value and breadth of transmitters’ chains of transmission, the arbaʿūn buldāniyya subgenre 49 50 51 52

Ibid., 38. Ibn Qaḍī Shuhba, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya li-Ibn Qaḍī Shuhba, 2:63. Al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islam, 50:142; Ibn Qāḍī Shuhba, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya, 2:152. Muḥammad b. Muḥammad Ibn Fahd, Laḥẓ al-alḥāẓ bi-dhayl ṭabaqāt al-ḥuffāẓ (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1419/1998), 147.

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remained popular for centuries after its emergence in the sixth/twelfth century. The arbaʿūn buldāniyya works composed by al-Dhahabī,53 al-Birzālī,54 al-ʿIrāqī55 and Ibn Ḥajar are a few of the more prominent examples of works in this sub-genre. As late as the ninth/fifteenth century, scholars continued to compose works in the subgenre demonstrating the breadth of their travels in the pursuit of hadith. By the late ninth/fifteenth and early tenth/sixteenth century, while a few scholars like al-Sakhāwī (d. 902/1496),56 Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī (d. 909/1503)57 and Ibn Ṭūlūn (d. 953/1546), were still composing arbaʿūn buldāniyya works, the sub-genre was suffering from an acute decline in popularity.58 This decline in popularity can be tied to a larger decline in general interest in post-canonical hadith genres, but may also have more specific causes. The Hanbalī hadith scholar Ibn Rajab (d. 795/1392) saw the Mongol invasion as a factor in the decline of the subgenre. In a discussion of the al-arbaʿūn albuldāniyya of ʿAbd al-Qādir b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Ruhāwī (d. 612/1215) he praises the works as unrivaled in its breadth, but remarks that the compilation of such a broad collection was no longer possible due to “the destruction (kharāb) of the east and the impossibility of now taking hadith from most of the eastern lands.”59 What Ibn Rajab seems to mean here is that following the Mongol invasions of the eastern Muslim realm in the seventh/thirteenth century, it became difficult for hadith collectors from the central Islamic lands to travel and hear hadith from masters in those regions, which had been part of how hadith collectors established the geographic breadth necessary to compose an impressive arbaʿūn al-buldāniyya work. Moreover, many if not most of the post-canonical hadith manuscripts that served as the sources for arbaʿūn albuldāniyya works seem to have been lost or destroyed in the Mongol invasions

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55 56 57 58 59

Interestingly, al-Dhahabī not only composed arbaʿūn buldāniyya works for himself and for his contemporaries, but he also composed an arbaʿūn buldāniyya posthumously for the great fourth/tenth-century hadith scholar al-Ṭabarānī. Al-Dhahabī, Arbaʿūn buldāniyya lil-Tabarānī, Ḥadīth Taymūr ʿArabī, MS 438, Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, Cairo, Egypt. Al-Dhahabī, Thalāthat tarājim nafīsa li-aʾimmat al-aʿlām Ibn Taymiyya wa al-ḥāfiẓ ʿalam alDīn al-Birzālī wa al-ḥāfiz Jamāl al-Dīn al-Mizzī, ed. Muḥammad b. Nāṣir al-ʿAjmī (Kuwait: Dār Ibn Athīr, 1415/1995), 39. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Nukat ʿalā kitāb Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ed. Rabīʿ b. Hādī al-Madkhalī (Medina: al-Jāmiʿa al-Islāmiyya, 1404/1984) 32. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Buldāniyyāt, ed. Ḥusām b. Muḥammad al-Qaṭṭān (Riyadh: Dār al-ʿAṭāʾ, 1422/ 2002). Konrad Hirschler, A Monument to Medieval Medieval Syrian Book Culture, Chapter One, forthcoming. Al-Kattānī, Fahras al-fahāris, 1:473. Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī, al-Dhayl ʿalā Ṭabaqāt al-ḥanābila, 3:179.

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and the upheavals that followed them.60 There were, of course, still many cities within the central Islamic lands to which a scholar could travel to hear hadith, and scholars of the central Islamic lands could and did compose arbaʿūn albuldāniyya works based solely on travel within these central lands. The Mongol invasion does, however, seem to have disrupted the tradition of taking long journeys to collect hadith in the far-off cities and towns of Khurasan and Central Asia. These journeys had been a part of the subgenre since it first emerged in the sixth/twelfth century, and the rupture in that tradition may have contributed to the its decline. The broader decline in interest in oral/aural hadith transmission that occurred roughly a century and a half after Ibn Rajab was writing, which, again, is discussed in Chapter Two, was, no doubt, also a primary factor in the genre’s decline.

5

The ʿAwālī Genre: Compiling and Presenting Elevation

From as early as the third century, and probably earlier, hadith scholars and collectors were compiling selections of their own and others’ most rare and valuable hadith for the purposes of audition, transmission and presentation. In the beginning, these collections seem to have been primarily tools for collectors to audit a transmitter’s most rare and valuable hadith. By the time he reached the phase of his career in which he began to transmit, an active collector would have compiled a massive corpus of hadith, and it would be extremely difficult and time consuming for a younger collector to audit all of this material. Furthermore, they might already have taken much of this hadith from other transmitters. Compiling a selection of a transmitter’s most valuable hadith was a means for a collector to audit only those hadith they considered valuable. Prior to an audition, a collector could survey a transmitter’s hadith corpus and compile those hadith he wanted to audit. Early on these selections were most often referred to as muntakhab or muntaqā selections. The criteria for selection initially varied. The hadith itself might be rare. It might contain wording not found in other similar reports. It might also be considered rare due to some unique quality in the chain of transmission. In the wake of canonization, however, the elevation of the chain of transmission was increasingly the primary criterion for selection.61 By the fourth/tenth century, transmission-based hadith collec60 61

Konrad Hirschler, A Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture, Chapter Two, forthcoming. For more on the process of selection and its mechanics see my forthcoming chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Hadith.

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tions were increasingly collections of elevated chains of transmission. The most common designation for these collections was ʿawālī, which is the plural of ʿālī, meaning elevated. Like many of the forty-hadith works that were discussed above, ʿawālī works were essentially collections of the cream of a transmitter’s chains of transmission. A variety of sub-genres can be categorized under the general rubric of ʿawālī employing many of the same themes employed in the forty-hadith genres. These include general collections of generic ʿawālī, collections based on the number of links in each chain of transmission, as well as collections of short isnāds meeting particular criteria, such as the abdāl and the muwāfaqāt. Unlike the forty-hadith genre, ʿawālī collections were not limited by size and could vary dramatically in length. Some ʿawālī collections were quite brief; an ʿawālī work by Ibn Ṭūlūn, for instance, is reported to have consisted of just ten hadith.62 The ʿAwālī Mālik compiled by Ibn ʿAsākir, on the other hand, weighed in at a whopping fifty juzʾ and Zāhir b. Ṭāhir’s ʿAwālī Ibn Khuzayma is reported to have consisted of more than thirty juzʾ.63 Although ʿawālī could vary in length, and while we do not yet have a comprehensive survey of the genre, most collections seem to have been relatively brief, consisting of a few juzʾ. The general brevity of the genre makes sense considering the rarity of short chains of transmission as well as the desire of the authors to create collections that could be transmitted in a relatively short amount of time. It seems natural enough that from early on hadith collectors separated their shortest and most rare chains of transmission from the larger corpus of their hadith. These were after all the most valuable parts of their collections. AlKhaṭīb al-Baghdādī preserves an anecdote dating to the mid-third century indicating that scholars were already conceiving of their ʿawālī as a distinct part of their collections at that time. He reports that Muḥammad b. ʿAbbās al-Kadīmī (d. 286/899) was seen fleeing during the Zanj rebellion in southern Iraq with a large sack. When asked what was in the sack he replied, “this is the sack of goodness ( jurāb al-khayr), these are my ʿawālī hadith.”64 It is not, until roughly the first half of the fourth/tenth century, however, that ʿawālī collections emerged as a distinct genre. The collection compiled by the Central Asian hadith scholar resident in Egypt ʿUthmān b. Muḥammad al-Samarqandī (d. 345/956) is an early extant example of the genre.65 Al-Samarqandī’s collec62 63 64 65

Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar al-Kattānī, al-Risāla al-mustaṭrafa, 165. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 20:11. Al-Khaṭīb, Tārīkh Baghdād, 4:688. Al-Samarqandī, Al-Fawāʾid al-muntaqā al-ʿawālī, ed. Abū Isḥāq al-Ḥuwaynī al-Atharī (Cairo: Maktabat Ibn Taymiyya, 1418/1997).

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tion presents ninety-one hadith cited though his shortest chains of transmission. In a variant on the musnad genre, these hadith are organized according to their chains of transmission. The first 18 hadith in the collection, for example, lead back to the prominent transmitter Sufyān b. ʿUyayna.66 Al-Samarqandī heard hadith as a small child with his father and then survived well into his nineties, and as a result, he could cite these hadith through exceptionally short chains of transmission.67 In the first hadith he presents, for instance, al-Samarqandī is separated from the Prophet by just five degrees.68 It is noteworthy that not all the material transmitted in the collection is attributed to the Prophet. The final five reports al-Samarqandī included in his collection are attributed to early hadith authorities that are also transmitted through elevated chains of transmission.69 The collection of the prominent scholar and transmitter of hadith Abū al-Shaykh al-Iṣbahānī (d. 369/979) consisting of hadith cited through chains of transmission with as few as five links to the Prophet is another early work in the genre.70 As is ʿAlī b. ʿUmar al-Ḥarbī’s (d. 386/ 996) ʿawālī collection consisting of 150 hadith and a handful of reports.71 Perhaps the most well-known of fourth/tenth-century ʿawālī collections is that compiled by the Baghdadi hadith scholar Abū Bakr Aḥmad b. Jaʿfar alQaṭīʿī (d. 368/978). This collection, known as the Qaṭīʿiyyāt, was fairly large, consisting of five juzʾ. It is impossible to say precisely how many hadith this collection contained because only one juzʾ is extant. It appears to have been a large collection, however, as this extant juzʾ is comprised of more than three hundred hadith.72 The Qaṭīʿiyyāt became such a popular vehicle for conveying

66 67 68 69

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Al-Samarqandī, al-ʿAwālī, 25–48. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 15:423. Al-Samarqandī, al-ʿAwālī, 25. He cites, for instance, a report attributed to the prominent second/eighth century Egyptian authority al-Layth b. Saʿd (d. 174/790) in which al-Layth is asked about a person who believes that the Quran is created and responds, “He is a disbeliever! (huwa kāfir).” AlSamarqandī, al-ʿAwālī, 231. Abū al-Shaykh al-Iṣbahānī, al-ʿAwālī, ed. Musʿad al-Saʿdānī (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1417/1996). The manuscript of the text held in the Ẓāhiriyya collection in Damascus has a relatively large number of audition notices appended to it, indicating that it was transmitted with some frequency and moreover over a considerable period of time; one of the audition registers on the work dates from the year 645/1247. Yāsīn Muḥammad al-Sawwās, Fihris majāmīʿ al-Madrasa al-ʿumariyya fī dār al-Kutub al-Ẓāhiriyya (Kuwait: al-Munaẓẓama al-ʿArabiyya li-l-Tarbiya wa al-Thaqāfa wa al-ʿUlūm, 1408/1987), 487. ʿAlī b. ʿUmar Al-Ḥarbī, al-ʿAwālī li-l-Ḥarbī, ed. Taysīr b. Saʿd Abū Ḥamīd (Riyadh: al-Waṭan, 1420/1999). Abū Bakr Aḥmad b. Jaʿfar al-Qaṭīʿī, Juzʾ al-alf dīnār, ed. Badr b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Badr, (Kuwait: Dār al-Nafāʾis, 1414/1993). ʿUmar Kaḥḥāla, Muʿjam al-muʾallifīn (Beirut: Dār al-Muthannā,

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elevation in later centuries that al-Dhahabī remarked that if one were to fail to hear this collection his place in the hierarchy of transmitters would necessarily descend by a degree or two.73 The elevated chains of transmission the Qaṭīʿiyyāt afforded those who audited the collection meant that it remained a means of cultivating short chains of transmission at least as late the ninth/fifteenth century.74 Indeed the surviving juzʾ was so valued by hadith collectors that it came to be known as the Juzʾ al-alf dīnār that is the “quire worth a thousand dinars.” The fourth/tenth-century ʿawālī collections, which have been discussed so far, were composed by the transmitters of the hadith themselves. That is to say these works present the author’s own chains of transmission. This type of personal ʿawālī collection would remain a standard of the culture of hadith transmission for centuries, but scholars also used the genre to compile other transmitters’ hadith for purposes of transmission. Collections compiling the early founders of the tradition’s most elevated chains of transmission were one common use of the genre in this way. This type of ʿawālī work was a selection of the shortest chains of transmissions found in the corpus of a revered authority. This selection could then be audited with a transmitter who possessed an exceptionally close connection to that authority and thus give the compiler, his contemporaries, and even later generations, as direct a connection as possible to one of the revered founding fathers’ most elevated connections to the Prophet. The Imam of Medina, Mālik b. Anas was one of the earliest and most popular subjects of this subgenre. Abū Aḥmad al-Ḥākim alKabīr (d. 378/998) was one of the earliest scholars to compose a collection of Mālik’s ʿawālī. This collection was relatively small, consisting of 249 hadith.75 Later scholars followed al-Ḥākim al-Kabīr’s lead and numerous other collections of Mālik’s ʿawālī of varying lengths soon appeared. The composition of selections of Mālik’s short chains of transmission in fact became something of a standard of the culture.76 Al-Ḥākim al-Kabīr’s ʿawālī collection was followed

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n.d.), 1:182. It would seem that the length of this collection at least sometimes meant that it was not transmitted in its entirety. Ibn Ḥajar in his al-Muʿjam al-mufahras notes having read the first volume with one shaykh, the second and the third with another shaykh in Damascus and the fourth with another shaykh and the fifth with still another. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Muʿjam al-mufaharas, 1:340. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 16:41. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Muʿjam al-mufahras, 1:340; Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 2:151, 4:23, 8, 12. Abū Aḥmad al-Ḥākim al-Kabīr, ʿAwālī Mālik riwāyat Abī Aḥmad al-Ḥākim, ed. Muḥammad al-Ḥājj Nāṣir (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1408/1998). Al-ʿAlāʾī, Ithārat al-fawāʾid, 1:95. This collection was still in circulation in the eighth/fourteenth century. Al-ʿAlāʾī (d. 761/1395) notes having read the collection and cites his chain of transmission for it. Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar al-Kattānī, al-Risāla al-mustaṭrafa, 164–165.

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by a collection composed by his famous countryman Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥakīm (d. 405/1014).77 He was in turn followed by the influential Iraqi scholar of hadith al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī who composed a short juzʾ of Mālik’s ʿawālī consisting of 21 hadith.78 Another prominent fifth/eleventh-century scholar Abū Fatḥ Salīm b. Ayyūb al-Rāzī (d. 447/1055) composed yet another selection of Mālik’s ʿawālī in a single juzʾ.79 Extracting and compiling Mālik’s ʿawālī remained popular in the sixth/twelfth century, as is witnessed by the multi-volume collection of Mālik’s short chains of transmission composed by Zāhir b. Ṭāhir (d. 535/1140) of Naysābūr.80 In the same century, the prolific Syrian hadith scholar Ibn ʿAsākir likewise composed one of the largest collections of Mālik’s ʿawālī reportedly consisting of 50 juzʾ.81 Ibn ʿAsākir is also noted to have composed a more carefully curated collection of Mālik’s ʿawālī titled Tahdhīb al-multamis fī ʿawālī Mālik b. Anas in 31 juzʾ.82 Into the seventh/thirteenth century, scholars continued to compile Mālik’s elevated chains of transmission as a means of establishing their own proximity to him and by extension to the Prophet. Abū Yaman al-Kindī (d. 613/1216)83 and Ibn al-Ḥājib (d. 630/1232) are two examples of seventh/thirteenth-century scholars who compiled Mālik’s ʿawālī. As late as the eighth/fourteenth century, some scholars continued to compose collections of Mālik’s short chains of transmission. The Syrian hadith scholar al-ʿAlāʾī (d. 761/1359), for example, composed a short collection of Mālik’s hadith titled Bughyat al-multamis fī ʿawālī Mālik b. Anas.84 After the eighth/fourteenth century, the compilation of selections of Mālik’s short chains of transmission seems to have fallen out of popularity. The transmission of collections produced in previous centuries, however, remained a means for later scholars to cultivate short chains of transmission.85 77 78

79 80 81 82 83 84 85

Ibid., 164. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, ʿAwālī Mālik, ed. Muḥammad al-Ḥājj Nāṣir (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1408/1998); Al-ʿAlāʾī, Ithārat al-fawāʾid, 1:99. The collection was in circulation in ninth/fifteenth century Egypt, as is witnessed by Ibn Ḥajar in his al-Muʿjam al-Mufahras, 348. Al-ʿAlāʾī, Ithārat al-fawāʾid, 1:98. Al-Dhahabī, Tārikh al-Islām, 40:75. Ibn ʿAsākir, Tārīkh Dimashq, 1:20. Al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām, 1:22. Abū Yaman al-Kindī, ʿAwālī Mālik, ed. Muḥammad al-Ḥājj Nāṣir (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb alIslāmī, 1408/1998). ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī, Fahras al-fahāras, 2:790. The ninth/fifteenth-century Egyptian hadith scholar Ibn Ḥajar, for example, notes having read or transmitted a number of these collections and delineates his various chains of transmission connecting him to their authors and through them to Mālik and the Prophet.

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Mālik’s hadith were an early and popular subject for ʿawālī collections, but he was by no means the only, or even the most popular authority, to whom ʿawālī works were dedicated. From the fifth/eleventh century onwards, scholars compiled ʿawālī collections for a number of other early authorities of Islamic law including Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 150/767),86 al-Awzāʿī. (d. 157/773),87 al-Layth b. Saʿd (d. 174/790),88 al-Thawrī (d. 161/777–778) and others.89 The early hadith scholars and critics who compiled the works that make up the hadith corpus were also popular subjects for ʿawālī works, and collections were composed for the great imams of the discipline of hadith including alBukhārī (d. 256/870), Muslim (d. 261/875), Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (d. 242/855), alTirmidhī (d. 279/892), al-Nasāʾī (d. 303/915), Ibn Mājah (d. 273/887), and alDārimī (d. 255/868).

6

Thulāthiyyāt al-Bukhārī: al-Bukhārī’s Threes

It is not surprising that the author of the most revered work of the Sunni hadith canon was one of the all-time most popular sources for this type of selection. The shortest chains of transmission found in al-Bukhārī’s collection, those of only three links between him and the Prophet, which are collectively known as the al-thulāthiyyāt, were extracted and transmitted from at least as early as the fifth/eleventh century. Al-Bukhārī’s work contains 22 or according to some 23 thulāthiyyāt.90 Already revered for its authenticity, the presence of these short chains of transmission in al-Bukhārī further distinguished the collection from

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Ibn Ḥajar, al-Muʿjam al-mufaharas, 349. The eleventh/seventeenth-century Moroccan hadith scholar Muḥammad b. Sulaymān al-Fāsī (d. 1094/1682) likewise delineates his personal chains of transmission linking him to the ʿAwālī Mālik composed by Zāhir b. Ṭāhir. al-Rawdānī al-Fāsī, Ṣilat al-khalaf, 260. Yūsuf b Khalīl al-Dimashqī (d. 648/1160) among others compiled his ʿawālī. Yūsuf b Khalīl al-Dimashqī, ʿAwālī Abī Ḥanīfa, ed. Khālid ʿAwwād (Damscus: Dār al-Farfūr, 1422/2001). The Ẓahiriyya library holds two manuscripts of this collection. The audition registers appended to the first of these indicate that it was transmitted with frequency over the course of the seventh/thirteenth, eighth/fourteenth and ninth/fifteenth centuries. AlSawwās, Fihris majāmīʿ al-Madrasa al-ʿUmariyya, 34. Al-Dhahabī Siyar, 20:586. Qāsim b. Qatlubughā, ʿAwālī al-Layth b. Saʿd, ed. ʿAbd Karīm Bakr al-Mawṣilī (Jeddah: Dār al-Wafā’, 1408/1987). Al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islam, 40:75. Ibn ʿAsākir also composed a collection of al-Thawrī’s ʿAwālī. Ibn ʿAsākir, Tārīkh madīnat Dimashq, 1:60. Ḥamza Muḥammad Qāsim, Manār al-qārī sharḥ mukhtaṣar Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, ed. ʿAbd alQādir Arnāʾūṭ (Damascus: Dār al-Bayān, 1410/1990), 22.

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the other works of the canon. Muslim’s Ṣaḥīḥ contains no chains of transmission this short; the shortest chain of transmission in the collection consists of four links. Ibn Mājah’s collection, the most junior author of a canonical Sunni hadith work, contains five hadith with three links, but his collection was nowhere near as revered as al-Bukhārī’s, and his thulāthiyyāt never achieved much popularity. Al-Tirmidhī’s collection contains just one hadith with a threelink chain of transmission, while the collections of Abū Dāwūd and al-Nasāʾī contain none. Due to the revered status of al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīh it was transmitted frequently and scholars vied to hear the work’s 7,000 hadith through the shortest possible chains of transmissions back to al-Bukhārī. Over generations of transmission, this resulted in the creation of some very short chains of transmission back to al-Bukhārī. By compiling a selection of only the collection’s shortest three-link chains of transmission, scholars created a conduit that served to expeditiously connect them to al-Bukhārī and the Prophet through some of the shortest possible and most venerated chains of transmission. The seventh/thirteenthcentury Kurdish hadith scholar Ibn al-Athīr (d. 606/1210) remarked about this function of the Thulāthiyyāt, “In our time the chains of transmission with the shortest reliable links are those to the Thulāthiyyāt al-Bukhārī through the companions of Abū al-Waqt ʿAbd al-Awwal al-Sijizī (d. 535/1141), for there are only eight links between them and the Prophet through the Thulāthiyyāt.”91 The brevity of the Thulāthiyyāt was a further factor in its popularity. Because it consisted of only twenty-three hadith, it could be transmitted with a very minimal investment of time. As a result, it was common for collectors to hear al-Bukhārī’s Thulāthiyyāt from numerous transmitters. This use of the Thulāthiyyāt as a means of quickly hearing a number of transmitters’ shortest chains of transmission to the Prophet via al-Bukhārī seems to have been an especially common practice in situations where time was constrained, such as during travel. The eighth/fourteenth-century Andalusian scholar and traveler al-Tujībī (d. 730/1329), for example, notes having taken the Thulāthiyyāt from a number of authorities during his extensive journeys in the east.92 In the same vein, there is a significant body of evidence on the transmission of the Thulāthiyyāt during pilgrimages to the sanctuaries of Mecca and Medina. Ibn Rashīd al-Fihrī (d. 721/1321), for instance, reports having read the Thulathiyyāt

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Although following this comment, Ibn al-Athīr notes that it was possible to find chains of transmission a link shorter in some lesser-known collections, which were equally reliable, such as the Ghaylāniyyāt. Ibn al-Athīr, Jāmiʿ al-uṣūl, 1:111–112. Al-Tujībī, Barnāmaj al-Tujībī, 72, 73, 74.

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to a number of scholars during his pilgrimages to Mecca and Medina.93 The Damascene historian ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Nuʿaymī (d. 927/1521) notes that during his sojourn in Medina, the historian al-Maqrizī heard the Thulathiyyāt from the Mamlūk commander Amīr Tankaz, who possessed an elevated short chains of transmission for the collection due to having heard the Ṣaḥīḥ as a child.94 The influential Egyptian hadith master al-Ḥāfiẓ al-ʿIrāqī and his son Abū Zurʿa are reported to have heard the Thulāthiyyāt together from the elderly transmitter Ibrāhīm b. Yaḥyā al-Ṣanhājī (d. 779/1377) inside the sacred mosque in Mecca while performing pilgrimage in the year 773/1371.95 In his biographical dictionary of the men and women of the ninth/ fifteenth century al-Sakhāwī records a number of hadith collectors who heard the Thulāthiyyāt from him during his multiple sojourns in Mecca, including a three year-old-child whose father brought him to hear the Thulāthiyyāt.96 Al-Sakhāwī even notes that Aḥmad b. Musaddad al-Kazrūnī (d. 887/1482) read the Thulāthiyyāt to him while they were performing the ritual of spending the night in the plain of Mina outside Mecca during the annual pilgrimage.97 The tenth/sixteenth-century Damascene hadith scholar Ibn Ṭūlūn’s account of the Mamlūk Sultan’s visit to Damascus in the year 922/1516 further illustrates this use of the Thulāthiyyāt as a tool for expeditious transmission. The Mamluk Sultan was accompanied on this visit to the city of Damascus by the ʿAbbasid caliph, the four chief judges of each school of law as well as other prominent scholars and notables. Ibn Ṭūlūn recalls how during this visit he and his friend, the Meccan historian and hadith scholar Jār Allāh b. Fahd (d. 954/1547), met with the chief Shāfiʿī judge of Egypt al-Kamāl al-Ṭawīl, the chief Hanafī judge of Egypt Ḥusām al-Dīn Maḥmūd b. Shuḥna, the chief Mālikī judge of Egypt al-Mịhyawī Yaḥyā al-Damīrī, and the chief Ḥanbalī judge of Egypt alShihāb Aḥmad Ibn al-Najjār and their deputies and the two audited the Thulathiyyāt with all of them.98 He also recalls going to the Sultan’s camp on the

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Ibn Rashīd al-Fihrī, Milʾ al-ʿayba fī mā jumiʿ bi-ṭūl al-ghayba, ed. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥabīb al-Khawja (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1408/1981) 34, 37, 60, 66, 69, 162. Al-Nuʿaymī, al-Dāris, 1:92; The Egyptian historian Taghrībirdī (d. 874/1469) also notes other collectors of hadith visiting Medina reading the Thulāthiyyāt to Amīr Tankaz. Yūsuf b. Taghrībirdī, al-Nujūm al-zāhira fī mulūk Miṣr wa al-Qāhira (Cairo: Al-Muʾassasa alMiṣriyya li-l-Taʾlīf wa al-Ṭibāʿa wa al-Nashr, 1382–1390/1963–1971), 9:153. Al-Fāsī, Dhayl al-Taqyīd, 1:459. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-Lāmiʿ, 1:74, 2:225, 3:140, 3:148, 4:43, 6:306, 7:216, 8:215, 11:136. Ibid., 2:225. Moreover, Ibn Ṭūlūn notes that a century earlier, when the Mamlūk sultan al-Ashraf Barsbāy visited Damascus with the four chief judges of Egypt, Ibn Ḥajar and al-Badr al-ʿAynī among them, the local scholars requested to hear hadith from them. The Egyptian judges

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outskirts of Damascus and reading the Thulāthiyyāt to the ʿAbbasid shadowcaliph al-Mutawakkil ʿAlā Allāh.99 Bukhārī’s Thulāthiyyāt remained a popular means for scholars to establish very short chains of transmission to the Prophet in later centuries as well. The famous modern Egyptian historian al-Jabartī (d. 1237/1822) mentions, for instance, a number of the Syrian scholar ʿAlī b. Sālim al-Saffārīnī’s (d. 1188/ 1774) auditions of the Thulāthiyyāt with some of the great authorities of his time including ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nāblusī (d. 1143/1731), the Ottoman Mufti of Damascus Ḥāmid Afandī (d. 1171/1758), Ismāʿīl b. Muḥammad al-ʿAjlūnī (d. 1162/1749) and ʿAbd al-Rahmān al-Mujallid.100 The influential twelfth/eighteenth-century scholar al-Zabīdī likewise records a number of his lines of transmission for the Thulāthiyyāt in his Muʿjam al-shuyūkh.101 Even as late as the twentieth century the Thulāthiyyāt of Bukhārī remained an important means for establishing short chains of transmission to the Ṣaḥīḥ. In his catalog of chains of transmission, the twentieth-century Moroccan hadith expert Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī (d. 1382/1963) remarks with pride that he could transmit the Thulāthiyyāt with just fourteen intermediaries separating him from the Prophet, boasting “there is no shorter chain of transmission today in the world!”102 The multiple commentaries that were written on Thulāthiyyāt further evidence their importance in post-canonical hadith culture. At least fifteen commentaries were composed by scholars across the Islamic world on the short collection from as early as the ninth/fifteenth century onwards. The Egyptian scholars Ibn Ḥajar and Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad al-ʿAjamī (d. 1086/1675), the eleventh/seventeenth-century central Asian scholar Mulla ʿAlī al-Qārī, the Indian scholars ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ al-Qanujī (d. 1223/1808)103 and Ṣadīq Ḥasan Khān (d. 1307/1890) and the Moroccan ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī are all among the many scholars who produced commentaries on Bukhārī’s Thulāthiyyāt.104 Additionally, the Egyptian hadith scholar al-Barmāwī (d. 831/1428) versified the

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obliged and transmitted the Thulāthiyyāt to them. Ibn Ṭūlūn, Mufākahat al-khillān fī ḥawādith al-zamān, ed. Khalīl Manṣūr (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1418/1998) 1:329. Ibid. 1:329. Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib al-āthār, 1:469–470. Al-Zabīdī, al-Muʿjam al-mukhtaṣṣ, 297, 691, 419. ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī, Fahras al-fahāris, 2:688. Ṣadīq Ḥasan Khān, al-Ḥiṭṭa fī dhikr al-ṣiḥāḥ al-sitta (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1405/1985), 176. For a bibliography of commentaries on the thulāthiyyāt, see Muḥammad al-Ḥusaynī, Itḥāf al-Qārī bi-maʿrifat ʿamal al-ʿulamāʾ bi-ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, (Damascus: Dar al-Yamāmah, 1408/1987), 423.

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Thulāthiyyāt105 and the influential twelfth/eighteenth-century scholar Ibrāhīm al-Kūrānī reorganized the Thulāthiyyāt in musnad format.106 The collections authored by the other members of the pantheon of early hadith scholarship were also the subjects of ʿawālī works, although none were to become as popular as the Thulāthiyyāt al-Bukhārī. The three-link chains of transmission found in Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal’s Musnad made up one of the most popular collections of ʿawālī after al-Bukhārī. The Syrian Ḥanbalī Ismāʿīl b. ʿUmar al-Maqdisī (d. 613/1216) was one of the first to extract and compile these hadith from the Musnad. This collection does not, however, seem to have included all of the thulāthiyyāt in the Musnad. His fellow Syrian Ḥanbalī Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn al-Maqdisī (d. 643/1245) found and extracted further thulāthiyyāt in the musnad and composed an addendum to the earlier work, bringing the total number of thulāthiyyāt in the Musnad to 363.107 Perhaps not surprisingly the Thulāthiyyāt al-Musnad seem to have been particularly popular in Ḥanbalī circles, but they were also transmitted among adherents of other madhhabs.108 The relative length of the Thulāthiyyāt of the Musnad in comparison to the Thulāthiyyat of al-Bukhārī meant that they were less convenient to transmit and in many cases readings of the compilation were partial. In one case in the ninth/fifteenth century, for instance, only the thulāthiyyāt from the section of the Musnad dedicated to the hadith transmitted by ʿAlī (Musnad ʿAlī) were transmitted.109 Like the Thulāthiyyāt of Bukhārī the Thulāthiyyāt of Ibn Ḥanbal’s Musnad were also the subject of commentary, including one written by the twelfth/eighteenth-century Syrian Ḥanbalī hadith specialist Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Safārīnī.110 Hadith scholars also culled three-link chains of transmission from other canonical and extra-canonical hadith collection. The 15 thulāthiyyāt found in the Musnad of al-Dārimī were extracted and compiled and gained significant popularity.111 Like the Thulāthiyyāt al-Bukhārī, perhaps due to its brevity, it seems to have often been transmitted in brief encounters, as well as to very

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Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Dāʾim al-Barmāwī, Sharḥ manẓūmat thulāthiyāt al-Bukhārī, MS Ḥadīth Taymūr ʿArabī 589, Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, Cairo, Egypt. Ismāʿīl b. Muḥammad al-Babānī, Hidāyat al-ʿārifīn fī asmā al-muʾallifīn wa āthār al-muṣannifīn (Beirut: Dār al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1955) 2:186; Al-Kattānī, Fahras al-fahāras, 2:586. Al-Kattānī, Fahras al-Fahāris, 2:1003. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 8:201, 1:228, 2:103, 5:280, 8:51. Ibid., 5:280. Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Saffārīnī, Sharḥ thulāthiyyāt Musnad al-imām Aḥmad, ed. Zuhayr Shāwīsh (Beirut: Al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1399/1978). Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 6:273, 9:265, 12:29.

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small children.112 In more than a few cases this work was in fact transmitted alongside the Thulāthiyyāt of al-Bukhārī.113 The five thulāthiyyāt of Ibn Mājah were also compiled and occasionally transmitted.114 The Musnad of ʿAbd b. Ḥumayd (d. 249/863) contains some fifty-one hadith transmitted by three-link chains of transmission and these were also compiled and achieved a degree of popularity.115 The absence of thulāthiyyāt from the other major works of the hadith canon, such as the Ṣaḥīḥ of Muslim and the Sunan works of Abū Dawūd and al-Nasāʾī made them a less desirable source from which to cull ʿawālī. In his Siyar, alDhahabī, in fact, remarks on this aspect of Muslim’s Ṣaḥīḥ, “it contains only very few chains of transmission that can be considered elevated.”116 Still, the canonical status of these works meant that scholars also perused, extracted and compiled their shortest chains of transmission.117 The four-link chains of transmission (rubāʿiyyāt) of Muslim’s Ṣaḥīh, for example, were compiled by the Damascene hadith scholar al-Wānī (d. 735/1334),118 the Meccan hadith scholar Abū Zurʿa Ibn Fahd (d. 826/1422) and Ibn Ḥajar among others.119 While the rubāʿiyyāt of Muslim were nowhere near as popular as the Thulāthiyyāt of al-Bukhārī they were nevertheless transmitted with some frequency. The eighth/fourteenth-century Andalusian scholar al-Tujībī, for instance, notes having heard a selection of sixty hadith of the four-link chains of transmission he extracted from Muslim’s Ṣaḥīḥ from a number of transmitters during his sojourn in Damascus.120 The rubāʿiyyat of al-Nasāʾī’s al-Sunan were also extracted and compiled. The sources, however, preserve few references to their 112 113 114

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Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 7:302. Al-ʿAlāʾī, Ithārat al-fawāʾid, 1:271. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 1:315. A manuscript of the work held in the Ẓāhiriyya collection, for example, was transmitted frequently in seventh and eighth century Damascus and al-Dhahabī and Ibn Ṭūlūn are both recorded among the auditors of the three-page manuscript. Al-Sawwās, Fihris majāmīʿ, 291. There is a manuscript of this work held in the Aḥmadiyya collection in Aleppo by an unknown compiler. Al-Aḥādith al-thulāthiyya al-wāqiʿa fī Musnad ʿAbd, MS Aḥmadiya 673, Aleppo Syria. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 10:53. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 12:568. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 11:136, 12:29. Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar al-Kattānī, al-Risāla almusṭatrafa, 98. The Manuscript of this collection compiled by al-Wānī held in the Khuda Bakhsh library in Patna, for instance, has numerous audition notes indicating that it was transmitted with some frequency in the Umayyad mosque in Damascus. Muhammad Zakir Husain, Descriptive Catalog of the Rare Arabic Manuscripts preserved in the Khuda Bakhsh Library (Patna: Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Library, 1997), 1:146. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 11:111. Al-Tujībī, Barnāmaj al-Tujībī, 87–88.

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transmission.121 Abū ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī’s Sunan contains a large number of fourlink isnāds that were also extracted and compiled, but do not seem to have enjoyed much popularity either.122 Scholars did not only compose ʿawālī collections dedicated to the early heroes of the culture, but they also compiled collections of short chains of transmissions of a number of later authorities. Scholars for example compiled ʿawālī collections for the prominent fourth/tenth-century Hanafi jurist and hadith scholar al-Ṭahāwī (d. 321/933), as well as for the great fourth/tenthcentury hadith scholar al-Ṭabarānī (d. 360/970).123 In later centuries too scholars continued to extract, compile and transmit the ʿawālī of the authorities of law and hadith, creating a vast body of literature dedicated to the short chains of transmission of the culture’s great men. In contrast to the ʿawālī collections dedicated to the titans of the formative period, some ʿawālī collections were dedicated to relatively minor scholars 121

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Al-Sakhāwī, al-Qawl al-muʿtabar fī khatm al-Nasāʾī riwāyat Ibn al-Aḥmar, ed. Jāsim b. Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd al-Fajjī (Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 1420/1999), 79. The Chester Beatty Library holds a manuscript of this compilation twenty folios in length. A.J. Arberry, The Chester Beatty Library: A Handlist of the Arabic Manuscripts (Dublin: Hodges Figgis and Company, 1959), 31. C. Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litterarur (Leiden: Brill, 1937–1943), i. 162 suppl. i. 269. An analysis of the audition notes, if any exist on this manuscript, would help give a better idea of how popular this collection was. Al-Birzālī mentions having transmitted the text in Cairo and al-Sakhāwī also references the text’s transmission at least once. Al-Birzālī, Tārīkh al-Muqtafā ʿalā al-Rawḍatayn, ed. ʿUmar alTadumrī (Beirut: al-Maktaba al-ʿAṣriyya, 2006), 1:188. Ibn Ḥajar’s grandson Yūsuf b. Shāhīn, for example composed a collection of these hadith. Yūsuf b. Shāhin, Rubāʿiyyāt al-Tirmidhī, Ḥadīth Taymūr MS 437, Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, Cairo, Egypt. A complete collection of the rubāʿiyyat in the Sunan was quite voluminous and thus time consuming to transmit and when they were transmitted, they seem to have often been transmitted partially. Ibn Ḥajar for example records that that one ʿAbd alWāḥid b. Manṣūr al-Harāwī (d. 733/1332) transmitted just the first two juzʾ of the collection of al-Tirmidhī’s four-link isnads. Likewise, the Andalusian scholar Al-Balāwī (d. 767/1365) in his account of his travels to the eastern Islamic lands notes having transmitted an extract of al-Tirmidhī’s four link chains of transmission containing just six hadith. Khālid b. ʿĪsā al-Balāwī, Tāj al-mafraq fī taḥliyat ʿulamāʾ al-Mashriq, ed. Al-Ḥasan al-Sāʾiḥ (Rabat: Ṣundūq Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-Islāmī al-Mushtarak bayna al-Mamlaka al-Maghribiyya wa-alImārāt al-ʿArabiyya al-Muttaḥida, 1978), 1:28. Some scholars, however, did take an interest in collecting and transmitting the shortest chains in al-Tirmidhī’s collection. Al-Kattānī reports, for instance, that Ibn Ḥajar’s maternal grandson and prominent hadith transmitter Yūsuf b. Shāhīn (d. 899/1493) extracted and transmitted the hadith transmitted through four link isnāds in Tirmidhī’s Sunan. Al-Kattānī, Fahras al-fahāris, 2:1140. Al-Sakhāwī likewise reports that the ninth/fifteenth century Khalīl b. Muḥammad al-Qurashī compiled these hadith and then transmitted his compilation through the chains of transmission of two Cairene transmitters. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 3:188. Al-Rawdānī, Ṣilat al-khalaf, 253.

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and even laypeople. The ʿawālī collection known as the Ghaylāniyyāt is one of the more prominent example of this. The Ghaylāniyyāt were composed by the influential hadith critic and authority al-Dāraquṭnī (d. 385/995) for Abū Bakr Ibn al-Bazzāz al-Shāfiʿī (d. 354/ 965). It became known as the Ghaylāniyyāt after the last living student who could transmit from Ibn al-Bazzāz, Abū Ṭālib Ibn Ghaylān (d. 440/1049). Ibn Ghaylān had not heard the entirety of the collection from Ibn al-Bazzāz, nor was he by any means the most distinguished of those who had audited with him. He was, according to his biographers, a very minor scholar. Nevertheless, he was fated to outlive every other person who had audited the collection with Ibn al-Bazzāz. The collection contained a large number of four-link chains of transmission, this combined with Ibn Ghaylān’s longevity meant that he could offer those who took it from him in the fifth/eleventh century a phenomenally direct connection to the Prophet. As a result of this rare elevation the collection gained widespread and enduring popularity. Three centuries later, al-Dhahabī remarked about the elevation of the Ghaylāniyyāt, “it is so elevated it is as if it is in the heavens.”124 Al-Dhahabī also noted that “whoever misses hearing the Ghaylāniyyāt … his chain of transmission necessarily descends by a degree.”125 Four centuries after Ibn Ghaylān’s death, the collection was still a means of conveying elevation. The influential ninth/fifteenth-century Egyptian scholar al-Ḥāfiẓ al-ʿIrāqī noted that in his time the shortest chains of transmission, which consisted of nine links, were only possible through the Ghaylāniyyāt and a few other highly elevated ʿawālī collections.126 In its complete form, the Ghaylāniyyāt was quite large, weighing in at twelve juzʾ.127 Its bulk meant that it was often not transmitted in its entirety and a number of shorter selections derived from the collection were produced.128 Ibn Taymiyya and al-ʿAlāʾī in the eighth/fourteenth century, and Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn al-Maqdisī in the seventh/thirteenth century, among others, produced selections of the Ghaylāniyyāt to expedite its transmission.129 The audition notices recorded on a manuscript of Ibn Taymiyya’s short selection of the

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Al-Dhahabī, Lisān al-mizān, 6:119. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 16:41. Al-ʿIrāqī, Sharḥ al-tabṣira wa tadhkira, ed. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Humaym (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1423/2002), 2:61. Al-Dhahabī for instance notes that he read only the first few pages of the first juzʾ of the Ghaylāniyyāt. Muʿjam shuyūkh al-Dhahabī, 2:26; Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-Kāmina, 5:485. Ibn Rāfiʿ, Al-Wafāyāt, 1:453, 2:7; al-Fāsī, Dhayl al-Taqyīd, 1:250, 1:333; Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar alKāmina, 4:320; al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 11:87. Ibn Taymiyya, Juzʾ fīhi al-abdāl al-ʿawālī al-mustakhraja, ed. Abū ʿAmr Aḥmad b. ʿAṭiyya alWakīl (Cairo: Dār al-Baṣāʾir, 1432/2011). One such selection held in the Ẓāhiriyya was ten pages in length. Al-Sawwās, Fihris majāmīʿ, 375.

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Ghaylāniyyāt consisting of 31 hadith evidence how popular the work was. These notices indicate that more than 1,500 auditors attended public readings of this manuscript alone over the course of the eighth/fourteenth and ninth/fifteenth centuries in a variety of Damascene hadith institutes, madrasas and private homes.130 The Ghaylāniyyāt is but one of many ʿawālī collections dedicated to relatively minor scholars.131 ʿAwālī collections were above all about elevation. As such they could also be composed for men and women who laid no claim to scholarship but were simply fated to hear hadith at a young age and then survive to an advanced age and possess short chains of transmission as a result. The ʿawālī collection al-Dhahabī compiled for the 103-year-old transmitter Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Munʿim is an example of an ʿawālī collection composed for a layperson. Al-Dhahabī compiled this collection for him not because he had ever himself audited hadith much less studied it, but because of his extremely advanced age he could, through the global ijāza (ijāza ʿāmma), that is an ijāza not issued to him specifically, but to all living Muslims at a given time, transmit from a number of authorities who had been dead for nearly a century.132 Similarly, a century later, Ibn Ḥajar, composed an ʿawālī collection for Bahāʾ al-Dīn alShurūṭī (d. 749/1348), not due to any scholarly virtue he possessed, but because he had reached 89 years of age and as a result could lay claim to some relatively short chains of transmission.133

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Muhammad Zākir Husain, Descriptive Catalog of the Rare Arabic Manuscripts preserved in the Khuda Bakhsh Library, 1:141–166. The work’s popularity was by no means limited to Damascus; it seems to have enjoyed considerable popularity in Cairo too. Al-Sakhāwī notes the transmission of the text numerous times in his history of the ninth/fifteenth century. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 1:37, 3:81, 3:171, 3:198, 4:139, 4:255, 4:330, 5:35, 6:120, 7:178, 7:302, 10:158, 10:330, 12:22. Many of the numerous copies of the work held in the Ẓāhiriyya collection likewise have large numbers of audition registers appended to them from as late as the eighth century. Al-Sawwās, Fihris majāmīʿ, 375. Bahāʾ al-Dīn Ibn ʿAsākir (d. 723/1323) was a descendent of the great sixth/twelfth-century Damascene Hadith scholar Ibn ʿAsākir. Bahāʾ al-Dīn is an example of such an individual on the periphery of scholarship. A doctor by profession, he was taken to hear hadith as a very young child before the age of five. As an adult Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-ʿAlāʾī composes an ʿawālī collection for him. Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya wa al-nihāya, 14:108. Al-Fāsī, Dhayl al-taqyīd, 341. Ibn Ḥajar, al-ʿIbar fī khabar man ghabar, ed. Muḥammad Saʿīd b. Basyūnī Zaghlūl (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1985/1406), 4:151.

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Degrees of Separation: Link-Themed ʿAwālī Collections

In addition to the ʿawālī collections dedicated to individual scholars and transmitters there are several variations on the ʿawālī theme that should be noted. In another parallel to the forty-hadith genres discussed above, ʿawālī collections themed around the number of links between a transmitter and the Prophet were a popular subgenre. It was noted earlier in this section that scholars extracted the shortest chains of transmission from a particular collection, such as the thulāthiyyāt of al-Bukhārī and the Rubāʿiyyāt of Muslim. The link-themed ʿawālī collections are essentially an extension of this. Rather than extracting from the canonical and extracanonical hadith collections, however, scholars compiled hadith they or another transmitter could transmit through a specific number of links. These link-themed ʿawālī collections first emerged in the fourth/tenth-century and remained popular into the ninth/fifteenth century. The fourth/tenth-century Baghdadi hadith transmitter Ibn Naqūr’s (d. 407/1016) khumāsiyyāt is an example of the many collections of five-link chains of transmission that were produced over the fourth/tenth and fifth/ eleventh centuries.134 In the following century, scholars were compiling collections of six-link chains of transmission (sudāsiyyāt). Muḥammad al-Ḥaṭṭāb al-Rāzī’s (d. 525/1130) sudāsiyyāt was by far the most popular collection of this type. Compiled by al-Silafī in Alexandria, al-Rāzī’s Sudāsiyyāt quickly achieved widespread popularity as a vehicle for cultivating elevation and remains in use even today.135 Although the most popular collection of its kind, al-Rāzī’s Sudāsiyyāt was but one of many six-link collections produced in the sixth/ twelfth century. The Sudāsiyyāt attributed to the Persian hadith scholar and jurist al-Furāwī (d. 530/1136) is another example of a sixth/twelfth-century linkthemed ʿawālī collection. Al-Furāwī’s collection enjoyed a significant degree of popularity and was transmitted frequently as late as the eighth/fourteenth century, as is evidenced by the many audition notices recorded on one of the surviving manuscripts.136 Numerous sixth/twelfth-century scholars, such 134 135

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Ibn Rashīd al-Sibtī al-Fihrī, Malʾ al-ʿayba, 244. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-Kāmina, 1:160, 3:169, 4:151, 5:434, 5:516, 6:251; Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 1:14, 3:142, 5:63, 5:283, 6:293, 7:91, 8:167, 9:112, 12:167; Ibn al-Mulaqqin, al-Badr almunīr, 2:21; Ibn al-Abār al-Quḍāʿī, al-Takmīla li-Kitāb al-Ṣila, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām al-Harrās (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1415/1995), 2:21, 2:266, 4:26; al-Fāsī, Dhayl al-taqyyīd, 1:434, 1:260, 1:367, 2:63, 2:119; al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām, 11:264. The manuscript of the work held in the Ẓāhiriyya has a large number of audition notices dating to the seventh and eighth centuries. Al-Sawwās, Fihris majāmīʿ, 172. Ibn ʿAsākir also made a compilation of al-Furāwī’s six-link chains of transmission and it too was transmitted frequently. Al-Sawwās, Fihris majāmīʿ, 175.

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as Ibn ʿAsākir, composed collections of the hadith they could transmit with seven links (subāʿiyyāt).137 As late as the early seventh/thirteenth century, Yūsuf b. Khālīl (d. 648/1250) was still able to compile a collection of enough of his subāʿiyyāt to fill 19 folios.138 In the latter half of the seventh/thirteenth century, scholars were composing collections of eight-link chains of transmission (thumāniyyāt). The thumāniyyāt collections composed for ʿAbd al-Laṭīf b. ʿAbd al-Munʿim al-Najīb (d. 672/1273) by both al-Sharīf ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Ḥusaynī (d. 695/1295) and Ibn al-Ẓāhirī (d. 696/1296) were perhaps the most popular of the eight-link collections.139 Born in Harran, al-Najīb’s father had taken him to hear hadith in Baghdad and other cities while still under the age of five. As an adult, this gave him an unusually broad network of elevated chains of transmission. Al-Najīb’s Thumāniyyāt consisted of at least four juzʾ and was audited by a huge number of transmitters during his lifetime and continued to be popular in the following centuries.140 The prominent Shafiʿī jurist Ibn al-Subkī, for instance, notes having been taken to an audition of the text by members of his scholarly family when he was just a four-year-old child.141 The thumāniyyāt compiled for the Ayyubid princess Mūnisa Khātūn bt. al-Mālik alʿĀdil (d. 693/1293), based on the ijāzas she was issued while still an infant, was

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Ibn ʿAsākir, Tārīkh madīnat Dimashq, 20. A few of the scholars other than Ibn ʿAsākir who composed subāʿiyyāt works include Abū Maʿālī al-Furārī (d. 578/1182) as noted by Nabīl Saʿd al-Dīn Jarrār in his al-Īmāʾ ilā zawāʾid al-amālī wa al-ajzāʾ (Riyadh: Aḍwāʾ al-Salaf, 1428/2007), 1:48. Abū Asʿad al-Qushayrī (d. 546/1152) also had a subāʿiyyāt collection. AlḤāfiẓ al-ʿIrāqī, Takhrīj Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, ed. Maḥmūd b. Muḥammad al-Ḥaddād (Riyadh: Dār al-ʿAṣima li-Nashr, 1408/1987), 6:2799. The famous Andalusian Malikī jurist al-Qāḍī Abū Bakr Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 453/1148) is another scholar who composed a subāʿiyyāt work. Ibn al-Abār al-Quḍāʿī, Muʿjam aṣḥāb al-Qāḍī Abī ʿAlī al-Ṣadafī (Cairo: Maktabat al-Thaqāfa al-Dīniyya, 1420/2000), 1:42. The Ẓāhiriyya collection in Damascus also houses a number of subāʿiyyāt works including: Zāhir b. Ṭāhir al-Shaḥḥāmī (d. 533/1138) collection of a thousand of his seven link hadith, al-Subāʿiyyāt al-alf, MS 8:19, al-Ẓāhiriyya. Another copy of this work is housed in the majāmīʿ collection and has numerous auditions for readings of the text that took place in the Ḍiyāʾiyya in Damascus in the seventh century. Al-Sawwās, Fihris majāmiʿ, 93. The Subāʿiyyat of Abū Barakāt Ibn Mulāʿib (d. 616/1219), Abū Barakāt Ibn Mulāʿib, Subāʿiyyāt Abī Barakāt Ibn al-Mulāʿib, Ḥadīth MS 4:1371; there is another copy Ibn Mulāʿib’s work in the Majāmiʿ of the Ẓāhiriyya under the title alSubāʿiyyat. This collection was fairly popular as is demonstrated by the large number of audition registers appended to it. Al-Sawwās, Fihris majāmīʿ, 16. Some of these collections of subāʿiyyat were considered to be of a quite dubious nature. Al-Dhahabī, al-Muʿjam almukhtaṣ, 276. Al-Sawwās, Fihris majāmīʿ, 16.291. Ḥājjī Khalīfa, Kashf al-ẓunūn, 524. Al-Taghribridī, Al-Manhal al-ṣāfī, 7:357. Al-Subkī, Muʿjam shuyūkh al-Subkī, 273.

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another popular thumāniyyāt collection. Composed for her the year before she died, when she was 94 years old, at a time when very few people could claim to be separated from the Prophet by only eight degrees of separation, the collection enabled those who heard it from her to span the seven centuries between them and the Prophet with just nine links.142 Throughout the eighth/fourteenth century, scholars, such as the prominent Egyptians Ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd (d. 702/1302),143 al-ʿIzz b. al-Jamāʿa (d. 767/1365)144 and al-Ḥāfiẓ al-ʿIrāqī,145 the Tunisian Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Warghamī (d. 803/1400)146 and others147 composed collections of hadith that they or others could transmit through nine-link chains of transmission. Already in the late eighth/fourteenth century, scholars were compiling collections of hadith transmitted through ten-link isnāds (ʿushāriyyāt). The sources preserve numerous references to ʿushāriyyāt that were produced between the late eighth/fourteenth and early tenth/sixteenth centuries. The prominent Timurid scholar Ibn al-Jazarī (d. 833/1429) in Shiraz,148 Abū Zurʿa b. al-Ḥāfiẓ al-ʿIrāqī (d. 826/1422),149 Ibn Ḥajar150 and Sitt al-ʿAysh ʿĀʾisha bt. ʿAlī (d. 840/1436) in Cairo,151 and alTanūkhī (d. 800/1397) in Damascus152 are a few of the scholars and transmitters who are noted to have either composed ʿushāriyyāt or had ʿushāriyyāt composed for them. In the late ninth/fifteenth century, al-Suyūtī was still able to compile a small number of hadith he could transmit through ten-link chains of transmission. In an allusion to the phenomenal proximity the collection offered to the Prophet, al-Suyūṭī titled his collection al-Salām min sayyid alanām (Salutations of Peace from the Liege Lord of Humanity).153 Al-Suyūṭī’s

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Al-Fasī, Dhayl al-taqyyīd, 2:394. Taghrībirdī, al-Nujūm al-zāhira, 8:207. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 2:5, 3:52, 3:142. 5:9, 10:140. Al-ʿIrāqī, Sharḥ al-tabṣira, 39. Ismāʿīl b. Muḥammad Amīn al-Baghdādī, Hidāyat al-ʿĀrifīn, 2:177. For example, the Meccan Ibrāhim b. Muḥammad Raḍī al-Dīn al-Ṭabarī (d. 722/1322). Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad Raḍī al-Dīn al-Ṭabarī, al-Tusāʿiyyāt, MS 1373, al-Ẓāhiriya, Damascus; Muḥammad b. Muslim al-Zaynī (d. 726/1326), Al-Safadī, Al-Wāfī bi-l-wafayāt, 5:20. Ibn Ḥajar is reported to have accused Ibn al-Jazarī of having plagiarized this text from one composed by al-ʿIrāqī. Ibn al-ʿImād, Shadharāt al-dhahab, 9:299. Despite this accusation the collection was transmitted in ninth/fifteenth century Cairo. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ allāmiʿ, 3:140. Ibn Fahd, Laḥẓ al-alḥāẓ fī ṭabaqāt al-ḥuffāẓ, 187. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Iṣāba, 1:110. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 12:78. Ibn al-ʿImād, Shadharāt al-Dhahab, 8:614. ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī, Fahras al-Faharas, 2:688–689. It would seem al-Suyūṭī continued to search for ten-link chains of transmission and compiled multiple versions of this

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contemporary and rival al-Sakhāwī (d. 902/1497) also compiled a collection of the ʿushāriyyāt of his various teachers’ ʿushāriyyāt al-shuyūkh.154 For the same reasons that have been suggested above for the decline of other sub-genres of ʿawālī, these scholars of the late ninth/fifteenth century were some of the last who would compose collections of ʿushāriyyāt. While scholars no longer produced new collection in this subgenre, it retained a degree of popularity after the ninth/fifteenth century. Like the Thulāthiyyāt of al-Bukhārī, later transmitters continued to use the transmission of these collections as a means to establish their own elevation and proximity to the Prophet.

8

Categories of Elevation: Muwāfaqāt, Abdāl, Musāwāt, and Muṣāfaḥāt

ʿAwālī collections comprised of hadith in the categories of elevation: muwāfaqāt, abdāl, musāwāt, and muṣāfaḥāt are another notable subgenre of ʿawālī. It was noted above that since the sixth/twelfth century, scholars had compiled collections of forty-hadith using these categories. Scholars also employed this theme to compose much larger ʿAwālī collections. Although some scholars of hadith considered interest in this category of hadith somewhat trivial, it nonetheless attracted considerable interest for centuries. Production in the subgenre seems to have begun in the early sixth/twelfth century, probably in Iraq and then moved west to Egypt and Syria.155 By the seventh/thirteenth century, it had achieved widespread popularity. The seventh/thirteenth-century hadith scholar Ibn al-Ṣalāh remarked on the growth in the popularity of the subgenre in recent generations, “latter-day scholars have become increasingly interested in these categories.”156 This interest was enduring. More than two centuries after Ibn al-Ṣalāh, al-Sakhāwī noted that, “countless of the previous masters of the discipline have composed collections of these types.”157 A significant body of narrative sources, as well as audition notices produced from the early sixth/twelfth century to the early tenth/sixteenth century, confirm alSakhāwī’s assessment of the subgenre’s popularity.

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work. Al-Kattānī notes having seen four different collections of ʿushāriyyāt composed by al-Suyūṭī, the largest being al-Salām min sayyid al-anām, which consisted of 23 hadith. ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī, Fahras al-Fahāris, 2:881. Konrad Hirschler, Book Culture in Late Medieval Syria: The Ibn Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī Library of Damascus, A Monument to Medieval Medieval Syrian Book Culture, Chapter One, Forthcoming. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, Muqaddima, 258. Al-Sakhāwī, Fatḥ al-Mughīth, 3:345.

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Perhaps the earliest collection produced in this subgenre is al-ʿAwālī almuwāfaqāt by Ismāʿīl b. Muḥammad al-Iṣbahānī (d. 535/1140).158 This collection compiles hadith found in the collections of Muslim and Bukhārī but cited through his own independent isnāds that are considerably shorter than if he had transmitted the same hadith through Bukhārī or Muslim. The work is organized alphabetically according to the transmitter through whom al-Iṣbahānī establishes his superior chain of transmission. To illustrate, al-Iṣbāhānī cites a hadith concerning the reading of Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ in prayer through a chain of transmission that intersects with the fifth transmitter in al-Bukhārī’s chain of transmission, Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ibn Wahb (d. 264/874), with just four links, making a total of nine links to the Prophet. He then explains that al-Bukhārī transmitted the hadith with two links to Ibn Wahb, thus bringing the reader’s attention to the fact that if al-Iṣbahānī had transmitted this hadith through al-Bukhārī, his chain of transmission would necessarily be much longer. Al-Iṣbāhānī does not tell us how many intermediaries there were between him and Bukhārī, but his rough contemporary al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ (d. 544/1149) transmitted al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ through six intermediaries.159 Thus, as can be seen in the diagram below, if al-Iṣbahānī transmitted the collection through the same number of intermediaries as al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ or even one less, his chain of transmission would be five or six links shorter than if he transmitted it through al-Bukhārī. In terms of volume, these collections varied greatly in size. Al-Iṣbahānī’s contemporary Ibn ʿAsākir composed the largest collection of this type I have identified. This collection reportedly weighed in at a massive 72 juzʾ.160 Roughly a century later Ḍiyāʾ al-Maqdisī could still compile his al-Muwāfaqāt al-ʿawālī in 60 juzʾ.161 While his contemporaries al-Najīb al-Ḥarrānī and Abū Rabīʿ Sālim b. Sulaymān al-Himyarī’s (d. 643/1245) collections were made up of 12 juzʾ, and four juzʾ respectively.162 Other collections are relatively brief; many are as small as a single juzʾ. Some works of this subgenre were general and are not explicitly focused on any specific collections. Others, such as al-ʿAlāʾī’s Kitāb al-Muwāfaqāt al-ʿaliyya li-l-aʾimma al-sitta were specifically linked to the canonical Six Books.163 Ibn 158 159 160 161 162 163

Ismāʿīl b. Muḥammad al-Iṣbahānī, al-Muwāfaqāt al-ʿawālī, MS 10:6538, al-Ẓāhiriyya, Damascus, Syria. Al-Qāḍī ʿIyād, al-Ghunya, 33. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 20:599. Ibid., 23:128; In his Tārīkh al-Islām, however, al-Dhahabī describes this works as being 51 juzʾ, 47:212. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 23:137. Al-ʿĀlāʾī, Ithārat al-fawāʾid, 2:685.

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Relative length of al-Iṣbahānī’s independent isnād in relation to al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s through al-Bukhārī

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Balabān (d. 739/1338) is reported to have composed an unusual collection in which he presents chains of transmission in which there are five men between him and the five imams of hadith (the six minus Ibn Mājah).164 Other works of the subgenre were tied not to the whole canon, but only specific canonical collections. Al-Sharaf al-Dimyāṭī (d. 705/1305), for example, composed a collection of his chains of transmission which were muwāfaqāt with Muslim and al-Nasāʾī.165 The seventh/thirteenth-century Syrian Ḥanbalī Ḍiyāʾ al-Maqdisī composed a collection presenting his muwāfqāt with Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal.166 Others composed collections of their muwāfaqāt with Dārimī and Mālik.167 The seventh/thirteenth century was the heyday of muwāfaqāt, abdāl, musāwāt, and muṣāfaḥāt production. Ibn Jamāʿa,168 Ibn al-Ẓāhirī 169 Ibn Ḥājib170 and numerous others produced collections in this subgenre then.171 Likely because the natural growth in chains of transmission was making it more difficult to do so, fewer collections were produced in the genre over the eighth/fourteenth century. Nevertheless, the subgenre retained considerable popularity, as is witnessed by the collections that were compiled by prominent scholars such as al-Sharaf al-Dimyāṭī, Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1327),172 al-Dhahabī,173 and al-Mizzī (d. 742/1341).174 By the ninth/fifteenth century, as was seen in the above section on the forty-hadith genre, some scholars were still able to compose very brief collections of 40 muwāfaqāt and abdāl, but the days when a scholar, like Ibn ʿAsākir, could compose 70 plus juzʾ of muwāfaqāt were gone. Towards the close of the ninth/fifteenth century, al-Sakhāwī would state that it was no longer possible to establish musāwa with any of the great imams of the discipline.175 The maternal grandson of Ibn Ḥajar, Yūsuf b. Shāhīn (d. 899/1493) compiled a very brief collection of his muwāfaqāt and abdāl demonstrating that even in the ninth/fifteenth century it was still possible to find a few hadith that could be

164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175

ʿAlī b. Balabān al-Dimashqī, Juzʾ fīhi Khamsat aḥādīth ʿan al-aʾimma al-khamsa, ed. Riyāḍ Ḥusayn al-Ṭāʾī (Riyadh: Dār al-Mughnī, 1425/2004). Jarrār, al-Īmāʾ ilā zawāʾid al-amālī, 60. Al-ʿĀlāʾī, Ithārat al-fawāʾid, 1:421. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 3:183, 4:184. Ibn Jamāʿa, Mashyakhat Ibn Jamāʿa, 235. Al-Ziriklī, al-Aʿlām, 1:221. Ibn al-Ḥājib, Muṣāfaḥāt, Muwāfaqāt, Abdāl wa Aḥādīth ʿawāl, MS 11:719, al-Maktaba alMarkaziyya, Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Al-Taghrībirdī, al-Manhal al-ṣāfī, 7:357. Ibn Taymiyya, al-Abdāl al-ʿawālī, MS 4:262, Khudā Bakhsh Library, Patna, India. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Muʿjam al-mufahras, 1:360. al-Tujībī, Barnāmaj al-Tujībī, 232. Al-Sakhāwī, Fatḥ al-Mughīth, 3:345.

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seen to compare favorably with those of the canon.176 He, however, was one of the last who could do this, and production in the subgenre seems to have ceased altogether in the following century.

9

Conclusion

This chapter endeavored to trace the development and functions of the most salient genres and subgenres of post-canonical hadith literature that share the themes of presenting and transmitting breadth and quality of transmission. It is a preliminary study of a massive and complex body of literature that developed over centuries and is by no means comprehensive.177 Although it covers the most prominent features of these genres and their development, much further research is needed. Among other areas in need of work, more investigation is required to better understand the decline of these genres and subgenres in the tenth/sixteenth century. From this vantage, it would seem that some genres had specific factors that contributed to their decline. In the case of those genres which aim to demonstrate elevation in relation to the canon, this seems to be because it was simply no longer possible and the genre had reached the natural end of its life. It, of course, remained possible for scholars to compile collections of more generally elevated hadith that were not necessarily tied to the canon but were elevated in relation to their contemporaries. They, however, only rarely did so. As was noted, some scholars would occasionally compose collections of forty elevated-hadith, but on the whole the genres and subgenres studied in this chapter disappeared in the tenth/sixteenth century. It would appear that this was, at least in part, because these collections were very much a part of the culture of oral/aural hadith transmission that suffered 176 177

Al-Kattānī, Fahras al-fahāris, 2:1139. There a many fascinating and creative ʿAwālī collections that did not fit in the parameters of this chapter that deserve scholarly attention. The eighth/fourteenth-century Syrian scholar Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-ʿAlāʾī’s al-Ajzāʾ al-ʿashara ʿalā al-ṭarīqa al-mubtakara, is one example of such a collection. This collection consists of ten parts. In the first section, he cites hadith through elevated chains of transmission that he only heard from one shaykh. In the second section, he cites hadith through elevated chains of transmission that he heard though two shaykhs, in the third section hadith he heard from three shaykhs and so on up to ten shaykhs. This collection achieved considerable popularity and the extant manuscripts include generations of audition notices. It and its audition notices have recently been edited by my friend Yūsuf al-Uzbakī the librarian of the Masjid al-Aqṣā library and his coleague Muḥammad Khālid al-Kullāb as part of a series of manuscripts that were audited in the Masjid al-Aqṣā. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-ʿAlāʾī’s al-Ajzāʾ al-ʿashara ʿalā alṭarīqa al-mubtakara, ed. Yūsuf Muḥammad al-Uzbakī and Muḥammad Khālid al-Kullāb (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 2017/1438).

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a general decline in popularity following the tenth/sixteenth century, as discussed in Chapter Two. Scholars continued to engage in hadith transmission, but it was increasingly dependent on non-oral modes of transmission, and it would be the catalog genres, discussed in the following chapter, that scholars chose as the primary vehicle for presenting and curating their connections to the Prophet.

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Men of Books and Books of Men: The Muʿjam/ Mashyakha and Fihrist/Thabat Catalog Genres In the fourth/tenth century hadith scholars began composing catalogs organizing and documenting the men and women and the hadith they had taken from them over the course of their careers as collectors of hadith. Eventually, the cataloging of personal chains of transmission would become one of the primary activities of scholars in the culture of post-canonical hadith transmission. The production of a catalog was an important milestone in a scholar’s career, marking their transition from a collector to a transmitter. It furnished them with a record of the breadth of the sources from whom they had taken hadith over their years as students and collectors. Moreover, it provided them a vehicle to transmit their chains of transmission to the following generation and ensured that their memory as a transmitter would be preserved and carried on in the community of hadith scholars. These catalogs fall into two distinct but closely related genres, the muʿjam /mashyakha genre and fihrist/thabat genre. This chapter traces the development of these two genres and explains their functions within the culture of post-canonical hadith transmission.

1

The Mashyakha and Muʿjam al-Shuyūkh Genre

The mashyakha and muʿjam al-shuyūkh genre is the earliest of the catalog genres hadith scholars developed to serve the concerns of post-canonical hadith transmission. It first emerged in the third/ninth century and maintained popularity into the eleventh/seventeenth century with scholars producing thousands of works in the genre. By the eighth/fourteenth century, the Syrian historian al-Ṣafadī (d. 764/1363) would describe the books of the genre as being “beyond delimitation, innumerable … as they have become like the rolling waves of the sea in number.”1 A century and a half later, the Egyptian scholar al-Sakhāwī (d. 902/1496) commented on the long-term popularity of the genre, “I do not think that there are now less than a thousand of these

1 Al-Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī bi-l-wafāyāt, 1:61.

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works.”2 In the early years of this century, the Lebanese historian Yūsuf alMarʿashlī would even claim that he had identified more than three thousand works in the genre.3 Despite the genre’s long-term popularity and significance to the culture of post-canonical hadith transmission, for the most part, it has remained unstudied. This section begins to fill this lacuna, tracing the development of the genre, and contextualizing its functions within the culture of post-canonical hadith transmission. The genre is diverse in both style and structure. In essence, however, a mashyakha or a muʿjam work is a catalog of the transmitters from whom the author, or the person for whom it was composed, had taken hadith. In most mashyakha and muʿjam works, each transmitter’s entry is followed by a short sample of hadith, usually consisting of just a few, but sometimes more, that the author had taken from the shaykh. In theory, the difference between a muʿjam al-shuyūkh and a mashyakha is purely organizational. The entries in a mashyakha are not organized according to any particular criteria, while the entries in a muʿjam al-shuyūkh are organized alphabetically, as the word muʿjam, which translates roughly as ‘dictionary,’ indicates. In practice though, this distinction was not always strictly observed. A further point of difference is that muʿjam works are generally more voluminous than mashyakhas, many catalog thousands of transmitters.4 The difference in volume between muʿjams and mashyakhas seems to be a result of the fact that a work with a smaller number of entries was in less need of alphabetical organization. Nevertheless, mashyakha works could be quite large, in some cases multiple volumes, despite their lack of organization.5 In terms of chronology, these catalogs appear to have first emerged in the third/ninth century. Although it only survives as a fragment, the mashyakha attributed al-Fasawī (d. 277/890) may be the earliest extant example of the genre.6 It was not until the fourth/tenth century, however, that the genre

2 Al-Sakhāwī, al-Iʿlān, 222. 3 Yūsuf al-Marʿashlī, Muʿjam al-Maʿājim wa al-mashyakhāt (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Rushd, 1423/ 2002) 1:8. 4 Al-Birzālī’s muʿjam, for example, is said to have cataloged upwards of two thousand shaykhs he had taken from in the oral/aural mode and another thousand from whom he had received ijāzas. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-kāmina, 4:278. 5 The Syrian hadith scholar Ibn al-Ḥabūbī’s (d. 708/1308) Mashyakha, for example, was reported to have been three volumes. Al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām, 50:79. 6 While only a fragment of al-Fasawī’s work survives today, it may have been available to scholars as late as the ninth/fifteenth centuries. Al-Sakhāwī (d. 902/1497) mentions the work and notes that it was organized according to the authorities’ places of origin. See al-Sakhāwī, al-Iʿlān, 239. However, according to Akram Ḍiyāʾ al-ʿUmarī, who has analyzed the extant

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achieved widespread popularity. Abū Yaʿlā al-Mawṣilī’s (d. 307/919) Muʿjam, which fortunately survives in its entirety, is one of the earliest extant examples of a complete muʿjam al-shuyūkh work.7 A mashyakha or a muʿjam at its most essential level was a means to organize and present the transmitters a collector had taken hadith from over the course of his or her life. Somewhat like a curriculum vitae, it was a record of the author’s career as a collector of hadith. It functioned as a catalog of the men and women from whom a senior transmitter had taken hadith and made them, and their chains of transmission, accessible to younger collectors. By hearing a muʿjam or mashyakha from its author, a collector could establish a connection to all of the men and women the author had heard hadith from and receive a choice selection of their best hadith. In addition to making a transmitter’s network of sources accessible to students and collectors, a muʿjam or mashyakha work also functioned as a statement of the breadth of the authorities from whom one had heard hadith. Some authors who composed in the genre emphasized the geographical breadth of the transmitters from whom they had taken hadith by noting in each entry the far-flung geographical locations where they encountered each of their shaykhs.8 Others organized their works according to the travels they had undertaken in the pursuit of hadith. Al-Silafī’s (d. 576/1180) Muʿjam al-safar is a prominent example of a geographically organized muʿjam work. This work catalogs more than a thousand men and women from whom Al-Silafī had taken hadith over the eighteen years he traveled collecting hadith.9 In addition to this work, al-Silafī composed two other geographical muʿjam works, one dedicated to the transmitters he had heard from during his sojourn in Baghdad, and another cataloging those he had heard from in the city of Isfahan.10 Together these three works formed a detailed map of his travels in the pursuit of hadith and a testament to his status as an heir to transmitters of hadith from all over

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fragments of the work held in the Ẓāhiriyya library in Damascus, it does not seem to follow any clear scheme of organization. See Akram Ḍiyāʾ al-ʿUmarī, Buḥūth fī tārīkh al-sunna (Beirut: Muaʾssasat al-Risāla, 1395/1975), 150. The eighth/fourteenth-century scholar alʿAlāʾī mentions that it was the earliest mashyakha he knew of. Al-ʿAlāʾī, Ithārat al-fawāʾid, 2:646. Abū Yaʿlā al-Mawṣilī, al-Muʿjam, ed. Ḥusayn Salīm al-Dārānī and ʿAbduh ʿAlī Kūshk (Beirut: Dār al-Maʾmūn li-l-Turāth, 1421/1989). Ibn Jumayʿ al-Ṣaydawī, Muʿjam al-shuyūkh, ed. ʿUmar ʿAbd al-Salām al-Tadmurī (Beirut: Muaʾssasat al-Risāla, 1405/1985); Ibn Fahd al-Makkī, Muʿjam al-shuyūkh, ed. Muḥammad al-Zāhī (Riyadh: Dār al-Yamāma, 1402/1982). Abū Ṭāhir al-Silafī, Muʿjam al-safar, ed. ʿAbd Allāh ʿUmar al-Bārūdī (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1413/1993). Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 21:21.

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the empire. Whether organized alphabetically, geographically or not at all, a muʿjam or mashyakha work was a demonstration of the scope of the sources from whom the author had taken hadith. It was a monument to his or her efforts as a collector and preserver of the Prophet’s legacy and the community’s connections to him. Moreover, it was a means to convey these connections to the next generation of collectors for further preservation. Some authors composed multiple muʾjām or mashyakha work of various sizes. The larger muʾjām usually presented multiple hadith from each shaykh, while the smaller works presented a smaller sample of each shaykh’s hadith. Al-Ṭabarānī’s (d. 360/970) al-Muʿjam al-ṣaghīr and al-Muʿjam al-awsaṭ are the most well-known examples of this.11 Presenting the numerous transmitters from whom the author had taken hadith is, however, only one half of a muʿjam or mashyakha work; the hadith the author presents for each shaykh make up the other half of each entry. At first glance though, it is difficult to discern the function the hadith presented are intended to serve. They certainly lack any topical coherence indicative of the criteria the authors employed in selecting the hadith. When the reader shifts their focus from the texts of the hadith to the chains of transmission, however, it becomes apparent that in most cases, the elevation of their chains of transmission was the primary criterion for the selection of hadith. In this way, a muʿjam work functioned as a selection of the most valuable hadith the author had taken from each of his sources. Al-Ṭabarānī’s muʿjam works exemplify this concern with elevation. In these works, he regularly presents hadith through chains of transmission with only five and even four links. By the standards of the fourth/tenth century, this was extraordinarily short; indeed, four links is as short as the shortest chain of transmission in the Ṣaḥīḥ of Muslim, who died a whole century before him.12

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12

In al-Muʿjam al-ṣaghīr al-Ṭabāranī catalogs 1167 authorities; in all but a few cases he transmits only one hadith for each of them. In al-Muʿjam al-awsaṭ, he catalogs what seem to be the same authorities, but gives more than one hadith for each of them. Despite its title, al-Muʿjam al-kabīr is organized according to the names of the companions who transmit the hadith it contains, and as such, is closer to musnad works in structure. The Iraqī scholar Ibn Shādhān (d. 425/1034) is another example of a scholar who composed more than one mashyakha for himself. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 17:417. The Syrian scholar Ibn ʿAbd alHādī composed three mashyakha works, al-Kubrā, al-Wusṭā and al-Ṣughrā. Al-Marʿashlī, Muʿjam al-Maʿājim, 1:557. Al-Ṭabarānī, al-Muʿjam al-ṣaghīr, ed. Muḥammad Shakūr (Beirut: al-Maktaba al-Islāmiyya, 1405/ 1985). For examples of hadith al-Ṭabarānī transmits through four-link chains of transmission see hadith numbers 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70. For five links see hadith numbers 1, 6, 19, 34, 37, 47, 48, 86, 92, 106, 107, 118, 122.

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The vast majority of the hadith found in muʿjam works can, of course, also be found in earlier collections of hadith, including the six canonical books of Sunni hadith. When we compare the chains of transmission for the hadith presented in the muʿjam al-shuyūkh works with those found in the six canonical books of Sunni hadith, it becomes apparent that despite the fact that the authors of most early muʿjam works died nearly a century after the compilers of the canonical collections, they frequently cite chains of transmission as short as those of the compilers. In an entry in al-Ismāʿīlī’s (d. 371/981) muʿjam, for instance, he cites a chain of transmission consisting of just six links. This is as short as the chain Muslim cites for the same hadith—despite the fact that Muslim had been dead and buried for ten years before al-Ismāʿīḷī was even born.13 This demonstration of the author’s elevation in comparison to the authors of hadith canon would remain a driving force in muʿjam works in later centuries and is key to understanding the genre. For muʿjam authors writing in the late fourth/tenth century and beyond, citing a chain of transmission as short as that for the same hadith found in the canon was increasingly difficult and rare. This was, however, not the only technique authors employed to present their proximity to the Prophet, the canon and the sacred era in which it was produced. Authors of muʿjam works also used the genre to present chains of transmission demonstrating their relative proximity to a revered scholar or compiler of hadith. If, for example, the compiler of a canonical hadith collection cited a chain of transmission with five links, then the author of a muʿjam work could demonstrate his relative elevation by transmitting the same hadith with just six links. This type of elevation, as was discussed in Chapter One, eventually came to be known in the nomenclature as “relative elevation (al-ʿulūw al-nisbī).” This demonstration of relative elevation and proximity to the great scholars who had produced the books of the Sunni hadith canon was an important theme of the muʿjam genre and post-canonical hadith literature generally. For a scholar of the fourth/tenth century to transmit a hadith through a chain of transmission that was just one link longer than a chain of transmission cited in the canon a century earlier was indeed an impressive demonstration of elevation. This particular type of relative elevation, as was discussed in Chapter One, eventually came to be referred to as muṣāfaḥa, literally “shaking hands,” because it was as if the two transmitters could have met and shaken hands. Al-Ismāʿīlī, for example, transmits a hadith in his muʿjam with a chain of transmission just one link longer than the one 13

Abū Bakr Aḥmad b. Ibrāhīm al-Ismāʿīlī, Muʿjam shuyūkh al-Ismāʿīlī, ed. ʿUmar al-Bārūdī (Mecca: al-Maktaba al-Tijāriyya, 1990–1995), 95. Compare to Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj, Kitāb alḤajj: bāb istiḥbāb baʿth al-hudā ilā al-ḥarām li-man lā yurīd al-dhihāb bi-nafsihi.

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the revered compiler Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj cites for the same hadith. Al-Ismāʿīlī was able to perform this feat due to his having heard the hadith from a shaykh, who in turn took from one of Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj’s shaykhs; thus, despite the fact that Muslim was dead before al-Ismāʿīlī was born, this chain of transmission is so short it is as if he took the hadith directly from Muslim.14 Al-Ismāʿīlī then uses this entry to position himself just one generation below Muslim— as if Muslim were his shaykh—and he had shaken his hand. It was, of course, impossible for al-Ismāʿīlī to be the student Muslim, much less shake his hand. However, in a view of time and temporality based not in years, but in generations of transmitters, this chain of transmission demonstrates that, at least for this hadith, he could be imagined to occupy the same temporal rank and virtue of those collectors who did actually meet and shake Muslim’s hand, despite the fact that in terms of years, those men were almost all a century his senior. The claims to temporal excellence and virtue that the authors of these early fourth/tenth-century muʿjam texts made through the presentation of their short chains of transmission were implicit. These early authors did not explicitly reference the canon or indicate how a particular hadith they present in their muʿjam or mashyakha situates them in relation to the canon, the generations of its architects, and ultimately to the Prophet. In order to recognize and appreciate how elevated the author’s chains of transmission were, the reader had to be familiar enough with the canon to be able to compare the author’s chains of transmission and recognize that they were elevated without the author explicitly pointing this out. In the following century, authors of muʿjam works began to make their claims of elevation and proximity to the canon explicit, explaining to their readers how their chains of transmission compare to those found for the same hadith in the canon. This development was likely a product of the natural lengthening of chains of transmission through the passing of time that made it more difficult for audiences to easily compare chains and recognize their relationship to the canon, making it necessary for authors to explain to the reader their relationship to the canon in more explicit terms. Abū ʿAlī alḤasan Ibn Shādhān (d. 425/1034) is one of the earliest authors to employ this technique. After citing a hadith in his mashyakha, Ibn Shādhān often notes if any of the renowned compilers transmitted the hadith and how their chain of transmission differs from his. In the entry for his shaykh Abū Muḥammad Maymūn b. Isḥāq, for example, he explains, “Muslim transmits this hadith

14

Al-Ismāʿīlī, Muʿjam shuyūkh, 95. Compare to Muslim’s Ṣaḥīḥ, Kitāb al-Zakāt; bāb faḍl al-nafaqa ʿalā al-ʿiyāl wa al-mamlūk wa ithm man ḍayʿahum aw ḥabasa nafaqatahum ʿanhum.

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[in his Ṣaḥīh] through both Abū Bakr Ibn Abī Shayba and Abū Kurayb Muḥammad b. al-ʿAlāʾ who both transmitted it from Ibn Idrīs.”15 Based on this information the reader can fairly easily determine that Ibn Shādhān’s chain of transmission for the hadith also converges on Ibn Idrīs after three intermediaries. This means that his shaykh transmitted this hadith with a chain as short as Muslim’s. Therefore, it was as if Ibn Shādhān took the hadith directly from Muslim, although he was born 130 years after Muslim.16 Not all authors of muʿjam work followed the trend of explicitly indicating how their chains of transmission compared to the canon. Some authors chose, for whatever reason—perhaps a sense of modesty—to leave this comparison unspoken; most muʿjam authors, however, did. In the seventh/thirteenth century, authors of muʿjam works began expressing their relationship to the canon in terms even more explicit than their predecessors had. Rather than just noting in which book of the canon a hadith occurs and how their own chain of transmission differs from that, these authors go a step further and explain exactly how a particular chain of transmission compared to the same hadith in the canon. An author might explain, for example, that for a particular hadith, his chain of transmission is only two links longer than Muslim’s despite the gap of several centuries separating them. The Iraqi hadith scholar Abū al-Munjjāʾ Ibn al-Lattī (d. 635/1238) was among the first authors to articulate his elevation in relation to the compilers of the canon in such explicit terms.17 Al-Lattī, however, was probably not the first to use the technique, it seems to have already been widespread, as his contemporaries al-Mundhirī (d. 643/1245) and Rashīd al-Dīn al-Dimashqī (d. 650/1252) also employ it in their muʿjam works.18 An entry in al-Mundhirī’s muʿjam demonstrates well how this technique was used. After citing a chain of transmission al-Mundhirī comments, “Praise be to God, we received this hadith through an extremely elevated chain of transmission, so that it is as if the shaykh of my shaykh heard the hadith from al-Nasāʾī, who died in the year 303/905, while the shaykh of my shaykh died in the month of Ramadan in the year 525/1130.” Al-Mundhirī, thus makes it clear to the reader 15 16 17 18

Al-Ḥasan b. Aḥmad Ibn Shādhān Mashyakhat Ibn Shādhān al-ṣughrā, ed. Mashʿal alMuṭayrī (Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 1421/2001), 27. Ibid., 26–27. Al-Birzālī, Mashyakhat Abī al-Manjā al-Lattī, ed. ʿĀmir Ḥasan Ṣabrī in Majmūʿ fīhi thalātha min al-mashyakhāt al-ḥadīthiyya (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Rayyān, 1425/2004). Aḥmad b. al-Mufarrij b. ʿAlī b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, Ibn Maslama al-Umawī, al-Mashyakha albaghdādiyya, ed. ʿĀmir Ḥasan Ṣabrī in Majmūʿ fīhi thalātha min al-mashyakhāt al-ḥadīthiyya (Beirut: Muʾssasat al-Rayyān, 1425/2004). Rashīd al-Dīn al-Mundhirī, Mashyakhat alnaʿʿāl al-Baghdādī, ed. Nājī Maʿrūf and Bashār ʿAwwād Maʿrūf (Baghdad: al-Majmaʿ al-ʿIlmī al-ʿIrāqī, 1390/1975), 58–59.

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that in terms of generations of transmitters, for this hadith he is only two generations below al-Nasāʾī, in spite of the more than three centuries that separated them.19 The passing of time, of course, made it increasingly difficult for authors of muʿjam works to establish this kind of proximity to the canon. Still, they continued to strive to do so and in some cases, they were still able to come quite close in spite of the expanding chronological gap. In most cases, of course, this was due as much to the authors of the canon having exceedingly long chains of transmission for particular hadith as it was due to the authors of the muʿjams having short ones. Nevertheless, authors used this technique to demonstrate that, even though they were living centuries after the great compilers of the canon, they could still lay claim to a degree of proximity to them, even if at the most inferior level. A muʿjam author of the eighth/fourteenth century, such as the Syrian Sharaf al-Dīn al-Yūnīnī (d. 701/1301), for instance, could cite a chain of transmission with nine links in his muʿjam and remark with pride, “With regard to the number of links in this chain of transmission, it is as if I heard this hadith directly from Muslim and shook his hand, because between him and the Prophet there are eight transmitters and between the Prophet and I [for this hadith] there are nine.”20 For Muslim, of course, a chain of transmission consisting of eight links was unusually long; most of his chains of transmission consisted of between four and six links. For al-Yūnīnī, however, this was a highly desirable and remarkably short chain of transmission. This technique of explicitly comparing chains of transmission to those of the canon would continue to be employed in the muʿjam genre for the remainder of its history.

2

The Muʿjam/Mashyakha Genre as a Vehicle for Cultivating Elevated Hadith

It has been shown that scholars composed mashyakhas and muʿjam works as a means to demonstrate both the breadth and elevation of their chains of transmission, thereby memorializing their place in the community of hadith transmitters and facilitating the transmission of the cream of their hadith to the following generation of collectors. This was one of the more common functions the genre served, but it was not its only function. Many mashyakhas and muʿjams were not composed by the transmitter himself, but instead were 19 20

Al-Mundhirī, Mashyakhat al-naʿʿāl al-Baghdādī, ed., 58–59. ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Yūnīnī, Mashyakhat Sharf al-Dīn al-Yūnīnī, ed. ʿUmar ʿAbd al-Salām al-Tadmurī (Beirut: al-Maktaba al-ʿAṣriyya, 1423/2002), 55.

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composed for a transmitter by a younger scholar and these works served a quite different function. By composing a muʿjam or mashyakha for a transmitter who possessed elevated chains of transmission and then presenting this work to the transmitter and auditing it with them, a collector could establish a connection to what he considered to be that transmitter’s most valuable chains of transmission. In other words, in addition to functioning as a vehicle for a transmitter to present and transmit a selection of his best hadith to junior collectors, the composition of a muʿjam could also function as a means for a collector to acquire a personal link to some of a senior transmitter’s best chains of transmission. The circumstances leading to the composition of such a mashyakha varied. In some cases, the transmitter for whom the author composed the mashyakha was, in fact, quite capable of composing a mashyakha for himself, but simply did not have the time to do so. The mashyakha the prominent Syrian hadith scholar al-Birzālī (d. 739/1338) composed for al-Badr Ibn Jamāʿa (d. 733/1332), who served as the chief judge of both Cairo and Damascus, exemplifies this aspect of the genre. In the introduction to the mashyakha, al-Birzālī explains that he composed the work as a service to Ibn Jamāʿa because he was “too busy tending to the affairs of the Muslim community to compose his own mashyakha.”21 Thus, although his official responsibilities prevented him from composing his own mashyakha, Ibn Jamāʿa could transmit to al-Birzālī and other collectors a choice selection of the hadith he took from his shaykhs and preserve and convey those connections. The mashyakha Abū Zurʿa al-ʿIrāqī (d. 826/1423) composed for ʿImād al-Dīn Aḥmad b. ʿĪsā al-Miʿyarī (d. 799/1396) is another example of a mashyakha complied for a transmitter, who possessed the scholarly background necessary to research and write his own mashyakha, but was simply too busy to do so. Al-Miʿyarī was the scion of a scholarly family of some repute based in the town of Karak, and grew up immersed in hadith culture, hearing hadith from numerous transmitters as a child and as a result possessed a broad and elevated network of transmission. In the year 782/1380, he was appointed by the Sultan to the position of chief Shafiʿī judge of Cairo. Upon his arrival in the city, Abū Zurʿa composed a mashyakha for him and then arranged an audition of the text with al-Miʿyarī so that the hadith collectors of Cairo could hear a selection of hadith through his network of transmission.22 Another catalyst that drove the composition of this type of mashyakha was the inability of the transmitter to compose it for themselves. It was not uncom21 22

Al-Birzālī, Mashyakhat Ibn Jamāʿa, ed. Muwaffaq ʿAbd al-Qādir (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb alIslāmī, 1408/1988), 82. Ibn al-ʿImād, Shadharāt al-dhahab, 9:14.

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mon for an elderly transmitter who possessed elevated and desirable chains of transmission to lack the scholarly skills necessary to research and compose a mashyakha for themselves. The mashyakha that al-Birzālī composed for Karīma bt. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 641/1243) is a prime example of this. Karīma was the daughter of a Damascene hadith scholar who had taken her to hear hadith from numerous senior hadith transmitters while she was still a small child. Karīma was then fortunate enough to live to the age of ninety-five, outliving all of her peers and eventually becoming recognized as the last living link to those now long-deceased transmitters (tafarradat fī al-dunyā ʿanhum).23 In order to establish a connection to Karīma’s uniquely elevated chains of transmission, al-Birzālī researched the transmitters she had heard hadith from and based on this research composed a large eight-volume mashyakha for her.24 AlBirzālī then arranged an audition of the mashyakha with her, thus establishing an oral/aural link to the long-dead masters from whom she had received hadith and preserving her network of transmission.25 The mashyakha Ibn Ḥajar composed for the elderly lay transmitter Sitt al-Quḍāt Maryam bt. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (d. 758/1357), who had received ijāzas from numerous prominent transmitters including the famous transmitter al-Ḥajjār, is another example of this use of the mashyakha as a tool for transmission.26 It was not uncommon for a prolific scholar of hadith to compose numerous muʿjam and mashyakha works for the senior transmitters of their time. The prominent sixth/twelfth-century hadith scholar Abū Ṭāhir al-Silafī, for example, is said to have composed more than forty such muʿjam and mashyakha works.27 The eighth/fourteenth-century hadith scholar al-Birzālī likewise composed nearly fifty mashyakha and muʿjam works.28 Depending on the importance of a transmitter for whom the work was composed and the breadth and value of his or her sources, these mashyakha works varied significantly in both total volume and number of entries. One of the mashyakha works al-Birzālī

23

24 25 26 27 28

Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 23:93. The audition notices for numerous of these readings are preserved and cataloged in al-Sawwās and Leder’s Stefan Leder’s Muʿjam al-samāʿāt al-Dimashqiyya. Yasīn Muḥammad al-Sawwās, et al., (eds), Muʿjam al-samāʿāt al-Dimashqiyya: almunatakhaba min sinat 550–750 (Damascus: al-Maʿhad al-Faransī l-l-Dirasāt al-ʿArabiyya, 1996). Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 23:93. Ibid., 23:93. Ibn Ḥajar, Muʿjam al-shaykha Maryam, MS 1421, Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, Cairo Egypt, Ḥadīth ʿArabī. Aḥmad al-Ghumārī, Ḥuṣūl al-tafrīj bi-uṣūl al-takhrīj (Riyadh: al-Maktaba al-Ṭabariyya, 1414/1994), 14. al-Marʿashlī, Muʿjam al-Maʿājim, 1:426–431.

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composed, for example, catalogs just six shaykhs, while a mashyakha he composed for another transmitter catalogs a hundred shaykhs.29 A transmitter with particularly desirable chains of transmission might have more than one muʿjam or mashyakha work composed for them by different authors. The multiple muʿjam works composed for Abū al-Qāsim b. Muẓaffar Ibn ʿAsākir, who was the great-nephew of the famous hadith scholar and historian Ibn ʿAsākir, is an example of this. Abū al-Qāsim had heard hadith and received ijāzas from numerous transmitters as a child, and thus in his old age possessed elevated chains of transmission. Al-Birzālī had first composed a brief mashyakha work for him consisting of a selection of his shuyūkh, then sometime later, apparently after deeming the mashyakha that al-Birzālī had composed for him to be insufficiently thorough, Nāṣir al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Ṭughrīl (d. 737/1336) composed a more comprehensive mashyakha for him cataloging five hundred and seventy of his shaykhs and filling seven volumes.30 While dedicated to the same transmitter, these two mashyakha works served different functions and were used in different contexts. The longer work obviously was a more complete record of Abū Qāsim’s career as a collector of hadith, but Ibn Kathīr reports that it was the smaller work, which was easier to transmit, that was the more popular of the two. It was this smaller work that young collectors’, eager to hear hadith through his chains of transmission before it was too late, audited with him in the final months of his life.31 In some cases when a scholar decided that the brevity of an existing mashyakha required a more comprehensive record of a shaykh’s network of transmission, rather than compose an entirely new mashyakha, they simply composed an addendum (dhayl) to the already existing work.32 Scholars were most often motivated to compose a mashyakha for a transmitter out of self-interest. They composed them as a means to establish a connection to that transmitter’s elevated chains of transmission. This, however, was not the only concern that motivated scholars to compose mashyakha works. In some cases, scholars composed mashyakha works not to serve themselves, but out of concern for others. Moreover, while in most cases a mashyakha or muʿjam was composed for an elderly transmitter who possessed valuable short

29 30 31 32

Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-kāmina, 1:63. Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya wa al-nihāya, ed. ʿAlī al-Shayrī (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1408/1988), 13:337. Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya wa al-nihāya, 14:108. Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya wa al-nihāya, 14:124. For other examples of this, see Ibn Ḥajar, alDurar al-kāmina, 1:296; Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī, Dhayl Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanābila, 4:180, 4:246–247. Al-Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī bi-l-wafayāt, 5:174; al-Sakhāwī, al-Tuḥfa al-laṭīfa fī tārīkh al-madīna alsharīfa (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1414/1993), 2:163.

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chains of transmission, in some limited cases it was the exact opposite: they were composed for young children. Generally, this type of muʿjam work was composed by a father for his small child and was intended to function as a record of the various shuyūkh from whom they had been taken to hear hadith or from whom they had received ijāzas with the hope that later in life, when the child was old enough to transmit hadith, he could make use of the work. The eighteen juzʾ muʿjam the prominent hadith scholar al-Samʿānī composed for his young son Abū Muẓaffar after taking him on a trip to hear hadith in Bukhara, Samarqand, Marw, Herat and Nishapur is a good example of this.33 The mashyakha al-Sakhāwī composed for his young son Aḥmad (d. 864/1459) is a similar case. Tragically, however, the boy died when he was just nine years old and was never able to benefit from his father’s concern for him.34 In one unusual case the hadith scholar Aḥmad al-Shihāb al-Manzilī composed a mashyakha for the elderly transmitter Ḥafīd Yūsuf al-ʿAjamī (d. 890/ 1485) not because he desired to hear hadith through his chains of transmission, but because al-ʿAjamī was a layman and was making egregious mistakes and transmitting through chains of transmission he could not possibly possess. By composing a mashyakha for him delineating the chains of transmission alʿAjamī did, in fact, possess, al-Manzilī gave him the means to accurately transmit hadith and cease spreading spurious chains of transmission.35

3

The Reception of Mashyakha and Muʿjam al-Shuyūkh Works

Whether composed out of self-interest or for other concerns, the composition of a mashyakha for a transmitter could and often did bring him or her considerable attention. Ibn Rajab, for instance, reports that Ibn al-Ẓāhirī (d. 696/1296) composed a mashyakha for ʿAḷī b. Aḥmad al-Maqdisī (d. 690/1291) and sent it by post to Damascus, where an audition session of the text was announced and attended by crowds of scholars and their children. More than a thousand people supposedly attended the final audition session.36 The attention that the composition of a mashyakha work brought a transmitter helped to ensure that the transmitter’s chains of transmission were passed on to another generation

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Ibn al-ʿImād, Shadharāt al-dhahab fī akhbār man dhahab, 7:135; al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 20:462. Abū ʿUbayda Mashhūr b. Ḥasan Āl Salmān and Abū Ḥudhayfa Aḥmad al-Shuqayrāt, Muʾallafāt al-Sakhāwī, (Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 1998/1419), 146. Āl Salmān and al-Shuqayrāt, Muʾallafāt al-Sakhāwī, 148. Ibn Rajab, al-Ḥanbalī, Dhayl Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanābila, 4:246–247; Ibn Kathīr, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyyīn, ed. Aḥmad ʿUmar Hāshīm (Cairo: Maktabat al-Thaqāfa al-Dīniyya, 1413/1993), 1:921.

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and further that his name would live on among the community of hadith scholars. Most transmitters for whom mashyakhas were composed seem to have been quite pleased with the attention and distinction it brought them. Some transmitters even rewarded the scholar who composed his mashyakha with generous gifts.37 Al-Sakhāwī reports that the transmitter Abū Bakr b. ʿUmar (d. 833/1249) was so proud of the mashyakha that was composed for him that he would often brag and boast about it despite his ignorance of hadith transmission and the fact that “he was unable to distinguish between long and short chains of transmission.”38 In the same vein, Ibn Ḥajar reports that Qāsim b. ʿAlī al-Fāsī (d. 811/1408), who was a minor scholar but had heard from a number of senior scholars as a youth and had a mashyakha composed for him, “continuously lamented the loss of his mashyakha” after the only copy was stolen from him when his caravan was attacked by highway robbers while returning to Cairo from Mecca.39 Still, while the transmitters for whom mashyakhas were composed were generally appreciative of the authors’ efforts, for the collectors who came after the author a mashyakha was above all a tool to access and acquire a connection to a selection of the transmitter’s best chains of transmission. As a result, the work of composing a mashyakha for a transmitter was, in many cases, little appreciated. After all, these were not cutting-edge works, whose authors were lavished with praise for their hard work, creativity and contribution to scholarship. Rather they were compilations of a usually elderly transmitter’s hadith that were generally composed primarily as a means for the author to establish his own connection to those short chains of transmission. Because of this, it was above all the identity of the transmitter for whom the mashyakha was composed that mattered. The author of the mashyakha was of secondary concern. Biographers, in fact, frequently fail to even identify who authored a transmitter’s mashyakha, but simply note something to the effect of, “one of the

37 38 39

Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-kāmina, 1:264. Al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 11:639. Ibn Ḥajar, Inbāʾ al-ghumr, 2:142. While most seem to have appreciated having a mahsyakha composed for them, there is at least one exception to prove the rule. Ibn Ḥajar notes that al-ʿIrāqī offered multiple times to compose a mashyakha for Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbd al-Raḥīm b. Jamāʿa, who was the grandson of a famous scholar and had heard hadith as a child from alDhahabī and others. He, however, refused and “did not appreciate that ( fa-lam yuqaddir dhālika).” The fact that al-ʿIrāqī asked the shaykh repeatedly and that he found his refusal remarkable enough to report this to his student Ibn Ḥajar, demonstrates just how unusual this refusal was. Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ al-iṣr ʿan quḍāt Miṣr, ed. ʿAlī Muḥammad ʿUmar (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khanjī, 1418/1998), 1:29.

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collectors compiled a mashyakha for him.”40 Indeed, many biographers use the passive when discussing the composition of such a mashyakha, often using the phrase, “a mashyakha was composed for him (khurrijat lahu mashyakha).”41 Muʿjam and mashyakha works, in all of the forms discussed above, retained popularity into the tenth/sixteenth century. Like most other genres of postcanonical hadith literature after the tenth/sixteenth century, however, the genre fell out of favor, and become quite rare. The decline of the genre seems to be tied to the general decline of oral/aural hadith transmission following the tenth/sixteenth century that was discussed in Chapter Two.

4

The Fihrist/Thabat Genres

A mashyakha was, in essence, a vehicle to catalog and present some of the best hadith a collector had taken from each of his shaykhs. These hadith were selected from the various books, compilations and selections of hadith those scholars had audited or received ijāzas. From the fifth/eleventh century, scholars increasingly took pride not only in presenting and cataloging their chains of transmission to individual hadith but also in presenting their chains of transmission to the books and collections from which they had selected them. Each book was treated like an individual hadith and was transmitted and cited using the same methods, protocols, and terminology that were developed for the transmission of individual hadith. This was true not only for the books of hadith, but also for the books of the full range of disciplines from law to Sufism to grammar. The transmission of books through chains of transmission according to the protocols of hadith has its roots in the idea that, like a hadith, it was only through a chain of transmission of trustworthy transmitters that the attri-

40

41

The sources express this in a variety of ways, in some cases it is said “They composed a mashyakha for him (kharrajū lahu mashyakha),” without identifying who “they” are. See for example al-Dhahabī, Muʿjam shuyūkh al-Dhahabī, 1:50, 1:317, 2:51; Ibn ʿImād al-ʿAkarī, Shadharāt al-dhahab, 8:7, 8:296. Alternately “one of the hadith collectors composed a mashyakha for him (kharraja lahu baʿḍ al-ṭalaba mashyakha)” or “one of the hadith specialists composed a mashyakha for him (kharraja lahu baʿḍ al-muḥadiththīn).” Ibn Rāfiʿ, alWafayāt li-Ibn Rāfiʿ, ed. Bashshār ʿAwwād Maʿrūf, (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1402/1981), 1:505, 1:217, 2:125, 2:203, 2:38, 2:99, 2:320. In other cases, it is said, “a mashyakha was compiled for him ( jumiʿat lahu mashyakha).” Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 21:510; Ibn Rāfiʿ, al-Wafayāt li-Ibn Rāfiʿ, 2:308. For the phrase “a mashyakha was composed for him (kurrijat lahu mashyakha)” see Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-Kāmina, 1:86, 4:98, 4:105, 5:518; Ibn ʿImād al-ʿAkarī al-Ḥanbalī, Shadharāt al-Dhahab, 8:21, 8:360; Ibn Rāfiʿ, al-Wafayāt li-Ibn Rāfiʿ, 2:63, 2:224, 2:254, 2:281, 2:284, 2:301.

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bution of a text to an author could be reliably established. It was often stated that chains of transmission “are the genealogies of books.” Without a chain of transmission, to follow the analogy, a book was like a fatherless child and cut off from sources of legitimacy.42 Alongside this pragmatic concern for citing chains of transmission as a means of establishing the attribution of a book, the practice of citing chains of transmission for books was rooted in an expanded conception of the heritage of the Prophet. This prophetic heritage was conceived of as not only being embodied by the texts of the hadith, but by the books of all the “transmitted disciplines (al-ʿulūm al-naqliyya),” which are ultimately attributed to the Prophet. Each of the transmitted disciplines articulated a portion of the Prophet’s legacy and revelation and could be traced back to him directly or indirectly through his heirs, the revered figures of the tradition. The books of these disciplines were also loci of sacred knowledge, the careful preservation and transmission of which was a communal duty. By the early fifth/eleventh century, the concern for preserving the chains of transmission for books had led scholars to begin cataloging not only the hadith they had taken from their masters but their chains of transmission for the books they had taken from them as well. In the eastern and central Islamic lands, this seems to have first begun within the mashyakha genre itself with authors presenting the chains of transmission for the various books they had taken from their shaykhs, alongside the individual hadith they had taken from them. The Mashyakha of the Iraqi scholar and great-grandson of the Abbasid caliph alMahdī, Muḥammad b. ʿAbbās b. al-Mahdī (d. 444/1052) is an early example of this. As is standard for a mashyakha in the majority of his entries, al-Mahdī cites a hadith for each shaykh he catalogs. In roughly ten entries, however, instead of, or in addition to, presenting a hadith, he cites a book he took from the shaykh delineating the shaykh’s chain of transmission back to the author or compiler.43 Roughly a century later, the Egyptian hadith scholar Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. Aḥmad Ibn al-Ḥaṭṭāb al-Rāzī (d. 525/1130), produced a mashyakha catalog in which the focus is split almost equally between the presentation of chains of transmission to books and individual hadith. For all but three of the 47 shaykhs cataloged in his mashyakha, he first presents the chains of transmission to a number of books he took from the transmitter and then 42 43

Al-ʿAjlūnī, Ḥilyat ahl al-faḍl, 37; Al-Kattānī, Fahras al-Fahāris, 1:82; al-Mubārakfūrī, Tuḥfat al-aḥwadhī, 1:1. Muḥammad b. ʿAbbās b. al-Mahdī, Juzʾ fīhi dhikr shuyūkh al-sharīf Ibn al-Mahdī, ed. ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad al-Kundurī (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 2010/1431), 27, 48, 58, 59, 65, 67, 68, 83.

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switches the focus to the presentation of one or more hadith through the transmitter’s chain of transmission.44 On the opposite end of the Mediterranean in the Iberian Peninsula and Morocco, the production of catalogs in which the focus was primarily on the chains of transmission to books rather than individual hadith had an earlier start. These works were most commonly designated as fihrist or barnāmaj works.45 The earliest extant examples of this genre date to the sixth/twelfth century. Later sources, however, preserve references to numerous earlier fihrist works that do not seem to have survived. In his al-Dibāj al-mudhahhab, for instance, Ibn Farḥūn al-Yaʿmarī (d. 799/1387), references a barnāmaj attributed to Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān of Cordoba (d. 399/1008).46 The sixth/twelfthcentury Andalusian scholars Ibn Khayr al-Ishbīlī (d. 575/1179) and Ibn Bashkuwāl likewise both attribute fihrist works to a number of fifth/eleventh-century scholars.47 While the earliest fihrist works do not seem to have survived, it is possible to piece together shards of evidence from the narrative sources that provide us glimpses of the genre in its early stages of development. The narrative sources 44

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Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. Aḥmad Ibn al-Ḥaṭṭāb al-Rāzī, Mashyakhat al-shaykh alajall Abī ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Ibrāhīm al-Rāzī, ed. Al-Sharīf Ḥātim b. ʿĀrif al-ʿAwnī (Riyadh: Dār al-Hijra, 1994/1415). There is some debate surrounding the spelling and vocalization of the word Fihrist. The word is Persian in origin and is Arabized by some scholars in the form Fihris, while others used fahras. There is also further debate on whether in the tāʾ in the fihrist form should be maftūḥa or marbūṭa. Most medieval and early modern authors, however, chose to use the form fihrist, and I have followed them. Modern Arab editors sometimes choose to ‘correct’ the medieval authors whose works they edit. The editors Muḥammad Zāhī and Muḥammad Abū al-Jaffān, for example, have used the Fihris form in the title of their edition of Ibn ʿAṭiyya’s work, despite the fact that in the author’s autograph manuscript of the works, as well as in a copy of the autograph, the title is clearly written in multiple places as fihrist. Ibn ʿAṭiyya, Fihris Ibn ʿAṭiyya, 25–28. For a summary of the debate see ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Ḳattānī, Fahras al-Fahāris, 1:69–71. Ibn Farḥūn al-Yaʿmarī, al-Dibāj al-mudhahhab fī maʿrifat aʿyān ʿulamāʾ al-madhhab, ed. Maḥmūd b. Muḥyī al-Dīn al-Bannān (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1418/1996) 1:43. Ibn al-Khayr al-Ishbīlī, Fihrist, 242. Ibn Bashkawāl refers to a number of works he identifies as kitāb rijālihi alladhīna laqiyahum, which seems to be an alternative term for fihrist. Ibn Khayr notes that Abū ʿUmar b. al-Ḥadhdhāʾ (d. 467/1074) composed a fihrist, for example, while Ibn Bashkawāl mentions rather than his fihrist a work that he calls kitāb rijālihi alladhīna laqiyahum. Abū al-Qāsim Ibn Bashkuwāl, Kitāb al-Ṣila fī tārīkh aʾimmat alAndalus, ed. Al-Sayyid ʿIzzat al-ʿAṭṭār al-Ḥusaynī, 2 vols. (Cairo: Maktab Nashr al-Thaqāfa al-Islāmiyya), 2:388. Likewise, al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Ibn ʿAṭiyya and Ibn Khayr make reference to the fihrist of Abū ʿAlī al-Ghassānī al-Jayyānī (d. 498/1104), while Ibn Bashkuwāl mentions a work by al-Jayyānī he refers to as kitāb rijālihi alladhīna laqiyahum. Ibn Bashkuwāl, Kitāb al-Ṣila, 2:516.

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preserve scattered evidence, for instance, indicating that some of these works not only cataloged the men and women from whom the author had taken and the books they had taken from them, but also included some biographical information about them. In his biographical dictionary of the scholars of Andalusia, Ibn Bashkuwāl, for one, cites biographical information verbatim from two fifth/eleventh-century fihrist works. In his biography of ʿUthmān b. Abī Bakr alṢadafī (d. after 440/1048) he cites part, or perhaps an entire biography, which he attributes to the fihrist of Abū ʿUmar b. al-Ḥadhdhāʾ (d. 467/1075).48 Ibn Bashkuwāl also cites biographical data he attributes to the fihrist of ʿAbd alRaḥmān b. Muḥammad al-Ṭulayṭlī (d. 438/1046) in his biography of Muḥammad b. Marwān al-Iyādī (d. 422/1031).49 Although there were earlier fihrist catalogs, the earliest surviving fihrist works seem to date to the first half of the sixth/twelfth century. The fihrist of the Andalusian scholar Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Ibn ʿAṭiyya (d. 541/1147), which was completed in 533/1139, is one of the earliest of these.50 Ibn ʿAṭiyya’s fihrist was closely followed by the fihrist of the prominent Moroccan Mālikī scholar al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ (d. 544/1149), which was composed sometime between 539/1144–1145 and 544/1149.51 While there are differences between these works, they are quite similar both in content and structure, which would seem to indicate that they were working in a genre that already had fairly established parametrs. In any case, the style and format employed in these works would be followed by authors of fihrist works for centuries. Indeed, while there would be some innovation in the genre, in general it was remarkably conservative and authors would continue to compose works closely resembling those of Ibn ʿAṭiyya and al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ into the modern period. Both Ibn ʿAṭiyya and al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s fihrists are structured like a muʿjam or a mashyakha work and are organized according to their transmitters. Under each transmitters’ entry, the authors delineate the texts they had taken from them. Volume is one notable point of difference between the two works. Al-

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Ibn Bashkuwāl, Kitāb al-Ṣila, 2:387. Approximately seven lines in length this biography includes praise for the breadth of his transmission and learning, information mentioning al-Ṣadafī’s age when al-Ḥadhdhāʾ met him, his education, travels, employment and death. Ibn Bashkuwāl, Kitāb al-Ṣila, 4:87. The colophon of the autograph of Ibn ʿAṭiyya’s fihrist dates its completion to 533/1139. Ibn ʿAṭiyya, Fihris Ibn ʿAṭiyya, 110. Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s work includes entries in which the subject’s death date is given as 539. Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, al-Ghunya ed. Māhir Zuhayr Jarrār (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1982/1402), 214. Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ gives death dates for some of his authorities that are as late as 539/1144– 1145. Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s work then must have been completed sometime between then and his death in 544/1149. Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, al-Ghunya, 214.

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Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s work is significantly longer than Ibn ʿAṭiyya’s, cataloging 98 transmitters, while Ibn ʿAṭiyya catalogs only 30. The difference in the volume of the two works seems to have resulted in a difference in their organization; alQāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s works is alphabetized while Ibn ʿAṭiyya’s is not. Other than the fact that Ibn ʿAṭiyya begins his work with his father, who is one of his most important sources of transmission, it seems he lists his authorities randomly. Like mashyakha works that lack organization, the lack of an organizational scheme in Ibn ʿAṭiyya’s work is likely because the relatively small number of entries meant that it could be easily navigated without organization. One of the more significant differences between these two early fihrists is that Ibn ʿAṭiyya almost exclusively presents his chains of transmission to the books, compilations, and collections he had taken from each of his sources. On the other hand, while Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, focuses primarily on documenting his chains of transmission to books, he also occasionally gives his chains of transmission to individual hadith and other reports. In 18 of 98 entries, he presents a hadith alongside or instead of books. In six entries, he transmits more than one hadith. The presence of these hadith is perhaps a remnant from an earlier phase in the genre’s development when the fihrist was not conceived of as a completely separate genre focused primarily on the presentation of chains of transmission for books, but was something more akin to Ibn al-Ḥaṭṭāb’s mashyakha presenting a mixture of books and individual hadith. Both authors begin their fihrists with short prefaces. Unfortunately, Ibn ʿAṭiyya’s preface is rather terse and provides little insight on the intended function or the work, nor the context in which it was composed.52 ʿIyāḍ’s preface, however, helps illuminate the context in which the work was composed as well as the function he intended it to serve. He writes in rhymed prose:

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He writes, “this is a list (tasmiya) of those authorities (shuyūkh), the bearers of knowledge, whom I have met and a record of that which I have transmitted from them, as well as those whom I did not meet, but issued me a license (ijāza) to transmit.” Ibn ʿAṭiyya, Fihris, 41. Interestingly, this is conspicuously similar to the manner in which some mashyakha and muʿjam al-shuyūkh works open. To illustrate, Ibn Jumayʿ al-Ṣaydāwī (d. 402/1011–1012) opens his Muʿjam al-shuyūkh, “this is a record of those authorities whom I encountered across the horizons … (hādha mā ishtamala ʿAlayhi dhikru shuyūkhī alladhīna laqītuhum fī sāʾir al-āfāq …).” Although the structure of Ibn Ạtiyya and al-Ṣaydāwī’s descriptions of their works differ enough to not quite be formulaic the parallel in meaning, structure and vocabulary used in both descriptions is evident. Ibn Jumayʿ al-Ṣaydāwī, Kitāb Muʿjam alshuyūkh, 55. There is a slightly less pronounced parallel to al-Ismāʿīlī’s introduction to his Muʿjam shuyūkh which he refers to as, “ḥaṣr … shuyūkhi alladhīna samiʿtu minhum wa katabtu ʿAnhum …” Abū Bakr al-Ismāʿīlī, Muʿjam shuyūkh al-Ismāʿīlī, 13.

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O You who desire a detailed account of the texts I can transmit and an authorization (ijāza) to take all that which I have heard and collected. You extended your hands yearningly towards me, and He who issues all decrees has decreed that I set down something of that for you, dedicating these pages for the purpose, with the hope that it will suffice …53 Evidently then, al-Qaḍī ʿIyāḍ composed his fihrist in order to encapsulate his network of transmission and transmit it to the next generation. He was writing at a point when the men from whom he had taken texts over the course of his career as a collector had all died, and he had established himself as one of their most senior heirs, and, as a result, he was actively being sought out by younger scholars. It was a means for him to pass the torch to the following generation of scholars, preserving his chains of transmission as well as the memory of the transmitters from whom he had taken them. The topos of an author attributing the composition of a book to the request of a petitioner is, of course, a common one.54 In this case, however, the evidence suggests it was more than just a topos. Al-Qaḍī ʿIyāḍ composed the work in the final years of his life, when his chains of transmission had become elevated and desirable, and he almost certainly was in fact sought out by collectors and students desiring to connect themselves to his chains of transmission while they still could. This is supported by the fact that the terminus post quem for his completion of the text is 539/1144, just five years before he died at 68 in the year 544/1149.55 Al-Qaḍī ʿIyāḍ’s fihrist is not unique in this regard, Ibn ʿAṭiyya’s likewise composed his fihrist in the final years of his life; the colophon of the work indicates that he completed the work just eight years before he died.56 53 54

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Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, al-Ghunya, 25. This is a fairly common means for an author to explain why a book was composed and is found at least as early as the mid third/ninth century. It can be seen in the introduction to Muslim b. Hajjāj’s introduction to his Ṣaḥīh. In his study and translation of Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Sulamī’s Bayān laṭāʾif al-miʿrāj titled The Subtleties of the Ascension: Early Mystical Sayings on Muḥammad’s Heavenly Journey, Frederick Colby suggests that this should be seen as a topos rather than a reflection of an actual request. Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān alSulamī, The Subtleties of the Ascension: Early Mystical Sayings on Muhammad’s Heavenly Journey, trans. Frederick S. Colby (Louisville: Fons Vitae, 2006), 31. He provides death dates for each of the shuyūkh he catalogs, the last death date he provides is 539. al-Qaḍī ʿIyāḍ, al-Ghunya, ed. Māhir Zuhayr al-Jarrār (Beirut; Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1982/14020), 214. Ibn ʿAṭiyya, Fihris, 110. This function of the fihrist as a means for junior collectors to obtain a record of senior scholars’ chains of transmission seems to have already been established at least a generation earlier when ‘Iyāḍ and Ibn ʿAṭiyya were both still in their youth. AlQaḍī ʿIyāḍ’s notes in his fihrist that when he was a young man, in his twenties or even

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Following their short prefaces, both authors launch into the main body of their catalogs. Like the authors of the non-extant fifth/eleventh-century fihrist works, both Ibn ʿAṭiyya and al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s fihrists include biographical data for each transmitter. The majority of these biographies are brief. They provide information, such as the subject’s date and place of birth, education and, of course, his sources of transmission, including information on any scholarly journeys they undertook. Both authors frequently mention when and where they met and took from the transmitter and often conclude the entry with his death date. While most biographies are brief, both authors provide more extended biographies for their most important sources of transmission. In addition to providing information relevant to transmission, these short biographies serve to establish each transmitter’s place in the scholarly community. Moreover, they often establish the author’s close personal relationship with them. By mentioning, for example, that a transmitter held a prestigious position, or for example that he traveled to the east and studied with a famous scholar, was remarkably pious, or that he was sought out by students from all over the Iberian Peninsula, the author establishes the transmitter’s place in the community of scholars, and by extension his own. Moreover, by providing details demonstrating the intimate nature of their relationship, the author establishes that he was more than just a casual acquaintance. In one entry, for example, Ibn ʿAṭiyya notes that in the year 495/1102 Abū ʿAlī al-Ghassānī spent a month as his guest in Granada during which time he read to him several recensions of Mālik’s Mūwaṭṭāʾ, multiple recensions of Abū Dāwūd’s Sunan, parts of the Ṣaḥīḥayn, and a number of other books.57 Ibn ʿAṭiyya thus establishes his status as one of al-Ghassānī’s heirs, not just a collector who briefly met him and heard a few hadith. Following each short biography, the authors list the various books they received from the biographee. The majority of these books roughly fall in the category of hadith, but books from the full spectrum of disciplines ranging from works of tafsīr to grammar are represented. Both authors generally organize the books they catalog in each entry according to discipline. Books of hadith are

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perhaps in his late teens, he too petitioned senior transmitters for their fihrist works, writing, for example, more than once to Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn b. Aḥmad al-Ghassānī al-Jayyānī (d. 497/1103–1104), who would have been in his sixties at the time, requesting his fihrist and an authorization to transmit it. A generation later, this was repeated, Ibn Khayr al-Ishbīlī (d. 575/1189), who was likely one of the young scholars who originally requested al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ to compose his fihrist, received al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s fihrist and then in turn, towards the end of his life, he composed his own fihrist, in which he transmits al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s work. Ibn Khayr, Fihrist, 437. Ibn ʿAṭiyya, Fihris, 57–66.

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usually given priority and listed first. Probably out of deference for the founder of the legal school to which they both adhered, whenever possible they begin the list with the Mūwaṭṭāʾ of Mālik b. Anas. Following the Mūwaṭṭaʾ, come the canonical and well-known collections of hadith. Early manuals of Mālikī law such as the Mudawwana of Ṣaḥnūn (d. 240/854) or the Risāla of Abū Zayd al-Qayrawānī (d. 386/996) often follow the hadith collections; these are followed by the books of other disciplines. Multiple chains of transmission are often given in each shaykh’s entry for books of great importance, such as the Muwaṭṭāʾ and the Ṣaḥīḥ of al-Bukhārī. These repetitions include chains of transmission to different recensions of the same text, as well as multiple paths back to the same recension. Naturally, the number of works transmitted from each authority varies significantly. For some shaykhs only a few works are cataloged, while for others the list of books transmitted consumes pages. Full personal chains of transmission back to the author or compiler are delineated for each book. These are cited using the same technical method employed in the transmission of an individual hadith with a typical entry reading something like: … and I took from him a portion of the tafsīr of ʿAbd al-Razzāq orally and the rest by way of ijāza. He transmitted the work from his father Abū Bakr b. Ḥawbayl, as well as from al-Qāḍī Yūnus b. Mugīth, both transmitted it from Abū Bakr b. Ismāʿīl b. Badr, who transmitted it from al-Khushanī who transmitted it from Salama b. Shabīb who transmitted it from ʿAbd alRazzāq. And we have other chains of transmission for this work as well.58 Upon close analysis, one of the more significant details that emerges from these chains of transmission is the extent to which the genre was dependent on the ijāza. Ibn ʿAṭiyya transmits exclusively by ijāza from twenty-four out of the thirty authorities he catalogs in his fihrist.59 Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ depended slightly less on the ijāza, but he was also heavily reliant on it, citing ijāzas from 46 of 98 of his shaykhs. The extent to which these authors are dependent on the ijāza is significant, as it demonstrates how essential it was to establishing the breadth of transmission that is at the core of the fihrist genre. As is discussed in detail in Chapter Three, with the ijāza a collector like ʿIyāḍ or Ibn ʿAṭiyya could, in an instant, receive permission to transmit all the books and collections a transmitter had the authority to transmit. Without use of the ijāza both authors would

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Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, al-Ghunya, 163. Ibn ʿAṭiyya, Fihris, entries, 3–7, 12–30.

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have dramatically fewer chains of transmission to catalog. Ibn ʿAṭiyya would have chains of transmission to present from only six shaykhs—hardly enough to warrant a catalog. Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ too would have his fihrist cut roughly in half. Not only was the ijāza a primary factor in the creation of the vast networks of transmission that necessitated a catalog like these fihrists, but when combined with the fihrist, it gave transmitters the power to create even more colossal networks and exponentially increased the amount of material one could collect and then transmit. Indeed, al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ notes that ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Muḥammad Ibn ʿAttāb (d. 520/1126) granted him an ijāza to transmit everything for which he possessed a chain of transmission.60 This included not only chains of transmission to collections of hadith and the works of other disciplines but a number of fihrist catalogs and all of the books and chains of transmission they contained, thus increasing by many times the number of works and the network of chains of transmission he could draw upon.61 Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ further amplified the combined power of the fihrist and the ijāza to exponentially expand one’s network of chains of transmission by appending to his fihrist a list of thirty-three other fihrist works that he was authorized to transmit.62 The collectors whom he issued an ijāza for his fihrist could then claim chains of transmission, not only to all the books it cataloged, but also all of the fihrist works in this appendix and by extension all the books they cataloged, thus creating a vast network of transmission linking them to thousands of books and their authors. The organizational schemes employed by ʿIyāḍ and Ibn ʿAṭiyya in their fihrist catalogs would remain a standard of the genre for the remainder of its history. This was not, however, the only format scholars developed to organize their fihrists. A generation later, scholars developed the other format that would shape the genre. These late-sixth/twelfth-century authors organized their fihrist catalogs not according to the transmitters they had taken from, but instead according to the books they could transmit from them. This innovation was perhaps the product of the exponential growth in the number of books for which scholars could establish chains of transmission through the combined use of the ijāza and the fihrist. The Andalusian scholar Ibn Khayr al-Ishbīlī’s (d. 575/1179) seems to be the first to employ this mode of organization. Ibn Khayr organizes his fihrist according to discipline, beginning with the various disciplines related to the Quran, then moving to genres of hadith

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Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, al-Ghunya, 164. Ibn ʿAṭiyya, Fihris, 72. Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, al-Ghunya, 228–230.

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literature, works of law, and so forth. Each entry begins with a title and is followed by his chain or chains of transmission for that work back to the author. As a whole, Ibn Khayr’s fihrist is many times larger than either ʿIyāḍ or Ibn ʿAṭiyya’s works. In its printed edition, it fills 463 pages and catalogs thousands of titles. Extensive use of ijāzas and fihrist catalogs was a primary factor in Ibn Khayr’s ability to create and curate his chains of transmission to such a massive body of literature. More than half of his chains of transmission are, either directly or indirectly, based on the ijāza. Like ʿIyāḍ, Ibn Khayr appends to the end of his fihrist a list of the fihrist works he could transmit.63 Ibn Khayr, however, gives his chains of transmission to seventy-three fihrist works—more than twice as many as ʿIyāḍ. This, of course, meant that collectors who took Ibn Khayr’s fihrist could transmit not only all the books in his fihrist, but also all the books contained in those seventy-three fihrist works. Moreover, if some of these fihrist works included chains of transmission to other fihrist works, they could also transmit all those works, thus creating a truly massive network of transmission connected to virtually every book Islamic civilization had produced thus far. To create an even more enormous network of transmission, Ibn Khayr attached another appendix to his fihrist titled, “A compilation useful for the purposes of expansion of transmission through the ijāza,” In this appendix he delineates his chains of transmission to 66 of some of the most renowned figures of the Sunni scholarly tradition, including al-Ḥākim al-Naysabūrī (d. 405/ 1014), Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣbahānī (d. 430/1038), Abū Isḥāq al-Shīrāzī (d. 476/1083), Ibn Abī Zayd (d. 386/996), Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr (d. 463/1070), al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī (d. 463/1070), Abū al-Walīd al-Bājī (d. 474/1081), and Abū Bakr Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 534/1148).64 Ibn Khayr’s fihrist thus functioned as a portal to a vast network of chains of transmission that connected any collector who took it from him to the majority of the prominent figures and moreover to practically every work of the Sunni scholarly tradition written thus far. The formats employed by Ibn Khayr, ʿIyāḍ and Ibn ʿAṭiyya would continue to shape the genre into the modern period. The ability of the fihrist to create vast networks of transmission made it one of the most enduringly popular genres of post-canonical hadith literature.

63 64

Ibn Khayr, Fihrist, 425–438. Ibid., 438–452.

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The Thabat: The Development of the Catalog Genre in the Central and Eastern Islamic Lands

In the central and eastern Islamic lands, the term thabat would eventually come to be synonymous with the terms fihrist and barnāmaj used by scholars in the western Islamic lands. On the synonymy of the terms the Moroccan hadith scholar al-Kattānī writes, “In the latter times the people of the east used the term thabat while the people of the west until now call it a fihrist.”65 The renowned hadith scholar and lexicographer al-Zabīdī likewise defined the term thabat as “the fihrist in which a hadith scholar compiles his chains of transmission and his shuyūkh.”66 Western scholarship too, has seen the terms as synonymous.67 The term thabat would indeed eventually come to be synonymous with the term fihrist. This, however, seems to have been a considerably later development and the origins of the thabat appear to diverge considerably from the fihrist’s. While the fihrist, as has been seen, is highly dependent on the ijāza, early thabat works are focused almost exclusively on documenting the oral/aural transmission of books. The early thabat was essentially a personal archive documenting all the books one had audited and with whom. This type of thabat seems to have been in use as early as the late fifth/eleventh century. Al-Dhahabī refers to a portion of such a thabat dating to the years 488– 489/1095–1096: A thabat of books that our shaykh ʿAbd Allāh b. Ghudayr al-Saʿdī heard: He heard all of the Sunan of Abū Dāwūd on the authority of al-Khalaʿī from Muḥammad al-Rūḥānī with the readers Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad al-Ṣadafī and the servant of the Qāḍī Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh b. Rifāʿat Ibn Ghadīr. They also heard from him [al-Khalaʿī] Ibn Hishām’s redaction (tahdhīb) of the Sira, all of the Fawāʾid of al-Likhlaʿī in twenty juzʾ, as well as other fawāʾid with the above mentioned, as well as others, acting as readers. All of this was in the years 488 to 489, and most of it was in the Qarāfa neighborhood of Cairo.68

65 66 67 68

Al-Kattānī, Fahras al-Fahāris, 1:67. Al-Zabīdī, Tāj al-ʿArūs sharḥ al-Qamūs, th-b-t, 1:534. Pellat, Ch. Fahrasa, Encyclopedia of Islam, Second Edition, eds. P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel. Al-Dhahabī cites Ibn al-Anmāṭī as his source for this document. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 20:437.

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In roughly the same period, Muḥammad Ibn al-Ḥaṭṭāb al-Rāzī likewise notes that his father composed for him a “thabat of the books I had audited.” This would have been compiled at the latest before the year 491/1097 when his father died, but probably much earlier while Muḥammad, who was born in 434/1042, was still a child, as it seems to have been a compilation of notices documenting the audition sessions his father had taken the young boy and was likely contemporaneous to those sessions.69 Although the thabat was in use as early as the mid-fifth/eleventh century, the earliest extant thabat works seem to date to the seventh/thirteenth century. The thabat of Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn al-Maqdisī (d. 643/1245) is among the earliest extant thabat works. One of the primary differences between al-Maqdisī’s thabat and contemporaneous fihrist works is that it seems to have been composed in installments over an extended period time with each entry composed immediately or soon after the audition it documents. In this way, it seems to have functioned something like a personal archive documenting his auditions. The earliest entries in his thabat date to the last decade of the sixth/twelfth century, and the latest entries date to the first decade of the seventh/thirteenth century.70 Al-Maqdisī structures his thabat around the men and women with whom he had his auditions. A typical entry begins with him naming a transmitter, then proceeding to list the books and collections he audited with him or her. For example, “I heard, by my own reading, from the illustrious shaykh, the imām Abū Muẓaffar ʿAbd al-Raḥīm b. ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Manṣūr al-Samʿānī in the protected city of Merv.”71 He then lists the fifteen books he read with Abū Muẓaffar, noting his chain of transmission for each work. A further point of contrast it that al-Maqdisī does not provide biographical information for these transmitters, although in some cases he later added their death dates in the margins of the manuscript.72 He does, however, provide detailed information regarding the oral/aural transmission of each text. This is, in fact, one of the distinguishing features of the work. For many texts, he provides the exact date of transmission, and he often notes the place where the audition occurred as well. He notes, for instance, that the first session of his audition of a collection of the second/eighth-century Egyptian scholar al-Layth b. Saʿd’s hadith with one Abū Faḍl b. Abī Naṣr was held in 606/1209 in the Dardash congregational mosque in Isfahan, and the last session was completed in the 69 70 71 72

Ibn al-Ḥaṭṭāb al-Rāzī, Mashyakha, 152. Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Maqdisī, Thabat masmūʿāt, ed. Muḥammad Muṭīʿ al-Ḥāfiẓ (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 1420/1999), 115. Ibid., 62–67. al-Maqdisī, Thabat masmūʿāt, 58, 61, 70, 98.

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city’s ancient congregational mosque.73 He also regularly notes who owned the manuscript that was used in the audition, its provenance and any other copies that were used in the audition.74 He mentions, for example, that the manuscript of Zāhir b. Ṭāhir’s mashykaha that he audited in the year 598/1201 in the city of Hamdhān was now in his brother’s possession.75 In cases when al-Maqdisī himself did not act as the reader of the text during the audition, he often notes who performed the function in his place.76 Additionally, he often identifies the other auditors who were present for the transmission of the text.77 In this regard, his thabat seems to have been intended to complement the audition notice that would have been recorded in the manuscript used in the audition. This is supported by the fact that many of the notices in the thabat were not recorded by al-Maqdisī, but instead by the transmitter who presided over the session and likely also recorded the primary audition notice in the manuscript that was read in the session.78 Moreover, these entries were added to the work over the course of many years. The notices in the first juzʾ of the thabat date to between the years 606/1210 and 610/214, while the notices in the second juzʾ are earlier and date to between 598/1202 and 601/1206. The exclusive focus of al-Maqdisī’s thabat on oral/aural transmission, as well as its apparent documentary nature, stands in stark contrast to the earliest surviving fihrist works produced in the western Islamic lands. Al-Maqdisī’s thabat was not unique in its focus on oral/aural transmission. His contemporary and countryman ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Maqdisī’s (d. 629/1231) thabat is also exclusively focused on oral/aural transmission.79 As a genre, the thabat seems to have remained focused on oral/aural transmission in the following century. The eighth/fourteenth-century Syrian hadith scholar Amīn al-Dīn alWānī’s (d. 735/1334) thabat survives and it is remarkably similar to al-Maqdisī’s, only documenting his oral/aural transmission.80 Two short fragments of either a single thabat, or perhaps two separate thabats, composed by the prominent Syrian hadith scholar al-Birzālī (d. 739/1338) have also fortunately survived.

73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80

Ibid., 104. Ibid., 53, 66, 87, 93, 96, 133, 136, 150, 164, 216. Ibid., 144. Ibid., 65, 76. Ibid., 77, 82, 84, 87, 98. Ibid. 80, 121, 167, 175, 236. Muḥammad al-Sawwās, Fihris al-madrasa al-ʿUmariyya fī Dār al-Kutub al-Ẓāhiriyya biDimashq (Kuwait: Maʿhad al-Makhṭūṭāt al-ʿArabiyya, 1408/1982), 482. Amīn al-Dīn al-Wānī, Ithbāt masmūʿāt, Ḥadīth MS 306, Dār al-Kutub al-Ẓāhiriyya, Damascus, Syria.

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Both of these works are also exclusively focused on documenting oral/aural transmission. The longer of the two thabats is a ten-page fragment documenting the numerous books of hadith he audited over the months of Jumada I, Jumada II, Rajab and Shaʿban.81 The Thabat of Abū ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad al-Nadhrūmī (d. 775/1373) is another extant eighth/fourteenth-century thabat focused on documenting the author’s auditions of hadith. This thabat is above all a collection of independent documents, rather than an authored work like a fihrist. Instead it is more akin to a personal archive of audition notices. AlNadhrūmī compiled his thabat over a period of eight years. Each entry in the thabat is essentially an audition notice that was composed following the audition that it documents. These entries were recorded between the years 750/1350 and 758/1358. Like Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn al-Maqdisī’s thabat, many entries were composed, not by al-Nadhrūmī, but by the transmitters who oversaw the audition sessions as well by as other auditors who were in attendance.82 As was common practice with the recording of audition notices, following many of the entries, al-Nadhrūmī had the transmitter from whom he heard the text countersign the entry attesting to its veracity.83 Below one notice of audition alNadhrūmī composed, for instance, the transmitter wrote “this is accurate and Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. Ibrāhim wrote this.”84 The Thabat of the Egyptian scholar Aḥmad b. ʿUthmān al-Kalūtātī (d. 835/1432) is an example of a thabat closely resembling al-Nadhrūmī’s produced in the late eighth/fourteenth and early ninth/fifteenth century. Like al-Nadhrūmī’s thabat, al-Kalūtātī’s thabat is a composite document that was produced over the course of many years. It too seems to have functioned as a personal archive of his audition notices. Each entry appears to have been produced immediately following audition sessions and were recorded between the years 781/1380 and 796/1394. Some of these notices were recorded by al-Kalūtātī himself, others were recorded by the shaykhs who were transmitting in the sessions. Like al-Maqdasī and alNadhrūmī’s thabats, in many cases, the notices that al-Kalūtātī composed were countersigned by the transmitter.85 Descriptions of other eighth/fourteenth-

81 82 83 84 85

Al-Birzālī, Thabat masmūʿāt al-Birzālī ʿAlā Shuyūkhihi MS 3755, Dār al-Kutub al-Ẓāhiriyya, Damascus Syria, Majāmiʿ al-Madrasa al-ʿUmariyya. Al-Nadhrūmī, Thabt al-Nadhrūmī, Majmūʿ Qāf MS 1:34 Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, King Saud University library, f 9, 10, 13. Ibid., f. 12, 20, 24, 31, 33. Ibid., f. 25. Aḥmad b. Uthmān al-Kalūtātī, Thabat al-Kalūtātī, Cairo, Egypt, al-Azhar University Library, Rawāq al-Shawām, MS 48.

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century thabat works found in narrative sources also indicate that the genre remained focused on documenting oral/aural transmission.86 The nature of the thabat genre seems to begin to shift in the ninth/fifteenth century. Thabat works produced during this period increasingly documented transmission through ijāza in addition to oral/aural transmission and closely resemble fihrist works. This shift in the genre’s focus continued over the following century and by the late eleventh/seventeenth century, thabat works focused on documenting oral/aural audition sessions become quite rare.87 In Chapter Two, it was shown that the culture of oral/aural hadith transmission underwent major transformations in the tenth/sixteenth century. These shifts seem to have led to the demise of archive-type thabat works focused on documenting oral hadith transmission, and by the eleventh/seventeenth century, they seem to have all but disappeared. It is from this point that the terms thabat and fihrist become virtually synonymous. That the thabat genre does not seem to have become concerned with documenting non-oral/aural chains of transmission until the ninth/fifteenth century does not, however, mean that scholars in the central and eastern Islamic lands did not compose works presenting their non-oral/aural chains of transmission to books before then. It was seen above that already in the sixth/twelfth century, Ibn al-Ḥaṭṭāb al-Rāzī had composed a work quite similar to the fihrist works composed by his western contemporaries. Ibn al-Ḥaṭṭāb’s student the prominent sixth/twelfth-century hadith scholar Abū Ṭāhir al-Silāfī also composed a muʿjam-like work exclusively dedicated to those scholars who had issued him ijāzas through correspondence, but whom he had not met. In this work, however, al-Silafī is primarily concerned with citing individual hadith from each shaykh, like a muʿjam work, and only rarely mentions books.88 Such works, however, seem to have been exceptional. Works cataloging both oral and non-oral chains of transmission to books, like the western fihrist works, do not seem to have gained popularity in the central and eastern Islamic lands until a considerably later date. 86

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The Damascene historian Ibn Rāfiʿ (d. 774/1372) notes that Ibn al-Jawharī (d. 738/1338) composed a “thabat bi-masmūʿātihi.” Al-Marʿashlī, Muʿjam al-Maʿājim wa al-mashyakhāt; Ibn al-Muḥibb (d. 737/1336) composed a thabat for his son ʿUmar (d. 781/1379) that seems to have been focused on cataloging the many transmitters with whom he had taken him to auditions. Al-Marʿashlī, Muʿjam al-Maʿājim wa al-mashyakhāt, 1:421. See for example ʿĪsā b. Muḥammad al-Thaʿālibī, Thabat Shams al-Dīn al-Bābalī, ed. Muḥamad b. Nāṣir al-ʿAjmī (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 1425/2004); Muḥammad b. Badr al-Dīn al-Khazrajī al-Balabānī, Thabat Ibn Balabān al-Ḥanbalī, ed. Ṭālib Nūr al-Dīn (Damascus: Dār al-Nawādir, 1427/2006). Al-Silafī, al-Wajīz, 124, 136, 141, 142, 143, 152.

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Although they were not unknown to them, scholars in the east do not seem to begin producing catalog works akin to the fihrist works of the west with frequency until the eighth/fourteenth century. The prominent Baghdadi scholar ʿUmar b. ʿAlī al-Qazwīnī (d. 750/1349) authored one of the earliest of these works.89 Al-Qazwīnī’s work is similar in many ways to Ibn Khayr’s fihrist, and may have been inspired by it. Al-Qazwīnī’s catalog, like Ibn Khayr’s fihrist, cites books through both oral and non-oral chains of transmission. Also like Ibn Khayr’s fihrist, it is organized according to discipline, beginning with the disciplines related to the Quran and then moving to hadith, law and other disciplines. Also like Ibn Khayr, al-Qazwīnī closes his work with an appendix delineating his chains of transmission to more than a hundred prominent scholars and transmitters thus forging a mammoth network of transmission.90 Like Ibn Khayr, al-Qazwīnī was able to present such a broad network of chains of transmission through extensive use of the ijāza. Like al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, al-Qazwīnī explains that the catalyst for composing his catalog was the many petitions he had received from collectors wanting a compilation of his chains of transmission for purposes of transmission. He, in fact, complains that he had received so many requests for ijāzas that composing them was taking up much of his time.91 He notes that he had recently issued one distinguished petitioner a rather extensive ijāza delineating many of his chains of transmission. Upon seeing this ijāza, other collectors wanted to copy it, but the fact that it was addressed to a specific person prevented them. He, therefore, decided to expand this ijaza, and create a comprehensive and general record of his transmission for those to whom he issued ijāzas to consult and copy, thus benefiting them and saving himself the time of composing ijāzas. The question of why there is a two-century gap between the emergence of fihrist works in the west and what would seem to be the earliest similar

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The extant manuscript of the work has the title Mashyakhat Sirāj al-Dīn al-Qazwīnī. Despite its title, the work does not catalog al-Qazwīnī’s shaykhs and in terms of organization has little in common with a mashyakha. In al-Qazwīnī’s own introduction to the work, the author does not refer to having given the work any title, but he does however state that if he had time he would have composed a mashyakha cataloging the many shaykhs from whom he had taken. Al-Qazwīnī, Mashyakha, 85. This may indicate that it was not alQazwīnī himself who titled the work as a mashyaka, but the copyist who composed the extant manuscript ʿAbd ʿAzīz b. ʿAlī al-Ḥalabī (d. 846/1442). Al-Qazwīnī, Mashyakha, 70. Whatever the original title of the work was, in terms of its organization al-Qazwīnī’s is essentially a fihrist catalog and Ibn Ḥajar in fact refers to the work as a fihrist. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-kāmina, 4:211. Al-Qazwīnī, Mashyakha, 492–557. Ibid., 82.

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work produced in the east is difficult to answer. It was shown in Chapter Three that the practice of issuing ijāzas was wide-spread in the east as early as the sixth/twelfth century. Why then didn’t eastern scholars before al-Qazwīnī compose catalogs of the works they could transmit through both ijāza and audition? The author of a thabat based primarily on oral/aural transmission could, of course, use his catalog in the same way that al-Qazwīnī did and issue students and collectors an ijāza to transmit all the works mentioned in it. Through the ijāza though they could, no doubt, have produced much broader catalogs, encompassing many times as many works like their western counterparts, such as Ibn Khayr, did. Why they did not choose to do this is unclear at this juncture. In any case, from the eighth/fourteenth century until the present, there is a constant record of scholars producing catalogs of their chains of transmission for books both through ijāza and audition in the central and eastern Islamic lands. Already the dominant mode for presenting chains of transmission in the west, from this point onwards these works would gradually come to be the predominant genre in which scholars presented their chains of transmission throughout the Islamic world, ultimately producing thousands of works in the genre.92 Scholars used a variety of terms to refer to these catalogs. The term fihrist was used both in the western as well as the central and eastern Islamic lands. The term thabat would come to be primarily used in the central and eastern lands, although it was also occasionally used by scholars in the west.93 Other terms including mashyakha, and sanad were also used to designate to the genre.94 From as early as the sixth/twelfth century, many authors also gave their works proper titles, as is witnessed by al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s al-Ghunya. This was true for the genre after it emerged in the eastern and central lands as well. AlʿAlāʾī (d. 761/1359), for example, who likely composed his catalog very soon after

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There is not yet a comprehensive bibliography of the genre, al-Marʿashlī’s Muʿjam alMaʿājim wa al-Mashyakhāt, however, gives a sense of it vastness. Aḥmad b. ʿAlī al-Balawī al-Wādī Āshī, Thabat Abī Jaʿfar Aḥmad b. ʿAlī al-Balawī al-Wādī Āshī, ed. ʿAbd Allāh al-ʿImrānī (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī 1983/1403). Ibn al-Ḥakīm, Sanad Ibn al-Ḥakīm al-Khānkī, MS 186. Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, Cairo, Egypt, 186; Muḥammad b. Qāsim al-Ghaznī, Sanad al-Ghaznī Majāmiʿ MS 196, Dār alKutub al-Miṣriyya Cairo, Egypt. ʿAlī b. ʿAlī al-Shabrālmallisī, Sanad al-Shabrālmallisī Majāmiʿ M S 222, Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, Cairo, Egypt, Majāmiʿ MS 222; Ḥāmid b. Yūsuf al-Uskādārī, Sanad al-Uskādārī, Majāmiʿ Ṭalʿat MS 933, Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, Cairo, Egypt; Aḥmad b. Aḥmad al-Suḥaymī, Sanad al-Suḥaymī, MS 22, Al-Azhar library, Cairo, Egypt, ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAlī Sūwaydān al-Damallījī, Sanad al-Damallījī, Baʾ MS 23162, Dār alKutub al-Miṣriyya, Cairo, Egypt.

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al-Qazwīnī, titled his fihrist Ithārat al-fawāʾid al-majmūʿa fī al-ishāra ilā alfarāʾid al-masmūʿa.95 In general, cataloging was not an endeavor conducive to much creativity and innovation, and in the history of the fihrist genre, there are few major departures from the formats established in the sixth/twelfth century. In terms of organization, later authors of fihrist works, like their sixth/twelfth-century predecessors, for the most part, either organized their catalogs according to book and discipline or according to their shaykhs. There were, however, some exceptions. The thabat of the influential Indian scholar Shāh Walī Allāh of Dehli (d. 1176/1762) titled al-Irshād ilā mahammat al-isnād is one such notable exception. Shāh Walī Allāh structured his work something like a flow chart. In the introduction, he explains that although he had taken hadith from many transmitters, his primary source of transmission was the prominent Kurdish scholar Abū Ṭāhir al-Kūrānī (d. 1145/1732) with whom he had studied for many years in Medina. He then notes that al-Kūrānī was dependent on seven primary transmitters.96 These seven transmitters’ chains of transmission led back to just two men: the tenth/sixteenth-century Egyptian scholars Jalāl al-Dīn alSuyūṭī (d. 911/1505) and Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī (d. 926/1520).97 Shāh Walī Allāh delineates each of the seven transmitters’ chains of transmission back to these two men and then explains that al-Anṣārī and al-Suyūṭī’s chains of transmission lead back to just three primary transmitters: Fakhr al-Dīn Ibn al-Bukhārī (d. 690/1291), Sharf al-Dīn al-Dimyāṭī (d. 705/1305) and the long-lived illiterate Syrian transmitter al-Ḥajjār (d. 730/1329).98 He then lays out al-Anṣārī and alSuyūṭī’s chains of transmission back to these three transmitters. These three, al-Ḥajjār, Fakhr al-Dīn Ibn al-Bukhārī and al-Dimyāṭī, could transmit all of the major books of the Sunni hadith tradition through elevated chains of transmission. By establishing his chain of transmission first to them, Shāh Walī Allāh could then cite an abbreviated chain of transmission for each of the thirtyseven books he catalogs, beginning with one of these three transmitters. The thabat of the Syrian Ḥanbalī hadith scholar Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī (d. 909/1503) titled al-Nihāya fī Ittiṣāl al-riwāya is another example of a catalog that diverges from the standard structures employed in the genre. Ibn ʿAbd al-Hadī begins his thabat by delineating his chain of transmission first to God himself, by citing a ḥadīth qudsī, that is a hadith in which the Prophet relays the words of God 95 96 97 98

Al-ʿAlāʾī, Ithārat al-fawāʾid. Walī Allāh Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-Dihlawī, al-Irshād ilā muhimmat al-isnād, ed. Badr b. ʿAlī al-ʿUtaybī (Kuwait: Dār al-Āfāq, 1317 /2009), 25. Ibid., 29. Ibid., 36.

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directly.99 He then delineates his chain of transmission to the Prophet and then, interestingly, traces his chains of transmission back to the archangel Gabriel.100 Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī then cites chains of transmission leading back to a number of pre-Islamic Prophets through the Prophet Muḥammad, including Adam, Noah, Idrīs, Abraham, Issac, Ishmael, Jacob, Job, Moses, Aaron and David among others.101 Next he delineates his connections to the caliphs Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUthmān and ʿAlī and many other prominent companions. These are followed by his connections to the prominent Successors. Eventually, Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī delineates his chain of transmission to nearly every prominent figure of hadith scholarship, from Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal to al-Dhahabī.102 The tenth/sixteenthcentury Syrian Kamāl al-Dīn al-Ḥusaynī (d. 933/1527) is another scholar who innovated in the genre. He divides his work into three parts; the first is a selection of 40 hadith for which he cites full and extremely elevated chains of transmission. Indeed, he remarks with pride after citing one particularly elevated hadith, “today, it is inconceivable that any other living shaykh can cite a more elevated hadith than this.”103 This selection of 40 hadith is followed by an alphabetical catalog of works he had audited or received ijāzas citing their full chains of transmission.104 The third section of the work is an alphabetical catalog of the shaykhs from whom he had taken hadith. In most cases, he provides a short biography for each entry.105 Perhaps one of the more creative departures from the norms usually followed in the genre was the twelfth/eighteenth-century hadith scholar Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī’s fihrist in verse form titled Alfiyyat al-sanad (the thousand-line poem on chains of transmission).106 As the title suggests, the work consists of more than a thousand lines of verse tracing fifty-seven of al-Zabīdī’s shaykhs’ chains of transmission to numerous works of the Sunni scholarly tradition. Due to the constraints of poetic meter, the verses are terse and cryptic in places and as a result, al-Zabīdī composed a commentary to accompany and explain the

99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106

Yūsuf b. ʿAbd al-Hādī, al-Nihāya fī Ittiṣāl al-riwāya, ed. Nūr al-Dīn Ṭālib et al. (Beirut: Dār al-Nawādir, 1432/2011), 22. Ibid., 23. Ibid., 23–32. Ibid., 99–224. Kamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Ḥamza al-Ḥusaynī, Mashyakhat al-Ḥusaynī, ed. Shahlāʾ bt. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd al-Qādir (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 1435/2014), 190. He titles this section “fī dhikr al-kutub al-muḥtāj ilayhā wa ilā maʿrifat asānīdhā.” alḤusaynī, Mashyakhat al-Ḥusaynī, 343. Ibid., 409–505. Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī, Alfiyyat al-sanad, ed. Niẓām Yaʿqūbī (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 1426/2005).

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verses.107 Al-Zabīdī also composed a catalog in prose, and this is also innovative, in that in addition to cataloging the scholars from whom he took hadith, he also catalogs noteworthy students who took hadith from him.108 There were other scholars who made minor but noteworthy innovations in the genre. In the twelfth/eighteenth century, the Damascene scholar Ismāʿīl b Muḥammad al-ʿAjlūnī (d. 1162/1749) broke the standard molds employed in the genre and opened his thabat with an autobiography in which he discusses among other things his lineage, his education, dreams he had portending his future success as a scholar, and the books he wrote.109 For the most part, however, the genre was a conservative one and scholars rarely ventured very far from the models employed in the earliest works of the genre. In some cases, students would even simply copy or summarize one of their teacher’s thabats, adding one link to their shaykh’s chain of transmission.110 While the genre remained largely conservative in its organization and format, there were some notable developments in regards to the content that scholars presented within their fihrist and thabat works. It was seen above that the authors of the early sixth/twelfth-century fihrist works often presented their chains of transmission to a small number of individual hadith alongside their chains of transmission to books. Later authors continued to present some individual hadith within their fihrist works, but from at least as early as the ninth/fifteenth century, there was a particular focus on presenting hadith of the musalsal genre, which was discussed in Chapter Two.111 The musalsal bi-l-awaliyya, in particular, is presented by many authors of fihrist

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I have not been able to locate a manuscript of this commentary; it seems to have been extant as late as the early twentieth century. ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī cites the work in a number of places in his Fahras al-fahāris, 1:199, 1:327, 2:792, 2:795, 2:851. Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī, al-Muʿjam al-mukhtaṣṣ, ed. Niẓām Yaʿqūbī and Muḥammad b. Nāṣir alʿAjmī (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 1431/2010). Al-ʿAjlūnī, Ḥilyat ahl al-faḍl, 43–51. An example of this is the thabat of Muḥammad b. Sālim al-Hifnāwī (d. 1186/1767), which is simply a summary of the thabat of his teacher Muḥammad al-Budayrī al-Dimyāṭī (d. 1140/1728). Muḥammad b. Sālim al-Hifnāwī, Thabat al-Ḥifnāwī, Muṣtalaḥ ḥadīth MS 196, Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, Muṣtalaḥ ḥadīth 196. The Yemini scholar Abū Bakr alAhdal (d. 1030/1620) also summarized his shaykh Muḥammad al-Ṣiddīq al-Khāṣṣ’s fihrist. Al-Marʿashlī, Muʿjam al-Maʿājim, 2:13. Abū al-Mawāhib al-Ḥanbalī (d. 1162/1749) likewise summarized his father Taqī al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Bāqī al-Ḥanbalīs’s (d. 1071/1660) thabat. Abū alMawāhib al-Ḥanbalī, Asānīd Abī al-Mawāhib al-Ḥanbalī mukhtaṣara min thabat wālidihi, Taymūr MS 135, Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya. Ibn al-Ghāzī, Fihris Ibn al-Ghāzī, 144. Muḥammad ʿĀbid al-Sindī, Haṣr al-shārid min asānīd Muḥammad ʿĀbid (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Rushd, 1424/2004), 530–708.

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works in the opening pages of their catalogs.112 Another notable development was that from perhaps as early as the eighth/fourteenth century, some authors of fihrist works presented their chains of transmission to the Sufī orders.113 From as early as the ninth/fifteenth century, authors of fihrist works also often delineate their chains of transmission to the Sunni schools of law. The prominent thirteenth/nineteenth-century Egyptian transmitter al-Amīr al-Kabīr (d. 1232/1816), for example, even delineates his chains of transmission to the Hanafī, Ḥanbalī, and Mālikī schools of law.114 As was seen with the mashyakha genre earlier in this chapter, fihrist works could not only be a means for authors to present and transmit their own chains of transmission, but when composed not for oneself, but for a transmitter, it could be a tool for culling his or her chains of transmission. Ibn Ḥajar, for instance, composed for al-Bulqīnī (d. 824/1421) a “fihrist of his chains of transmission for the famous books.”115 Also like the mashyakha, from at least as early as the tenth/sixteenth century, scholars would, in many cases, produce multiple fihrist works of various sizes. The three fihrist works, al-Akbar, al-Awsaṭ and al-Ṣaghīr composed by the tenth/sixteenth-century Syrian scholar Ibn Ṭūlūn (d. 953/1546) exemplify this development.116

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Conclusion

At the conclusion of this chapter, it is useful to return to a concept that was first discussed in Chapter One. This is the idea that the fundamental aim of post-canonical hadith transmission was to preserve the chain of transmission and the connection to the Prophet. Scholars conceived of this chain of transmission as a distinct trait of the Muslim community. God had distinguished the Muslim community from previous Abrahamic communities by preserving the connections that linked them to their Prophet. Every community to which God had sent prophets before the Muslim community had lost those links and gone astray as a result. It was only the Muslim community that God had ordained to preserve their connection to their Prophet. This was at the core of the complex 112

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Al-ʿAjlūnī, Ḥilyat ahl al-faḍl wa al-kamāl, 227–373; Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ghāzī, Thabat Muftī al-ḥanābila bi-Dimashq ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Taghlibī, ed. Nāṣir al-Dīn al-ʿAjmī (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir, 1418/1998), 144; Al-Nahrāwālī, Thabat al-Nahrāwālī, 26–29. Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad al-Amīr al-Kabīr, Sadd al-irab min ʿulūm al-isnād wa al-adab, ed. Muḥammad Yāsīn al-Fadānī (Mecca: Maṭbaʿat al-Ḥijāzī, n.d.), 263–266. Ibid., 248–251. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Majmaʿ al-muʾassas, 3:154. For other examples of this, see al-Marʿashlī, Muʿjam al-Maʿājim, 1:576, 1:587. 2:33.

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of ideas that sustained and gave meaning to post-canonical hadith transmission. The catalog genres studied in this chapter, more than any other genre of post-canonical hadith literature, served this aim of preserving and archiving the community’s chains of transmission. By composing a catalog of his network of transmission a scholar could archive the breadth of the network of human sources of authority he had built over the course of his career and convey it to the following generation of scholars. It memorialized his and his masters’ places in the community of transmitters of knowledge and ensured the continuity of that community. The mashyakha and fihrist genres did this in different ways. For the author of a mashyakha catalog, the individual hadith was the torch passed from generation to generation symbolizing the continuity of the community, while for the author of a fihrist catalog it was primarily the books of the tradition that performed this function. As the mashyakha genre fell into decline and the transmission of individual hadith became rare, it was increasingly the transmission of books that served as the symbol of the community of transmitters’ continuity. The fihrist genre gave scholars a tool to preserve this continuity and their role in its preservation. It gave them the means to not only preserve the continuity of the community’s connection to their Prophet, and its scholars, saints and sages, but to do so on a phenomenally broad scale. Through the use of fihrist catalogs and ijāzas a scholar could create a network connecting him to virtually every figure and book of the Sunnī scholarly tradition. This connective power of the fihrist made it the most enduring genre in which scholars communicated their status as the heirs of the Prophet and preservers of tradition, and it continues to serve this function until today.

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chapter 7

Hadith Transmission in an Age of Transformation and Reform The final chapter of this book examines developments in the culture of hadith transmission in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. At the turn of the twentieth century, although it had undergone seismic shifts and oral/aural hadith transmission was not as prominent a feature of the culture as it once had been, the chain of transmission remained a feature of the scholarly culture of Sunni Islam. The cultivation of full chains of transmission back to the Prophet retained its status as both a form of social capital and a mode of piety, as it had in the pre-modern period. By the middle of the twentieth century, however, after enjoying popularity for more than a millennium, as a result of the rise of reformist Islamic thought and shifts in the political, cultural, and social terrain, both the social and pious aspects of hadith transmission faced severe challenges. By the late 1960s, hadith transmission as an institution had considerably diminished in popularity and seemed to be on the verge of disappearing. The waning of interest in hadith transmission, however, ultimately proved to be short-lived, and in the final years of the twentieth century, it began to enjoy a revival. This chapter traces these developments and situates them in the larger intellectual, cultural and social contexts.

1

The Last of the Mohicans: Al-Kattānī and the State of Hadith Transmission in the Early-Twentieth Century

The Moroccan hadith scholar Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī (d. 1382/ 1962) was arguably the most prolific and prominent hadith transmitter of the twentieth century. He produced upwards of a hundred works on various topics related to hadith transmission, the most well-known of these being the massive catalog of his chains of transmission Fahras al-fahāris. Widely regarded by his peers as the leading scholar in the field of hadith transmission, al-Kattānī’s activity and production in the field epitomize the state of hadith transmission in the early twentieth century and provides a backdrop against which we can view the decline of hadith transmission’s popularity. Al-Kattānī was born in Fez in the year 1303/1885 into a renowned family of scholars and sufis who traced their lineage back to the Prophet’s grandson al-

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004386938_009

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Al-Kattanī in his library in Fez Photo courtesy of Ḥamza al-Kattānī, Rabat

Ḥasan. As was not uncommon for scholarly families, al-Kattānī was introduced to the culture of hadith transmission when he was quite young. His maternal cousin and neighbor recounts that al-Kattānī’s still child-like voice would often loft over the wall separating their houses reciting Saḥīḥ al-Bukhārī.1 Like the pre-modern scions of scholarly families seen in Chapter Two, the young Kattānī was taken by his relatives to attend auditions with some of the senior authorities of their native Morocco. His father likewise wrote and requested licenses to transmit (ijāzāt) for his son from some of the most senior authorities of his time outside of Morocco. This gave al-Kattānī chains of transmission that were often times a whole generation shorter than scholars who did not have such an early start. His father’s concern for building ʿAbd al-Ḥayy’s network of transmission even led him to change his son’s first name to Muḥammad, so that he could transmit a hadith in which all of the transmitters shared the name Muḥammad (al-ḥadīth al-musalsal bi-al-muḥammadīn). Comically, in his autobiography, he notes that when he first transmitted the ḥadīth al-musalsal bi akhdh al-liḥya, in

1 Khālid b. Muḥammad al-Mukhṭār al-Sibāʿī, Tārīkh al-maktaba al-Kattaniyya li-mālikihā alimām ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī, (Tangier: Dār al-Ḥadīth al-Kattāniyya, 1437/2017), 1:29.

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which the transmitters ritually hold their beards while transmitting the hadith, al-Kattānī simply held his chin because he was yet too young to have any facial hair.2 Similarly indicative of his early start in the discipline, his father and older brother appointed him to teach hadith in the family Zawiya before he had reached puberty.3 ʿAbd al-Ḥayy’s status as one of the great transmitters of his age was not, however, only due to his father’s concern for him. In his autobiography, he notes that in his early teens, as a young student in the Qarawiyyīn mosque university in Fez, he actively cultivated his own short chains of transmission. He writes, “God made the meeting of muʿammarūn (individuals with unusually long lifespans and elevated chains of transmission) beloved to me, and so I sought them out and they held nothing back from me.”4 He goes on to note that in addition to collecting hadith from elderly transmitters, he was also active in collecting chains of transmission from scholars all over Morocco. Besides gathering chains of transmission from Moroccan scholars, he explains that while still a teenager, he began requesting ijāzas by correspondence from scholars the world over.5 By the time al-Kattānī was fifteen, he was recording his own detailed notices of audition in the manuscripts he audited, a medieval practice that was quite rare at the time.6 In Fez in the year 1318/1900, for instance, he read the Forty Hadith of al-ʿAjlūnī twice with his father and recorded detailed audition notices for both readings.7 The following year he read the collection with his cousin Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar al-Kattānī (d. 1345/1927) and recorded another detailed notice of audition.8 At the age of seventeen, he began traveling to other cities in Morocco to collect hadith from their local authorities.9 On these and later trips, he sought out and, when possible, bought rare manuscripts, especially those that contained audition notices and other notes composed by previous generations of hadith scholars. When he found such manuscripts, but was not able to purchase them, he either had a copy made or took copious notes.

2 ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī, Tarjamat wālidat al-ḥāfiẓ ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī al-musammā tarqīyat al-murīdīn bimā taḍammanathu sīrat al-sayyīda al-wālida min aḥwāl al-ʿārifīn wa yalīhi tarjamat al-ḥāfiẓ ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī bi-qalamihi, ed. Muḥammad b. ʿAzzūz (Casablanca: Markaz al-Turāth al-Thaqāfī al-Maghribī, 1428/2007), 131. 3 Al-Sibāʿī, Tārīkh al-maktaba al-Kattaniyya, 1:29. 4 Ibid., 129. 5 Ibid., 129. He notes for example having received an ijāza through correspondence from Aḥmad b. Ismāʿīl al-Barzinjī. ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī, Fahras al-Fahāris, 1:86. 6 For more on the rarity of this practice after the tenth/sixteenth century see Chapter Two. 7 Al-Sibāʿī, Tārīkh al-maktaba al-Kattaniyya, 1:170. 8 Ibid., 1:170. 9 Al-Kattānī, Tarjamat wālidat al-ḥāfiẓ, 138.

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Al-Kattānī’s collecting activities ultimately produced one of the world’s largest archives of this type of material.10 This provided him with a wealth of information on late networks of transmission, which he later used to compose his massive catalog of chains of transmission Fahras al-fahāris.11 On one of these trips to collect hadith that took him to Rabat, a transmitter from whom he requested an ijāza to transmit hadith refused to grant it to al-Kattānī, on the grounds that he was too young to be eligible to receive it. The teenage ʿAbd al-Ḥayy attempted to explain to this transmitter that according to consensus age was not a condition for the granting of ijāzas, but the scholar, apparently not well versed in the protocols of hadith transmission, stood his ground. AlKattānī responded by composing one of the most comprehensive treatises on the ijāza titled al-Radʿ al-wajīz li man abā an yujīz (A Concise deterrent for those who refuse to grant licenses of transmission). In this work, he clarifies for the said scholar the various rulings related to the granting of licenses of transmission synthesizing some 1,000 years of scholarship on the topic, proving that age is not a factor for the granting of ijāzas.12 In 1321/1903 at the age of only nineteen, al-Kattānī had amassed enough material to compose the first catalog of his personal chains of transmission tilted al-Nujūm al-sawābiq al-ahilla fī man laqītuhu aw kataba lī min al-ajjila.13 In 1322/1904 al-Kattānī undertook his first trip abroad to perform the ḥajj, traveling by steamship and train and making stops in Alexandria, Cairo, Beirut, Damascus, Baalbek, and Jerusalem. In all of the cities he visited, al-Kattānī sought out scholars and transmitters in order to take hadith from them. The audition notices he recorded document many of these encounters.14 One audition notice he recorded on this trip, for example, documents that while in Damascus he read Kitāb faḍāʾil Dimashq al-Shām to ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Bayṭār, Abū al-

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It is worth noting that al-Kattānī’s collecting activities were not limited to manuscripts and transmission related materials. He also collected coins, antique military equipment, rare animal skins, rare rocks and minerals among other things. Al-Sibʿī, Tārīkh al-maktaba al-Kattāniyya, 1:74. The bulk of al-Kattānī’s collection, which was thought to be the largest private collection in the world at the time, was incorporated in the National Library of Morocco in Rabat. Other parts of the collection are held in the Royal Library. Ibid., 129. Al-Kattānī notes, for example, that while in Damascus he discovered a manuscript of Yūsuf Badr al-Dīn al-Sūratī’s Fahras, parts of which he copied from the author’s hand and cites this in his own Fahras. Al-Kattānī, Fahras al-Fahāris, 1:143. ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī, al-Radʿ al-wajīz li man abā an yujīz, manuscript from the private library of Ḥamza al-Kattānī in Rabat. The most notable precedent to al-Kattānī’s work is Abū Ṭāḥir al-Silafī’s al-Wajīz fī dhikr al-majāz wa al-mujīz. Abd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī, Fahras al-Fahāris, 30. Al-Sibʿī, Tārīkh al-maktaba al-Kattaniyya, 1:166–180.

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Naṣr al-Khaṭīb al-Qādirī, and Salīm al-Musawatī in a single session.15 As was his practice in Morocco, during his travels abroad, he also sought out rare hadith and other manuscripts, purchased them when he was able, and when not able, he copied and took notes on the audition notices found therein.16 The prominent Syrian scholar Jamāl al-Dīn al-Qāsimī described how during al-Kattānī’s short stay in Damascus, he requested to visit the al-Qāsimī home in order to consult manuscripts related to his grandfather’s chains of transmission. He also describes how al-Kattānī examined the Qāsimī family’s ancient manuscript of al-Bukhārī and was overjoyed to discover rare audition notices containing information on the attendance and transmission of prominent scholars, such as Sharaf al-Dīn al-Yūnīnī (d. 701/1301) and Abū Shāma ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Ismāʿīl (d. 665/1267) and took careful notes on these.17 On his first trip abroad, as well as later trips, al-Kattānī meticulously researched and collected material related to the transmission of the most prominent transmitters of the late period. He took a special interest in researching two of the most important pillars of his network of transmission, Muḥammad ʿĀbid al-Sindī (d. 1257/1841) and Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī (d. 1205/ 1790). He used this material to carefully study and annotate both of their fihrist works Ḥaṣr alshārid18 and al-Muʿjam al-mukhtaṣṣ.19 Al-Kattānī acquired his first manuscript of Muḥammad ʿĀbid al-Sindī’s Ḥaṣr al-shārid as a gift from his older brother Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Kabīr upon his return from the hajj in 1321/1903. This copy was made from the author’s autograph held in the ʿĀrif Ḥikmat collection in Medina.20 As is evidenced by the marginal notes in al-Kattānī’s copy, the following year, he went on his own pilgrimage and brought this manuscript with him to collate with the autograph and made various corrections and notes.21 Al-Kattānī later collated his copy with a number of other manuscripts of Ḥaṣr al-shārid.22 In addition to collating the manuscript several times, he carefully 15 16

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Ibid., 1:169. This remained al-Kattānī’s practice throughout his life. Dale Eickelman notes that during al-Kattānī’s 1944 visit to the small town of Bzu, he made an inspection of the manuscripts owned by the Ait Umghār zāwiya. Dale F. Eickelman, Knowledge and Power in Morocco: The Education of a Twentieth-Century Notable (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 113. Jamāl al-Dīn al-Qāsimī, Riḥlatī ilā al-madīna, ed. Nāṣir al-ʿAjmī (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir alIslāmiyya, 1429/2008), 64–65. Muḥammad ʿĀbid al-Sindī, Ḥaṣr al-shārid min asānid Muḥammad ʿĀbid, ed. Khalīl b. ʿUthmān al-Jabūr (Riyadh: 1424/2003). Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī, al-Muʿjam al-mukhtaṣṣ, ed. Niẓām Ṣāliḥ al-Yaʿqūbī and Muḥammad b. Naṣr al-ʿAjmī (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 1427/2006). Al-Sibāʿī, Tārīkh al-maktaba al-Kattāniyya, 1:87. Ibid., 1:88. Ibid., 1:87.

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researched al-Sindī’s chains of transmission and made clarifications and corrections on the margins of his manuscript.23 Al-Kattānī’s efforts to edit and annotate Ḥaṣr al-shārid did not go unnoticed, his copy was considered authoritative by many and was the source of numerous later copies.24 The renowned twelfth/eighteenth-century polymath Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī was one of the most prolific transmitters of recent centuries and an important node in al-Kattānī’s chains of transmission, and the young al-Kattānī took special care in researching and annotating his manuscript of al-Zabīdī’s al-Muʿjam al-mukhtaṣs. AlZabīdī’s catalog consisted of the biographies of six hundred and thirty-five of both his shaykhs and students. Upon studying the work, however, al-Kattānī concluded that this was incomplete and set about compiling an appendix of dozens of al-Zabīdīs’ students and shaykhs not mentioned in the work. Much of this research depended on rare documentary evidence al-Kattānī discovered in his perusal of public and private archives during his travels. He notes, for instance, that while in Damascus he found an ijāza that al-Zabīdī composed for the prominent Damascene hadith scholar and transmitter Aḥmad b. ʿUbayd al-ʿAṭṭār (d. 1218/1803). Similarly, al-Kattānī notes that he found in the Khedival Library in Cairo an audition notice recorded on a manuscript of the Thulathiyāt al-Bukhārī composed by al-Zabīdī documenting the audition of one Abū Hurayra Dāwūd b. Muḥammad al-Qalaʿī.25 Through his study of hadith manuscripts and documentary evidence related to hadith transmission, al-Kattānī discovered numerous flaws and mistakes in earlier chains of transmission, thus further establishing his authority in the field. For example, he notes that on this first trip to the east, he made a short stay in Baalbek, where he went to visit Abū Khayr Ibn ʿĀbdīn (d. 1269/1925), the brother of the famous Hanafī Muftī of Damascus Muḥammad Ibn ʿĀbdīn (d. 1306/1889). During this visit, al-Kattānī asked to see the ijāza of Abū Khayr’s brother from the famous nineteenth century hadith scholar al-Amīr al-Ṣaghīr (d. 1253/1837). Upon examining the document, he discovered evidence that alAmīr al-Ṣaghīr did not, in fact, issue a global ijāza, permitting everyone alive before his death to transmit from him. This discovery contradicted the claims of some contemporary scholars born before al-Amīr al-Ṣaghīr’s death in 1837, who were still transmitting based on this supposed ijāza. During this period, whether at home or abroad, al-Kattānī relentlessly collected and transmitted hadith. Some of the audition notices he recorded on his first trip abroad even note that the readings took place on a steamship after 23 24 25

Ibid., 1:89. Ibid., 90–91. Ibid., 1:272.

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it departed from Malta.26 It was at this point that al-Kattānī began composing and publishing numerous short works demonstrating his mastery of the field of hadith transmission. During the Egyptian leg of this first trip abroad, for instance, he composed a forty-hadith book with his full chains of transmission in which all of the transmitters are descendants of the Prophet.27 In the same vein, following his sojourn in the Hijāz, he composed a work of all his newly acquired Ḥijāzī chains of transmission, titled Maṭṭiyat al-Ḥijāz ilā man lanā fī al-Ḥijāz ajāz.28 Following this first pilgrimage journey, al-Kattānī produced a steady stream of works covering all of the major genres related to hadith transmission. One of the earliest of these was a short catalog of his chains of transmission that could be easily distributed to those who requested an ijāza from him.29 He also produced a number of catalogs of other scholars’ chains of transmission. Some of these works were for scholars who had given him an ijāza, but had not composed their own catalog, as is the case with his works Fihris mujīzina al-Fuḍayl al-Shubayhī,30 Minaḥ al-Qadīr fī asānīd wālidī al-shaykh ʿAbd al-Kabīr31 and Nūr al-ḥadīth fī ijāzat al-shaykh Muḥammad al-Ṣādiq.32 Perhaps in exchange for some gift of patronage, al-Kattānī also composed works of hadith for political figures, which was something of an old tradition, as Ibn al-ʿArabī’s ijāza to the Ayyubid Sultan of Damascus al-Malik al-Ashraf (r. 626–635/1229–1237) and his children demonstrates.33 During his 1339/1920 trip to Tunisia, for example, he composed an ijāza for the Governor of Tunisia Muḥammad al-Nāṣir (r. 1906–1920) titled Fatḥ al-Malik al-Nāṣir li-ʿabdihi al-amīr Muḥammad bay al-Nāṣir.34 Before his falling out with the

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Ibid., 1:239. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī, al-Arbaʿūn al-musalsala bi-al-sādāt al-ashrāf, Ḥadīth MS 1843, Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, Cairo. The practice of transmitting hadith through chains like this seems to have a precedent and perhaps gained some popularity in the centuries leading up to al-Kattānī’s authoring this work. Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī, for example, is said to have composed a book on this type of hadith. Fahras al-fahāris, 1:184. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī, Maṭṭiyat al-Ḥijāz ilā man lanā fī al-Ḥijāz ajāz, MS from the private library of Ḥamza b. ʿAḷī al-Kattānī. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī, Fahras al-Fahāris, 1:20–28. Al-Kattānī, Tarjamat wālidat al-ḥāfiẓ, 178. Ibid., 178. Al-Kattānī, Tarjamat wālidat al-ḥāfiẓ 179. Al-Kattānī describes this as the best ijāza he has written up to this point. Ibn al-ʿArabī, Ijāza min Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muṣtalaḥ ḥadīth MS 365, Dār al-Kutub, Cairo. For more on this see Gerald Elmore, “Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī’s Personal Study-List of Books by Ibn al-ʿArabī,” JNES 56.3 (1997), 162. Al-Kattānī, Fahras al-fahāris, 31.

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Moroccan Sultan ʿAbd al-Ḥafīẓ (r. 1908–1912), he composed a catalog of the chains of transmission that al-Kattānī determined the Sultan could cite.35 In addition to these catalogs, he also composed a number of works in other genres dedicated to hadith transmission, such as his musalsalāt works al-Ṭāliʿ al-saʿīd ilā al-muhimm min al-aḥādīth al-musalsala bi-yawm al-ʿīd and his al-Musalsalāt al-kubrā.36 Al-Kattānī likewise composed a number of forty-hadith works with full chains of transmission, including his Istijlāb shafāʿat al-Rasūl bi-jamʿ arbaʿīn ʿan al-Rasūl.37 By the year 1346/1927, al-Kattānī had compiled enough material to compose his magnum opus, a massive two-volume catalog of his personal chains of transmission titled Fahras al-fahāris (The Catalog of catalogs). Al-Kattānī had no doubt of his unrivaled status in the field, and opens the work exclaiming that none of his peers have spent as much time collecting chains of transmission as he has, and therefore, he has amassed a number of chains “that no eye has seen and no ear has heard of.”38 Indeed, he goes on to note that only one of the scholars of the previous generation even came close to his breadth in transmission, but that scholar’s breadth in transmission was limited to the scholars of the east, while al-Kattānī also had great breadth of transmission from the Islamic west.39 Encompassing his connections to some twelve thousand catalogs of his predecessors’ chains of transmission, al-Kattānī’s work is one of the all-time largest work of this genre. The work’s entries are organized alphabetically according to the name by which the individual is most commonly known, thus making it easy to reference a particular scholar’s history and network of transmission. Each entry includes a short biography focusing on the individual’s transmission and ends with al-Kattānī presenting his own personal chain of transmission to the individual. The work is thus a kind of encyclopedia of the figures of the late Sunni tradition and their chains of transmission, encapsulating this aspect of the scholarly culture of the late period for future generations.40

35 36 37 38 39 40

This work was titled al-Minhāj al-muntakhab al-mustaḥsan fīmā asnadnā li-saʿādat mawlāya ʿAbd al-Ḥafīz b. al-sulṭān al-Ḥasan. Al-Kattānī, Tarjmat wālidat al-ḥāfiẓ, 178. Ibid., 179. Al-Kattānī, Fahras al-fahāris, 1:21. For more on the Forty Hadith genre see the previous chapter. Ibid., 1:50. Ibid., 1:50. To illustrate, John Voll has noted that al-Kattānī collected a significant amount of information on the important transmitter ʿAbd Allāh b. Sālim al-Baṣrī and his father, without which we would have few sources for al-Baṣrī’s life. John Voll, “ʿAbdallah ibn Salim al-Basri and 18th Century Hadith Scholarship,” WI 42 (2002), 358. Stefen Reichmuth has also noted

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Al-Kattānī published Fahras al-fahāris at his own expense and distributed the work free of charge to prominent scholars and promising students through his vast scholarly network.41 The work had a broad impact and instantly became an essential resource for scholars interested in hadith transmission. The Saudi researcher Muḥammad Āl al-Rashīd’s analysis of the last Ottoman vice-grand Mufti, Muḥammad Zāhid al-Kawtharī’s (d. 1371/1952) personal copy of Fahras al-fahāris documents that al-Kawtharī carefully studied and consulted al-Kattānī’s work.42 Al-Kawtharī was not alone in this regard; several other of al-Kattānī’s contemporaries wrote studies and rejoinders on the work.43 Now recognized as one of the world authorities in the field, when al-Kattānī undertook his second pilgrimage and tour of the east in 1932, he transmitted hadith to thousands. The newspaper al-Balāgh reported that during his stay in Cairo after preforming the Friday congregational prayer in the revered alḤusayn mosque, al-Kattānī was surrounded by students and others who petitioned him to transmit the al-ḥadith al-musalsal bi-l-awaliyya. He obliged and transmitted and commented on the hadith to the post-prayer crowds.44 During his sojourn in Mecca the same year, he is said to have read the opening pages of each of the six canonical books to a crowd of seven thousand in the Grand Mosque.45 Upon completing the pilgrimage, al-Kattānī headed to Tripoli, Lebanon where Muḥammad Rāghib al-Ṭabbākh (d. 1370/1951) likewise reports that he transmitted the al-ḥadith al-musalsal bi-l-awaliyya to a large crowd in the city’s grand mosque.46

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the usefulness of al-Kattānī’s work and cites his history of the awāʾil literature. Stefan Reichmuth, “Murtadā az-Zabīdī (d. 1791) in Biographical and Autobiographical Accounts. Glimpses of Islamic Scholarship in the 18th Century,” WI 39.1 (1999), 64–102. Al-Sibāʿī, Tārīkh al-maktaba al-Kattāniyya, 1:233. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh Āl al-Rashīd, al-Imām Muḥammad Zāhid al-Kawtharī (Amman: Dār al-Fatḥ, 2009), 74–84. ʿAbd Allāh al-Ghumārī, Tawjīh al-ʿināya li-taʿrīf ʿilm al-ḥadīth riwāyatan wa dirāyatan, ed. Ṣafwat Jawda Aḥmad (Cairo: Maktabat al-Qāhira, 1423/2002), 30; Al-Kattānī, Fahras alFahāris, 933. Abd Allāh al-Ghumārī (d. 1413/1993) notes that upon reading the work, his and al-Kattānī’s teacher Aḥmad Rāfiʿ al-Ḥusaynī al-Ṭaḥṭawī (d. 1355/1936) wrote one such work titled al-Masʿā al-ḥamīd ilā bayān wa ṭaḥrīr al-asānīd. There is also an anonymous work in the Moroccan national library titled Radd ʿalā Fahris al-fahāris, which is essentially a critique of the sources al-Kattānī used in his biographical entry on the controversial Moroccan scholar al-Yūsī (d. 1102/1690). ʿUmar b. al-Ḥasan al-Kattānī, Maṭāliʿ al-afrāḥ wa al-tahānī wa bulugh al-āmāl wa al-amānī fī tarjamat al-shaykh ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī, ed. Khālid b. Muḥammad al-Mukhṭār alSibāʿī (Beirut: Dār al-Ḥadīth al-Kattāniyya, 2015/1436), 208. Ibid., 224. Ibid. 244.

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Al-Kattānī’s status as one of the world’s leading authorities on hadith transmission meant that he was constantly petitioned for ijāzas. Wherever he went, students and scholars requested ijāzas from him and he likewise received requests for ijāza through correspondence from all over the world. In order to facilitate the flood of requests for ijāzas, sometime before 1331/1913, al-Kattānī had a form-ijāza printed with blanks for the date, name of the recipient and his signature.47 Al-Kattānī continued to use this printed form-ijāza as late as 1357/1938 and likely later, to meet the stream of requests from scholars he met in person and corresponded with.48 He could, of course, also use his Fahras alfahāris and other similar works in this way. This use of print allowed al-Kattānī to more efficiently establish himself as an important node in contemporary networks of transmission. Issuing ijāzas to a huge number of students and scholars facilitated al-Kattānī in establishing himself as a monumental figure in the landscape of hadith transmission until today. In his biography of al-Kattānī, his relative ʿUmar b. al-Ḥasan al-Kattānī (d. 1370/1950) went so far as to claim that every scholar alive at the time had either directly or indirectly received hadith from al-Kattānī.49 The epithet that al-Kattānī is given by many scholars today—“the master of many of our masters (shaykh kathīr min shuyūkhinā)”— demonstrates well his place in the history of hadith transmission in the twentieth century.50

2

Hadith Transmission and Reform

The culture of hadith transmission that al-Kattānī’s life and work epitomizes was slowly eroding over the course of his lifetime. By the middle of the twentieth century, after having been a feature of Sunni scholarly culture for more than a millennium, hadith transmission’s popularity had begun to diminish. By the 1960s, this ancient practice was a shadow of its former self. The decline of hadith transmission’s fortunes in the twentieth century has multiple causes. One of the factors seems to be the rise of various reform movements, including the Egyptian movement headed by Muḥammad ʿAbduh (d. 1322/1905) and 47 48 49 50

This printed ijāza is mentioned by al-Kattānī in his autobiography, which terminates in the year 1331/1913. Al-Kattānī, Tarjamat wālidat al-Ḥāfiz, 178. Dale Eickelman, Knowledge and Power in Morocco, 113. ʿUmar b. al-Ḥasan al-Kattānī, Maṭāliʿ al-afrāḥ, 127. See http://www.daralnawader.com/bookcard.php?maindepart=0&id=27, last accessed on 6/04/16; http://www.al‑jazirah.com/104787/wo1.htm, last accessed on 6/04/11; http://cb .rayaheen.net/showthread.php?tid=18204, last accessed on 6/07/16; http://majles.alukah .net/showthread.php?p=218537, last accessed on 6/7/16.

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Rashīd Riḍā (d. 1353/1935), as well as loosely aligned movements outside of Egypt. Somewhat analogous to European enlightenment thinkers, reformists considered “tradition” to be an impediment to progress and reason and called for a return to what they considered to be the rational Islam of the early community or the salaf, and abandonment of the irrational traditions and accretions of the later community. Unlike other elements of the late Sunni scholarly culture, such as taqlīd and ṭarīqa Sufism that were explicitly attacked as accretions and impediments to progress, hadith transmission was rarely explicitly targeted by reform-minded scholars. Post-canonical hadith transmission could easily fall under the rubric of medieval excess that reformers aimed to eliminate in their return to what they considered to be the Islam of the earliest community, but it does not seem to have been directly labeled as such. The rational and pragmatic emphasis of reformism, however, was inherently opposed to hadith transmission, which as has been demonstrated in earlier chapters, had not served a pragmatic function since the fourth/tenth century and had acquired significant, arguably irrational, accretions over the course of its evolution. Although reformers seem to have rarely explicitly criticized post-canonical hadith transmission, they did eventually abandon the institution. They did not, however, leave any explicit evidence explaining their apparent lack of interest in hadith transmission, and we are left to speculate about what intellectual underpinnings may have led to this. Itzchak Weisman has suggested that some of the earliest reformers were already moving away from hadith transmission in the late nineteenth century. For Weisman, the chain of transmission functioned as a scholarly genealogy, and he proposes that in order to avoid citing a chain of transmission consisting of scholars who held positions problematic to the reform agenda, Nuʿmān al-Alūsī’s (d. 1317/1899) attempted to construct an alternative “genealogy” based instead on a discontinuous chain of scholars whom al-Alūsī considered to be reformists.51 Although Weisman is correct in positing that the reformers did eventually move away from the “genealogical” model based on hadith transmission, this did not happen among the first generation of reformers. Though there may be indications that they were beginning to rethink hadith transmission, the early reformists did not abandon it. Al-Alūsī, himself, for example, solicited an ijāza from the Indian reformer Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān (d. 1307/1890) and composed a collection of his own chains of transmission, which he issued to the reformer Jamāl al-Dīn al-Qāsimī (d. 1332/1914).52 51 52

Itzchak Weismann, “Genealogies of Fundamentalism: Salafi Discourse in NineteenthCentury Baghdad”, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 36.2 (2009), 272. Nuʿmān al-Alūsī, Thabat al-shaykh Nuʿmān al-Alūsī, in Liqā’ al-ʿAshr al-awākhir bi-almasjid al-ḥarām, ed. Muḥammad Ziyād b. ʿUmar al-Tukla (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-

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The arch-reformer Rashīd Riḍā himself collected hadith from his teachers; he notes, for instance, having taken the ḥadīth al-muṣāfaḥa from his teacher Abū al-Maḥāsin Muḥammad al-Qāwaqjī (d. 1305/1887).53 While this generation of reformers, who began their careers in an educational environment in which the collection and transmission of hadith was the norm, seem to have engaged in the collection of hadith as students, they do not seem to have engaged in the transmission of their hadith as advanced scholars, nor do they seem to have cataloged their personal chains of transmission as a means of presenting and transmitting this material to the following generation the way their predecessors had done for centuries. As a result, the generation of reformers who followed them had minimal exposure to the culture of hadith transmission and took very little, if any, interest in conveying the tradition to the following generation and this ultimately produced a rupture in the tradition.

3

Reformers and the Irrationality of Post-Canonical Hadith Transmission

While, in general, the reformers seem to have left behind little explicit explanation for their move away from the tradition of collecting and transmitting hadith, there is at least one aspect of the culture of late hadith transmission, however, that they explicitly condemned, and this may have broader implications. As has been discussed in Chapter One, since as early as the fourth/tenth century, scholars had been transmitting hadith through supposedly supernaturally long-lived transmitters, sometimes 500 years old or more, as a means of creating extremely short chains of transmission. It goes without saying that this tradition was highly problematic for the reformists. The issue of supernaturally long-lived hadith transmitters seems to first enter reformer discourse in the year 1318/1900. In the al-Manār journal’s section dedicated to “fabricated, forged and weak hadith,” Rashīd Riḍā reproduces part of a letter he had received from one ʿAbd al-Salām al-Rafīqī of Punjab, India, in which he explains that a heated debate had recently erupted in Kashmir over the status of one Abū Saʿīd al-Ḥabashī, whom it is claimed was a companion of

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Islāmiyya, 1428/2007), 9:47–53. Basheer Nafi, “Salafism Revived: Nuʿmān al-Alūsī and the Trial of Two Aḥmads,” WI 49 (2009), 49–97, 62. For more on the correspondence between al-Qāsimī and al-Alūsī related to this ijāza, see Imām al-Shām fī ʿaṣrihi Jamāl al-Dīn alQāsimī: Siratuhu al-dhātiyya bi-qalamihi, ed. Muhammad b. Nāṣir al-ʿAjamī (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 2009), 216–228. Rashīd Riḍā, “al-Muṣāfaḥa al-ḥabashiya: istiftāʾ wa balāʾ,” al-Manār 20.3 (1318/ 1900), 477.

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the Prophet that did not die until the fourth/tenth century and is said to have transmitted hadith. Al-Rafīqī asks Riḍā to intercede and clarify al-Ḥabashī’s status as a companion to quell the debate. Riḍā responds that he is aware of the hadith attributed to Abū Saʿīd alḤabashī and that he had, in fact, taken this hadith from his teacher Abū al-Maḥāsin al-Qāwaqjī, who took the hadith from Muḥammad ʿĀbid al-Sindī (d. 1257/1841), among others. After citing the full chain of transmission consisting of a total of 14 links, which was five to six links shorter than any conventional chain of transmission at the turn of the century, he notes that al-Sindī states about al-Ḥabashī, “he is not known among the companions of the Prophet; he may, however, have been a companion, but was not well known.”54 Riḍā notes about al-Sindī’s statement that it was possible al-Ḥabashī was a companion: We say that it is the desire of those involved in hadith transmission for elevation that tempts them to find a way to deny the fact that this transmitter is unknown. Otherwise, how can they conceive that a companion of the Prophet lived for hundreds of years and remained unknown without becoming famous or being known to the imams and scholars of hadith? There are other motives for transmitting these hadith, which are not valid, and one cannot hold a good opinion about, such as the desire for distinction and to collect hadith from large numbers of authorities …55 In closing his response to the letter, Riḍā states that the upshot of this issue is that the aforementioned scholars in Kashmir are correct to reject the companionship of al-Ḥabashī. However, they should present their opinion in a way that does not cause communal strife.56 Riḍā and these unknown Kashmirī reformers were not alone in their discomfort with the phenomenon of long-lived transmitters; al-Qāsimī also struggled with this issue. Al-Qāsimī seems to have begun his career, like most of his contemporaries, considering chains of transmission based on supernaturally longlived transmitters normal and unproblematic. In the year 1322/1904, al-Qāsimī issued an ijāza to Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar al-Kattānī, who had come to Damascus after completing his pilgrimage to Mecca. In this ijāza, he delineates two of his personal chains of transmission for al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ. The first he describes as a Damascene chain of transmission, in which the majority of the transmitters were either from or lived in Damascus. Al-Qāsimī describes his second 54 55 56

Rashīd Riḍā, “al-Muṣāfaḥa al-ḥabashiya: istiftāʾ wa balāʾ,” 477. Ibid., 477. Ibid., 477.

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personal chain of transmission for al-Bukhārī as “the shortest chain of transmission in existence.”57 This chain is based on the transmission of Bābā Yūsuf al-Harawī from Muḥammad b. Shād Bakht, who were both said to have lived upwards of three hundred years, thus bridging more than six centuries between the two and creating an extremely short chain of transmission. Just two years after al-Qāsimī composed this ijāza, the recipient’s maternal cousin, Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī, came to Damascus following his pilgrimage and met with al-Qāsimī. In this meeting, the topic of Bābā Yūsuf al-Harawī came up and, perhaps under Riḍa’s influence, al-Qāsimī argued that the existence of 300-year-old transmitters was ridiculous and that such chains of transmission should be abandoned.58 Al-Kattānī, a firm adherent of the late hadith tradition, defended the existence of Bābā Yūsuf and upon returning to his native Fez, wrote a short treatise on the subject and sent it to al-Qāsimī. Apparently in response to this treatise, al-Qāsimī, in turn, composed a short tract arguing that the 300-year lifespan attributed to Bābā Yūsuf al-Harawī was simply impossible. In his autobiography, al-Qāsimī refers to this event but does not explain the shift in his opinion.59 It seems likely, however, that his reassessment of this tradition was the result of Riḍā’s influence and may be reflective of a general increasingly rationalist approach to the hadith tradition. Interestingly, al-Qāsimī and Riḍā’s disdain for the phenomenon of supernaturally long-lived transmitters seems to have found a sympathetic ear among some scholars who were working in direct opposition to the reform-minded scholars. The rabid anti-reform scholar al-Kawtharī, in particular, was highly critical of this tradition and was vocal in condemning it. In fact, al-Kawtharī composed two books on the topic. The first is titled ʿAtab al-mughtarrīn bidajājilat al-muʿammarīn (Blame for the deluded regarding the long-lived charlatans)60 and the second is a short work refuting the claims some hadith scholars made that Urkumās, a Circassian mamlūk, had taken hadith from Ibn Ḥajar (d. 852/1449) as a child and then lived 138 years.61 In the introduction to the cat-

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Al-Qāsimī, Riḥla ilā al-Madīna al-Munawwara, 59–61. Al-Qāsimī, Jamāl al-Dīn al-Qāsimī: Siratuhu al-dhātiyya bi-qalamihi, ed. Muḥammad b. Nāṣir al-ʿAjmī (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 2009), 301–303. Ẓāfir al-Qāsimī, Jamāl al-Dīn al-Qāsimī wa-ʿaṣruh (Damascus: Maktabat Atlas, 1965), 569– 570. Unfortunately, according to al-Kawtharī’s student Aḥmad Khayrī, al-Kawtharī loaned the sole manuscript of this book to one Shaykh al-Ayyubī during al-Kawtharī’s second sojourn in Damascus and the book was lost. Muḥammad Āl al-Rashīd notes that he located the son of al-Ayyūbī and enquired about the book only to be told that his father’s library was lost in a fire. Āl al-Rashīd, al-Imām Muḥammad Zāhid al-Kawtharī, 89. Muḥammad Zāhir al-Kawtharī, “Taʿṭīr al-anfās bi-dhikr sanad Ibn Urkumās”, in Muḥam-

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alog of his chains of transmission, al-Kawtharī stipulates that those who accept his license to transmit the book “must uphold the condition of not transmitting anything through his chains on the authority of jinn or supposedly long-lived transmitters, even though many authors of catalogs of chains of transmission are lax in transmitting on their authority in the name of baraka, but there is no baraka in a short chain of transmission in which there is weakness.”62 In a handwritten ijāza issued by al-Kawtharī to Aḥmad b. al-Ḥusayn al-ʿAmrī he specifically warns the recipient not to transmit hadith based on chains of transmission to the likes of Bābā Yūsuf al-Harawī.63 Seemingly in response to this attack on the phenomenon of supernatural hadith transmitters, in addition to the defense of Bābā Yūsuf, al-Kattānī composed two independent works defending supernatural hadith transmission. The first is a musnad collection of the hadith attributed to the supposed jinnī companion of the Prophet, Shamharūsh, who was discussed in Chapter One, titled al-Mahāsin al-fāshiya fī al-ahādīth al-Shamharūshiyya.64 The second is a lengthy work defending the existence and permissibility of transmitting from jinn hadith transmitters, including Shamharūsh, titled Mawāhib al-Raḥmān fi ṣuḥbat Abī ʿAbd al-Rahmān Shamharūsh qāḍī al-jānn.65 Al-Kattānī was also active in propagating hadith transmitted through jinn.66 He cites, to illustrate, a chain in which the prominent eighteenth-century transmitter Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī reads the opening chapter of the Quran, al-Fātiḥa, to ʿAbd Allāh b. Sālim al-Baṣrī (d. 1134/1722), who read al-Fātiḥa to Burhān, “the Teacher of jinn children,” who read it to Shamharūsh the Qāḍī of the jinn, who read to the Prophet.67 In another place al-Kattānī cites a chain of transmission through Shamharūsh for the popular liturgy of blessings on the Prophet, Dalāʾil alKhayrāt, directly from the ninth/fifteenth-century author of the text al-Jazūlī.68

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mad b. ʿAbd Allāh Āl al-Rashīd, Imdād al-Fattāḥ bi-asānīd wa marwiyyāt al-Shaykh ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Imām al-Shāfiʿī, 1999), 636–639. Muḥammad Zāhir al-Kawtharī, al-Taḥrīr al-wajīz fīmā yabtaghīh al-mustajīz (n.p.: Maktabat al-Anwār, 1360/1941), 4. Al-Kawtharī’s student ʿAbd al-Fattāh Abū Ghudda followed his teacher in this position. In his edition of ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Laknawī’s Ẓafar al-amānī, he notes that he considered removing one section in which al-Laknawī transmits a number of hadith through jinn Al-Laknawī, Ẓafar al-amānī, 268. Āl al-Rashīd, al-Imām Muḥammad Zāhid al-Kawtharī, 90. Al-Kattānī, Tarjamat wālidat al-ḥāfiẓ, 172. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī, Mawāhib al-Raḥmān fi ṣuḥbat Abī ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Shamharūsh qāḍī al-jān, Manuscript from the private collection of Ḥamza b. ʿAlī alKattānī, Ribat, Morocco. For more on supernatural hadith transmission see Chapter One. Al-Kattānī, Fahras al-fahāris, 461, 462, 497, 675. Ibid., 234. Ibid., 982.

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It might also be noted that in his Fahras al-Fahāris, he transmits a chain of transmission which includes Shamharūsh from the famous Tunisian scholar Muḥammad Makkī b. ʿAzzūz (d. 1334/1916).69 Ultimately, however, al-Kattānī’s attempts to defend the institution of supernaturally long-lived hadith transmitters failed, and the phenomenon would be, for the most part, abandoned. While most scholars involved in hadith transmission in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had engaged in transmitting hadith dependent on supernaturally long-lived transmitters, by the end of the twentieth century, it was almost unheard of. The desire for elevated chains of transmission that Riḍā disdained and correctly determined to be the motivation behind the transmission from supposed long-lived transmitters like al-Ḥabashī, was, as has been shown in previous chapters, not limited to this phenomenon—it was central to the whole institution of post-canonical hadith transmission. While perhaps not as offensive to reason as several hundred-year-old transmitters, many of the practices related to the ijāza as well as to oral/aural transmission, such as the transmission and issuance of ijāzas to infants and small children, are built upon the desire to cultivate short chains of transmission. It seems likely that the reformers’ disdain for the fictions created and indulged by the desire for short chains of transmission may have influenced later reformers’ opinions on other aspects of hadith transmission as well. In addition to struggling with the irrationality of supernatural hadith transmission, the Syrian reformer al-Qāsimī seems to have struggled to reconcile the larger institution of hadith transmission with a rational approach to religion. In his Qawāʿid al-taḥdīth, for instance, he attempts to find rational grounds to justify the practice of hadith transmission. Rather than giving the standard pious pre-modern explanations for the practice that have already been discussed in Chapter One, such as it being a means of preserving the chain of transmission, which is a distinct trait of the Muslim community, or that it was the practice of the early community that should be emulated, al-Qāsimī attempts to attribute more tangible benefits to continued hadith transmission. He explains, for instance, that by transmitting catalogs of chains of transmission (athbāt) and reading the titles of various books of hadith with their chains of transmission, the student is likely to be encouraged to seek out these books and read them.70 He goes on to state that a further benefit of the chain of transmission is that they protect the titles of books from being forgotten.71 A final benefit of 69 70 71

Al-Kattānī, Fahras al-fahāris, 877. Al-Qāsimī, Qawāʿid al-taḥdīth, 266. Ibid., 215.

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hadith transmission, according to al-Qāsimī, is that the chains of transmission illustrate the extent to which previous generations of scholars valued the books of hadith and thereby encourage one to follow in their footsteps.72 It was noted in Chapter One that, for some, the chain of transmission functioned as a conduit for the baraka or the spiritual charisma of the Prophet and the other great men and women of the chain of transmission. For some reformists, this tradition of ascribing baraka to the oral recitation and transmission of hadith through personal chains of transmission was itself an irrational and reprehensible innovation. We find that as early as 1902, some reformists criticized the practice of public transmission sessions of al-Bukhārī, which were attended by the public and were considered to transmit baraka to the auditors.73 As was seen in Chapter Two, from as early as the time of al-Qasṭalānī (d. 923/1518), the scholars of al-Azhar had held public recitations of al-Bukhārī in times of drought, plague, or political instability with the aim of invoking the baraka of the text and its chain of transmission.74 In the year 1320/1902, some scholars gathered in al-Azhar mosque to perform a pious public reading of al-Bukhārī, whereby they hoped to bring about an end to the drought they had been suffering. This pious reading was witnessed by a young reformminded Azharī, who promptly wrote a harsh critique of this tradition (taqlīd), writing that “the scholars of religion have gone so far in their following of tradition that their minds have become incapable of critically evaluating what their predecessors have done.”75 Jamāl al-Qāsimī cites this passage in his Qawāʿid al-taḥdīth, prefacing it with the comment, “it had occurred to me that some might reject the practice in their hearts, though I did not anticipate that anyone would openly condemn it.”76 For second-generation reformers like al-Qāsimī, even if at times, he struggled to make sense of hadith transmission, it remained a relevant tradition worthy of attempting to defend and rationalize. For later generations of reformers, this does not seem to have been the case. Although, as young students, many of the second and third generations of reformers collected hadith, they do not seem to have seen the value of presenting and transmitting it to their students the way their teachers had.

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Ibid., 215. David Commins, Islamic Reform: Politics and Social Change in Late Ottoman Syria (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 120. Al-Qāsimī, Qawāʿid al-taḥdīth, 265. Ibid., 266. Ibid., 265.

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Transmitting Hadith in the Shifting Political and Cultural Terrain of the Twentieth Century

While the incompatibility of the perceived irrationality of post-canonical hadith transmission with the rational orientation of the reform movement seems to have been one factor in the decline of hadith transmission over the course of the twentieth century, it was far from the only factor. The broader social and cultural changes that took place throughout the twentieth century caused the social and cultural capital associated with hadith transmission to diminish. The fundamental changes that the educational system underwent in this period, seem to be a primary factor in this decline. In particular, shifts in institutions of traditional Islamic education, coupled with the rise of the secular European university, seem to have played an important role in the declining popularity of hadith transmission. Over the twentieth century, the European-style university increasingly came to replace indigenous educational institutions and scholarly culture throughout the Muslim majority world. In 1957 Morocco, for instance, there were only 13,000 secondary degrees awarded, but by 1965 there were more than 200,000 students enrolled in secondary education and some 20,000 in universities.77 As this occurred, the prestige of Islamic higher education, which was increasingly the domain of students from rural backgrounds, suffered a rapid decline. These shifts in education and culture created new audiences for religious literature and new genres, modes, and cultural products to cater to this audience. These new genres and products competed with those of the traditionally trained scholars. Dale Eickelman has described this as a shift in the intellectual economy “in a way analogous to economic market forces, intellectual market forces support some forms of religious innovation and activity over others.”78 These “intellectual market forces” increasingly favored new literary genres such as the journal article, which were accessible and familiar to the graduates of the new educational institutions. Many ʿulamāʾ responded to this shift in the market forces by moving away from their own traditional cultural products that were inaccessible to the educated masses in favor of new products that they could access. The rise and success of the numerous religious journals, such as al-Manār and the Majallat al-Azhar, are examples of this trend. The numerous genres of hadith transmission that were discussed in Chapters Four and Five that had still enjoyed popularity at the turn of the century, but that were

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Dale Eickelman, “The Language of Modernity,” Daedalus 129.1 (2000), 124. Ibid., 129.

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entirely alien and inaccessible to outsiders, suffered as a result of these shifts in market forces and rapidly lost popularity as scholars struggled to remain relevant to their newly educated audiences. The radical transformation that traditional institutions of Islamic education underwent throughout the twentieth century had a dramatic effect on the culture of the ʿulamāʾ and was a further factor in the decline of hadith transmission’s relevance and popularity. The reforms imposed on al-Azhar, which began around the turn of the century and culminated in 1961, exemplify this transformation. These reforms were, in part, motivated by the perception that the students of al-Azhar were out of touch with the contemporary world and aimed to bring the “Azharite students closer to the status of modern students.”79 As a result of these reforms, a new material culture, new subjects, new modes of teaching and new administrative structures were imposed on students throughout the al-Azhar system. New faculties were created; a student at al-Azhar could, from this point onwards, not only specialize in the traditional religious disciplines, but in medicine, engineering or public administration.80 In Zeghal’s study of the scholars of al-Azhar in the latter half of the twentieth century, she aptly described this process of transforming the Azharite from “the mujāwir to the Modern student.”81 Reforms similar to those al-Azhar underwent were imposed on other important centers of Islamic higher learning such as the Qarawiyyīn in Fez, which underwent French imposed ‘organization’ in 1930.82 While not directly linked, these radical changes in the culture of Islamic higher learning seem to have contributed to the decline of hadith transmission as a social and cultural institution over the course of the twentieth century. The case of al-Azhar is instructive in this regard. We find that of the six scholars who held the position of shaykh al-Azhar from 1899 to 1927, all but one can be established to have engaged in the collection and transmission of hadith. On the other hand, of the scholars who held the position after 1927 to 1996, a number of whom were students of Muḥammad ʿAbduh, none seem to have engaged in hadith transmission.83 While before 1927 the scholars who held the 79 80 81 82 83

Malika Zeghal, “Religion and Politics in Egypt: The Ulema of al-Azhar, Radical Islam, and the State (1952–94),” IJMES 31.3 (1999), 371–399. Malika Zeghal, Religion and Politics in Egypt, 377. Ibid., 376. Dale Eickelman, “The Art of Memory: Islamic Education and Its Social Reproduction”, Comparative Studies in Society and History 20.4 (1978), 507. Al-Maraghī, for example was inspired by ʿAbduh in his reform of al-Azhar in 1929. Rainer Brunner, Education, Politics and the Struggle for Intellectual Leadership: al-Azhar between 1927–1945, in Guardians of Faith in Modern times: Ulama in the Middle East, ed. Meir Hatina (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 119. Shaykh al-Azhar al-Shinnāwī was also a student

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position of shaykh al-Azhar seem to have relied in part on their status as transmitters of hadith in the construction of their authority within the hierarchy of scholars, after 1927 scholars increasingly seem to have relied on other new sources of authority such as university degrees some obtained from European universities. Changes in the culture of the political elite also played a role in the decline of hadith transmission. In previous centuries, the political elite had often taken an interest in hadith transmission and in many cases, had patronized hadith transmitters. Sultans from the Zingids of the sixth/twelfth century had taken interest in and participated in hadith transmission.84 In some cases, they even had scholars compose collections of their chains of transmission.85 Al-Dhahabī reports, for example, that Abū al-Qāsim al-Ṣafrāwī composed a forty-hadith work for Al-Mālik al-Kāmil with his personal chains of transmission and that people then heard the work from al-Kāmil. Ibn al-Masadī also reports that he saw an ijāza issued to al-Kāmil by al-Silafī, which his father had requested for him and that based on this Ibn al-Masadī received an ijāza from al-Kāmil for himself and his son.86 Ibn Ḥajar reports having seen an ijāza composed for the

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of ʿAbduh. Prior to 1927 it can be established that every scholar who held the position of Shaykh al-Azhar back to the fifteenth century engaged in hadith transmission. In his book Asānid al-Miṣriyyīn, Usāma al-Sayyid documents a chain of transmission in which every transmitter back to the fifteenth century scholar Zakariya al-Anṣārī held the position. Usāma al-Sayyid Maḥmūd al-Azharī, Asānid al-Miṣriyyīn (Abū Dhabī: Dār al-Faqīh, 2011), 776. For a more detailed account of this see Chapter Six of my PhD dissertation. Sultan Nūr al-Dīn al-Zinkī, for example, is reported to have sought out the prominent transmitter Abū Ṭāhir al-Silafī and transmitted hadith from him. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 21:449. The Ayyubid Sultan of Damascus al-Malik al-al-Ashraf (r. 626–635/1229–1237) requested an ijāza from Ibn al-ʿArabī’s for himself and his children. Ibn al-ʿArabī, Ijāza min Ibn alʿArabī, Muṣtalaḥ Ḥadīth MS 365, Dār al-Kutub, Cairo. For more on this see Gerald Elmore, Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī’s Personal Study-List of Books by Ibn al-ʿArabī, in JNES 56.3 (1997), 162. Al-Kattānī notes that Shihāb Aḥmad al-ʿAjamī (d. 1086) composed a catalog of chains of transmission for governor (wālī) of Egypt Bāshā Ibrāhīm. He also notes a catalog composed for the “Wazīr al-dawla al-ʿUthmāniya” Bāsha al-Kābūrlī al-Ghāzī in the year 1142/1729. Al-Kattānī, Fahras al-fahāris, 1:116, 2:1066. Al-Dhahabī reports that Abū al-Qāsim al-Ṣafrāwī composed a forty-hadith work for AlMālik al-Kāmil with his personal chains of transmission and that people then heard the work from al-Kāmil. Ibn al-Masadī also reports that he saw an ijāza issued to al-Kāmil by al-Silafī, which his father had requested for him and that based on this Ibn al-Masadī received an ijāza from al-Kāmil for himself and his son. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 22:128. Ibn Ḥajar reports having seen an ijāza composed for the Mamluk Sultan Muḥammad b. Qalāwūn (r. 693–741) by al-Birzālī and that “some” hadith scholars composed a collection of the hadith for which Qalāwūn possessed chains of transmission. Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-kāmina, 4:147. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 22:128.

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Mamluk Sultan Muḥammad b. Qalāwūn (r. 693–741) by al-Birzālī and that some hadith scholars composed a collection of the hadith which Qalāwūn could transmit.87 This practice remained current in the early twentieth century. AlKattānī, as was noted above, composed a number of chains of transmission for political figures in the early twentieth century. He composed a work for the Bey of Tunisia Muḥammad al-Nāṣir (r. 1906–1920) titled Fatḥ al-Malik al-Nāṣir liʿAbdihi al-amīr Muḥammad bay al-Nāṣir as well as for the Moroccan Sultan ʿAbd al-Ḥafīẓ (r. 1908–1912).88 In contrast, the military officers or western-trained rulers, who were so often in control in the central Islamic lands over the latter half of the twentieth century, do not seem to have expressed any interest in the transmission of hadith or patronized it, which is indicative of the deflation of hadith transmission as a species of cultural capital and likely contributed to its further decline through loss of patronage.

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Hadith Transmission as a Feature of Late Sunni Traditionalism

The ascendance of reformist Islam and the radical changes in the educational, cultural and political landscape contributed to a steady decline in the value of hadith transmission as a form of cultural capital over the course of most of the twentieth century. There are indications that some of the scholars most dedicated to this tradition attempted to counter this decline. Al-Kattānī, seemingly in an attempt to compel scholars to continue to collect and transmit hadith, composed a book in which he revives the sixth/twelfth century position of Ibn Khayr al-Ishbīlī, who argued that there is a scholarly consensus that it is impermissible for a scholar to reference or cite a hadith or any other work without having a personal chain of transmission.89 This position, however, was too extreme and found little, if any, currency and by no later than the 1960s, hadith transmission was becoming increasingly the domain of a small number of scholars and students opposed to reform and committed to the late Sunni tradition of scholarship. In most cases, these are the direct students of scholars who had battled with reformists like ʿAbduh and Rashīd Riḍā in the first half of the twentieth century. Aḥmad Mashhūr b. Ṭāha al-Ḥaddād (d. 1996), ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Abū Ghudda (d. 1997), ʿAbd Allāh al-Ghumārī, Muḥammad b. ʿAlawī 87 88 89

Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-kāmina, 4:147. Al-Kattānī, Fahras al-fahāris, 31; Al-Kattāni, Tarjamat wālidat al-ḥāfiẓ, 178. This work is titled Rafʿ al-iṣar wa dafʿ al-ḍayr ʿan ijmāʿ al-ḥāfiẓ Ibn Khayr. Al-Kattānī, Fahras al-Fahāris, 24; Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Khayr al-Ishbīlī, Fihris mā rawāhu ʿan shuyūkhihi, 16–17.

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al-Mālikī (d. 2004), and Yāsīn al-Fadānī (d. 1990) are a few of the individuals who made up this network. This group of scholars’ interest in hadith transmission stemmed from an overall desire to preserve the institutions of the late Sunni scholarly tradition, including taqlīd, ṭarīqa Sufism, and scholastic theology that the reformers had attacked and called to abandon. In the 1970s, 80s and early 90s this network of scholars worked to preserve the institution of hadith transmission, authoring catalogs of their chains of transmission, arguing for the importance of its continuation, and inculcating their students with a reverence for the tradition. After receding in popularity for decades, in the late 90s hadith transmission began to experience a resurgence. This shift in fortunes seems to be linked to a general revival of interest in the late Sunni scholarly tradition. This revival capitalized on growing discontent among certain sectors of society with the perceived instability and radicalization of reformist modes of Islam. Proponents of the late Sunni scholarly tradition argued that their brand of Islam, with taqlīd, ṭarīqa Sufism, and Ashʿari scholastic theology, provided an alternative to the chaos of reformer ijtihād, the spiritual bankruptcy of political Islam, and constant anathema (takfīr) of Salafi theology. This met with considerable success, and by the late 90s, a number of proponents of the late Sunni tradition had gained considerable followings. Indicative of this shift, in 2003 ʿAlī Jumʿa, a vocal critic of reformists and proponent of the late Sunni tradition, was appointed Grand Mufti of Egypt. Jumʿa and many of the other proponents of late Sunni tradition that came to prominence in the first decade of this century, were students of the scholars who had kept hadith transmission alive in the 70s, 80s and 90s and now used their positions to quietly promote hadith transmission. Jumʿa, for instance, composed and circulated a catalog of his chains of transmission and played a role in the revival of hadith auditions in the Azhar Mosque.90 Jumʿa’s close student and advisor to President ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ al-Sīsī, Shaykh Usāma al-Sayyid, has also played a prominent role in this revival and has been active in promoting and encouraging hadith collection and transmission since the early years of this century and has published a number of works related to hadith transmission, including a catalog of late Egyptian chains of transmission.91 ʿAbd al-Ḥayy’s son ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Kattānī has also emerged as an important figure in the revival of hadith transmission. Because his father requested ijāzas for him when he was still an infant, he has particularly elevated chains of transmission that have been cataloged and published by one

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ʿAlī Jumʿa, Muʿjam al-shuyūkh (unpublished). Usāma b. Maḥmūd al-Sayyid al-Azharī, Asānid al-Miṣriyīn (Cairo: Dār al-Fiqih, 1436/2014).

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of his students.92 According to some, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Kattānī in fact has the most elevated chains of transmission in the world and students and scholars from around the world flock to hear hadith from him in his home in Fez. Indeed, to encourage his students to travel to Morocco to audit hadith with ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Kattānī, shaykh Mohammad Akram Nadawi wrote in a Facebook post, “If people flew on the plane to Morocco just to read to Shaykh ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Kattani (sic) and then flew back, they wouldn’t have lost anything.”93 The internet and social media have provided important venues for individuals involved in this revival. Message boards, blogs and Twitter and Facebook accounts dedicated to hadith transmission likewise exist, providing hadith collectors lists of hadith transmitters in the various cities and countries of the Islamic world, schedules of hadith transmission sessions, and other resources.94 One can even find advertisements circulating on these media announcing hadith transmission sessions boasting “the shortest chain of transmission in the world.”95 The practice of hadith transmission is also being adapted to the online world and discussions of the proper protocols of online hadith transmission and issuing ijāzas via electronic means are found on these message boards. The revival of interest in the hadith transmission has even been reproduced among proponents of the late Sunni scholarly tradition living in the West. We find, for example, the prominent Muslim American scholar Hamza Yusuf appending his personal chain of transmission to his English translations of classical Islamic texts.96 By 2017, hadith transmission and the

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Muḥammad Ziyād b. ʿUmar al-Tukla, Nayl al-Āmānī bi-Fihrist musnid al-ʿAṣr ʿAbd alRaḥman b. ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī (Beirut: Dār al-Ḥadīth al-Kattāniyya, 1431/2010). https://m.facebook.com/ShaykhMohammadAkramNadwi/posts/1116803468359523. Last accessed 11/16/17. http://cb.rayaheen.net/showthread.php?tid=18204, last accessed o11/16/17; http://www.ah lalhdeeth.com/vb/showthread.php?t=40179, last accessed on 11/16/17; http://www.ahlalh deeth.com/vb/showthread.php?t=138910, last accessed 11/16/17; http://www.ahlalathr.net/ vb/showthread.php?t=2513, last accessed on 11/16/17; https://twitter.com/arrewayah, last accessed 4/13/14; https://ar-ar.facebook.com/pages/‫دار‬-‫الحديث‬-‫الكتانية‬/257787174272056, last accessed 11/15/17; http://isnaduna.blogspot.com/, last accessed 11/16/17. http://www.sunniforum.com/forum/showthread.php?80493‑Highest‑Sanad‑in‑books‑of ‑Hadeeth, last accessed 4/18/14; http://www.ummahbuzz.com/islam/unity‑through‑conn ecting‑to‑sahih‑al‑bukhari/, last accessed 4/18/14. Sharaf al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Saʿīd al-Būṣīrī, The Burda: The Poem of the Cloak (CD Audio Book), trans. Hamza Yusuf (Thaxted, England: Sandala, 2002); al-Ṭaḥāwī, The Creed of Imam al-Ṭaḥāwī: al-ʿAqīdah al-Ṭaḥāwiyyah, trans. Hamza Yusuf ([nl]: Zaytuna Institute, 2007).

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seeking of ijāzas had become so popular among this network of late-Sunni traditionalists that two American scholars affiliated with it, Abdullah bin Hamid Ali and Muhammad bin Yahya al-Ninowy, felt the need write an article addressing what the latter refers to as “ijaza-craze (sic)” in order to clarify some common misunderstandings related to the institution of the ijāza to their audiences.97 Late Sunni traditionalists were not the only group that played a role in the revival of hadith transmission. What might be described as a neo-ahl al-ḥadīth network based primarily in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain, but including scholars from other countries as well, has also been working to revive hadith transmission since the 90s. At the center of this network of students and scholars is the Bahraini scholar Niẓām Yaʿqūbī (b. 1959). Born into a scholarly family in Manama, Shaykh Niẓām received a traditional Islamic education from a young age and then studied economics and religious studies at McGill. His interest in hadith transmission was the product of his relationship with the Malian scholar resident in Medina, Ḥammād al-Anṣārī (d. 1418/1997), who was involved in hadith transmission and the collection and publication of manuscripts related to hadith transmission. Shaykh Niẓām went on to become a leading figure in Islamic finance, sitting on the advisory boards of HSBC, BNP Paribas, and the Dow Jones Index. Al-Yaʿqūbī uses the resources this success in the field of Islamic banking has given him to promote the transmission of hadith in a number of ways. In the footsteps of his teacher al-Anṣārī, al-Yaʿqūbī has built a large private manuscript library in Manama, much of which is focused on genres related to hadith transmission. He has also edited and encouraged the editing and publication of a large number of works based in the genres of post-canonical hadith transmission, including works in the musalsalāt, mashyakha, thabat, ʿawālī, forty hadith, and other genres. Many of these editions have been published by the Lebanese publisher Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, in a series he oversees titled “Maktabat al-Shaykh Niẓām Muḥammad Ṣālih al-Yaʿqūbī al-khāṣṣa” that includes roughly a hundred editions related to hadith transmission. In addition to editing and supporting the editing of manuscripts of transmission-based works, al-Yaʿqūbī alongside another important figure in this network, the Kuwaiti editor and scholar Muḥammad b. Nāṣir al-ʿAjmī, has also been involved in organizing hadith audition sessions in a number of countries. In Kuwait, a number of audition sessions were organized

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“The Place of the Isnad in Islamic Education: Demystifying Tradition” http://www.lamp postproductions.com/wp‑content/uploads/2016/09/The‑True‑Value‑of‑Isnad‑and‑Ijaza .pdf, last accessed 10/30/17.

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by al-ʿAjmī and sponsored by the Kuwaiti Ministry of Awqāf between 1426/2005 and 1430/2009 and a number of prominent transmitters were flown in to oversee the audition. Audition notices were recorded for all of these sessions and then published in a large volume consisting of more than a thousand pages by Dār al-Bashāʾir in 2010.98 Beyond editing a number of works in transmissionbased genres, Muḥammad b. Nāṣir al-ʿAjmī has also authored his own works in these genres, including a forty-hadith work al-Arbaʿūn al-ḥanbaliyya, in which all the chains of transmission are composed of Ḥanbalī scholars and trace back to Aḥmād b. Ḥanbal, and was transmitted in a large gathering at the Hyatt Regency in Kuwait in 2013.99 Al-ʿAjmī also compiled a collection of his personal chains of transmission for Bukhārī’s thulāthiyyāt.100 The Egyptian scholar Abū Yaʿqūb ʿAbd al-ʿĀtī al-Sharqāwī (b. 1982) is another figure in this network of revived interest in hadith transmission. Al-Sharqāwī, recounts that his first exposure to the culture of post-canonical hadith transmission came as a teenager, not through a living tradition, but rather through a chance encounter with Ibn Ḥajar’s massive catalog of his chains of transmission al-Majmʿa al-muʾassas. Fascinated by the tradition of hadith transmission the work documents, al-Sharqāwī began looking for local scholars who could still transmit hadith like Ibn Ḥajar had. Eventually, in Alexandria, he found some scholars, like ʿAbd al-Bāʿith al-Kattānī, who were able to transmit hadith to him because he received hadith while still a young child from none other than ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī. After this, while in Mecca, he took hadith from the prominent transmitter Yāsīn al-Fadānī and others. His interest in hadith transmission did not fully develop, however, until years later after al-Sharqāwī specialized in the study of Arabic manuscripts and became aware of how ubiquitous paratextual audition notices were in the manuscript tradition. The ubiquity of these notices led him to the conclusion that hadith transmission was a core element of the tradition that had been all but forgotten and was worthy of revival.101 In recent years, in Cairo where he is now based, al-Sharqāwī has established the practice of holding public readings of hadith collections that by consulting manuscript audition notices he determined were often read in particular locations, such as the Shaykhūniyya and Dār al-ḥadīth al-Kāmiliyya.

98 99 100

101

Muḥammad Ziyād al-Takla, Thabat al-Kuwayt, (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 2010). http://www.ahlalhdeeth.com/vb/showthread.php?t=309937, last accessed 10/30/17. Muḥammad b. Nāṣir al-ʿAjmī, al-Arbaʿūn al-ḥanbaliyya al-masmuʿa (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 11434/2013); Muḥammad b. Nāṣir al-ʿAjmī, al-Kawkib al-munīr al-sārī fī alIṭṭisāl bi-Ṣaḥīḥ wa thulāthiyāt al-Bukhārī (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 1437/2016). Personal communication with Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sharqāwī, 9/20/2019.

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figure 10 Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sharqāw (second from right), Niẓām al-Yaʿqūbī (second from left) and others pose for a photograph after a hadith audition overlooking the Masjid al-Ḥaram. Photo courtesy of Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sharqāwī

In Jerusalem, Yūsuf b. Muḥammad Marwān b. Sulaymān al-Uzbakī (b. 1977) has played a key role in reviving the tradition of hadith transmission. Al-Uzbakī became aware of the tradition through al-Yaʿqūbī and the sessions he established in Mecca during the last ten days of Ramadan, which he first attended in 2012. After attending these audition sessions in Mecca, al-Uzbakī was inspired to begin organizing similar small sessions in Jerusalem. The majority of these sessions took place in locations within the al-Aqsa mosque compound, where, based on audition notices, medieval and early modern sessions had been held. His position of chief librarian of the al-Aqsa library gave al-Uzbakī unrestricted access to the audition notices recorded in the collection’s manuscripts and allowed him to map the geography of hadith auditions in the mosque compound. He used this information to help to bring this geography back to life through holding contemporary auditions of hadith texts in the same places medieval Jerusalemites had centuries earlier. In 2012, for example, he followed the audition notices recorded on a collection of short hadith texts compiled and audited by Ismāʿīl b. Jamāʿa (d. 861/1457) in various locations of the compound and held an audition session in each location, recording audi-

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figure 11

Yūsuf al-Uzbakī (far right) and others pose for a photograph during a 2012 hadith audition under the Dome of Sulaymān in the al-Aqsa complex.

tion notices after a series of ten sessions.102 Since then al-Uzbakī has organized many other audition sessions in the Masjid al-Aqsa complex and other areas of Jerusalem and the West Bank. The revival of these traditions related to oral/aural transmission after having been almost dormant for decades meant that many contemporary students of Islamic disciplines are not familiar with aspects of hadith transmission and even found some aspects troubling. For this reason, proponents of hadith transmission have, on occasion, found it necessary to defend the continued practice of hadith transmission and explain some of its most fundamental aspects. In some cases, this defense entailed attempts to rationalize the practice. For instance, al-Tamsamānī, another scholar in the network of al-Yaʿqūbī and al-ʿAjmī, found it necessary to publish a lengthy defense of hadith transmission in which he answers a series of questions regarding the nature and function of hadith transmission he received from confused students. For exam-

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Ismāʿīl b. Jamāʿa, Majmū ʿal-ḥāfiẓ Ismāʿīl b. Jamāʿa, ed. Yūsuf b. Sulaymān al-Uzbakī (Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 1434/2013).

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ple, he responds in detail to the question, “What is the benefit of reading, hearing and giving and receiving ijāzas, when the hadith corpus has already been recorded in its entirety and printed?”103 To this he responds that the benefits of collecting and transmitting hadith are many, first among them is that it is a great sunna through which God has distinguished the Muslim community from those that preceded it and went astray.104 Moreover, he argues that transmitting hadith is one of the traits that distinguishes “ahl al-sunna, for ahl al-sunna love the people of hadith, while innovators despise them.”105 He goes on to cite an early hadith authority as having said: “there is nothing heavier on apostates, nor more hated to them, than hearing hadith and transmitting it with its chains of transmission.”106 Another concern that he addresses is that “Many seekers of ijāzas today have become obsessed with collecting them.”107 To which he writes that it is not, in fact, problematic for one to be obsessed with collecting ijāzas, but in fact it is meritorious as it is a way to establish and strengthen one’s connections to the Prophet; further it was the way of the pious predecessors, as well as those who came after them, “was it permissible in their time, but has somehow become impermissible in this time?”108 These developments have given hadith transmission’s dwindling cultural relevance a boost, and while it will likely never again enjoy the popularity it did in the pre-modern period, the fact that young students are again seeking out aged hadith transmitters and composing works demonstrating the quality and quantity of their chains of transmission suggests that hadith transmission has once again managed to avoid extinction and remain relevant. 103

104 105 106 107 108

Muḥammad b. Aḥmad Maḥmūd al-Tamsamānī, al-Samāʿ wa al-qirāʾa wa al-ijāza wa ahimiyyatahā fī al-ʿuṣūr al-mutaqaddima wa al-mutaʾkhkhira wa yalīhi Thabat al-Shaykh Muḥammad Salīm Tawakkalnā (Beirut: Dār al-Ḥadīth al-Kattāniyya, 1434/2013), 87. Ibid., 87. Ibid., 87. Ibid., 87. Ibid., 93. Ibid., 93.

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Index ʿAbdū, Muḥammad 287 Abū Ghudda, ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ 296 Abū Ḥanīfa, Nuʿmān b. Thābit 223 Abū Ṭufayl, ʿĀmir b. Wāthila al-Kinānī 37 Abū Zurʿa al-Dimashqī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAmr 126 ʿAdālat al-ṣaḥāba 30 Al-Afghānī, Bahāʾ al-Dīn 201 Āl al-Rashīd, Muḥammad 284 Al-Aqfahsī, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn 207 ʿĀʾisha bt. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Hādī 190– 191 Al-ʿAjlūnī, Ismāʿīl b. Muḥammad 15, 273 Al-ʿAjmī, Muḥammad b. Nāṣir 299 Al-ʿAlāʾī, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn 37, 230 Al-ʿAlawī, Sulṭān ʿAbd al-Ḥafīẓ b. al-Ḥasan 283, 297 Al-Alūsī, Abū al-Thanāʾ 153 Al-Alūsī, Nuʿmān 286 Al-ʿAmīdiyya, Ṣafiyya 201 Al-Anṣarī, Fāṭima bt. Abī al-Ḥasan 71 Al-Anṣārī, Ḥammād 299 Al-Anṣārī, Zakariyya 199, 271 Al-Aqṣā Mosque 90 Arbaʿūn buldāniyya works 215–218 ʿArḍ (presentation of a memorized text) 180 ʿĀrif Ḥikmat Collection 280 Ashʿari theology 297 ʿAṣr al-riwāya 22 Auditing hadith while copying 82 Audition notices confusion in terminology 50 decline of 96 revival of 300–301 after the tenth/sixteenth century 96 form and contents of 53–55 distinction between auditors and attendees 73 conditions for recording auditors 70 recording non-Arabic speakers 79– 80 composer of the notice (kātib al-samāʿ) 55 issue of access to 57–58 Awāʾil genre 200

ʿAwālī collections emergence in the fourth/tenth century 219 Juzʾ al-alf dīnār 221 ʿAwālī Mālik 221–222 Link-themed collections 224–235 decline of the genre 235, 239–240 Al-ʿAwzāʿī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAmr 112, 120 Al-ʿAynī, Badr al-Dīn 199 Al-Ayyūbī, Fāṭima bt. al-Malik Abū ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn 197 Al-Azhar 44, 292, 297 twentieth Century transformation of 294 office of Shaykh al-Azhar 294–295 Al-Baghawī, Abū al-Qāsīm 59 Al-Bājī, Abū al-Walīd 136, 171 Al-Bājūrī, Ibrāhīm 44 Baraka 148, 151, 201, 292 Al-Baṣrī, ʿAbd Allāh b. Sālim 290 Al-Baṣrī, al-Ḥasan 124 Al-Bayhaqī, Abū Bakr 12, 62 Al-Bayṭār, ʿAbd al-Razzāq 279 Beirut 108 Berkey, Jonathan 111 Al-Birzālī, Muḥammad b. Yūsuf. 63, 74, 145, 213, 249, 295 Bourdieu, Pierre 152 Al-Buwayṭī, Abū Yaʿqūb 113 Al-Bukhārī, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl 35, 40, 43, 171, 212 Cairo 54, 89, 93, 100, 106, 165 Canonization 1, 2, 6, 26, 167, 218 Categories of Elevation badal 33, 34, 213 ʿulūw nisbī 33, 245 muṣāfaḥa 34, 245 musāwa 34 muwāfaqa 33, 222 Çelebi, Evliya 104 Chain of Transmission, as unique trait of Muslim community 10–12, 20, 62, 128 as a farḍ kifāya 84

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328 Chamberlain, Michael 111 Child auditors of hadith 66–75, 136, 138 Conditions for transmitters 23–25 Damascus 165, 198, 225, 228, 249, 252, 279, 289 Dār al-ḥadīth institutions 90 Dār al-Ḥadīth al-Ashrafiyya 102 Dār al-Ḥadīth al-Kāmiliyya 104, 300 in the Ottoman period 101–104 Dār al-Ḥadīth al-Ẓāhiriyya 56 Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya 2 Al-Dārimī, ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān 223, 227, 238 Al-Dhahabī, Abū Hurayra b. Shams al-Dīn 74 Al-Dhahabī, Shams al-Dīn 35, 65, 68, 69, 74, 79, 145, 162, 204, 213, 216, 231, 238, 295 on the end of meaningful transmitter criticism 22 opinions on Ratan al-Hindī 37 on his arbaʿūn buldāniyya collections 217 on the role of the Ghaylāniyāt in obtaining elevation 230 on the rarity of elevated chains of transmission in Muslim’s Ṣaḥīh 228 women hadith transmitters in his Siyar 168, 192 on the forgery of audition notices 159 on the ijāza his milk-brother requested for him 141 condemnation of transmission from nonsource manuscripts 63 Dan Fodio, Usman 18 Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya 299 Al-Dāraquṭnī, ʿAlī b. ʿUmar 41 Davidson, Karima 201 Al-Dihlawī, Shāh Walī Allāh 75, 200, 271 Al-Dihlawī, Amat Allāh bt. al-Shāh ʿAbd alGhanī 200 Al-Dimyāṭī, Sharaf al-Dīn 238, 271 Dozing and sleeping transmitters and auditors 82 Al-Dubaythī, Muḥammad b. Saʿīd 134 Eickelman, Dale 293 Elevation (ʿulūw) pre-canonization 25–26

index debate about post-canonization pursuit of 27–30 seeking out as a sunna 29–30 as a source of proximity to God 31 mystical understanding of 31 Al-Fadānī, Yāsīn 200, 297 Al-Fākihī, ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad 40 Al-Farabrī, Muḥammad b. Yūsuf 170 Al-Fayrūzābādī, Muḥammad b. Yaʿqūb 37, 76 Female led prayer 174 Female Scholars Karīma al-Marwaziyya 169–174 ʿĀʾisha bt. Ḥasan al-Warkāniyya 174 Sitt al-ʿAysh ʿĀʾisha bt. ʿAlī al-Ḥanbaliyya 181, 184, 188 Bayram bt. Aḥmad al-Dayrūṭiyya 184n158 Umm Hānī Maryam bt. Nūr al-Dīn 184n158 and madhhab affiliation 185–185 engagement in teaching 183 Female hadith transmitters longevity and elevation 177, 186–192 the question of literacy 185 Al-Fihrī, Ibn Rashīd 224 Fihrist genre early development of 255–257 spelling and vocalization of 256n45 dependence of the genre on the ijaza 261–262 organization of 260–262 distinction between Fihrist and Thabat genres 264–265 Forgery, of ijāzas and audition notices 158– 160 Forty hadith collections as vehicles for cultivating and transmitting elevated hadith 205–214 geographic forty hadith works (buldāniyya) 214–218 distinction between topical and transmission-based 204–205 Gender segregation 167 Generation Hadith 31, 32, 139 Al-Ghassānī, Abū ʿAlī 260 Al-Ghaylāniyyāt 230

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index Al-Ghazālī, Abū Ḥāmid 8, 181 Al-Ghumārī, ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Ṣiddīq 202 Al-Ghumārī, Aḥmad 214 Al-Ḥabashī, Abū Saʿīd 287, 291 Al-Ḥaddād, Aḥmad Mashhūr b. Ṭāha 296 Hadith Canon 6, 10, 22, 33, 49, 69, 87, 200, 211, 213, 223, 228, 236, 238, 245 Hadith as synecdoche 85 Al-Ḥākim, Abū ʿAbd Allāh 11, 29, 222 Ḥanbalīs 91, 189, 225, 227, 300 Ḥanbal b. ʿAbd Allāh 207 Al-Ḥajjār, Abū al-ʿAbbās 163, 175, 190, 204, 207, 226, 250, 271 Al-Harawī, Bābā Yūsuf 289 Al-Ḥīrī, Ismāʿīl b. Aḥmad 76 Hirschler, Konrad 55, 96 Hodgson, Marshall 111 Al-Ḥusayn Mosque 284 Al-Ḥuṣrī, ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Ibrāhīm 199 Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, Yūsuf 263 his opposition to the ijaza muṭlaqa 133 Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, Yūsuf 91, 208, 217, 271 Ibn Abī Ḥātim, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Rāzī 153 Ibn Abī Shujāʿ, Aḥmad b. al-Ḥusayn 180 Ibn ʿAllān, Muḥammad b. ʿAlī 88 Ibn ʿArafa, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan 156 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Abū Bakr 12 Ibn ʿAsākir, Abū al-Qāsim ʿAlī al-Ḥasan 31, 59, 212, 233, 238 on his arbaʿūn buldāniyya 215–216 God’s intercession for him while collecting hadith 84–85 biographies of women in his History of Damascus 168 his Awālī Mālik 219 Ibn ʿAsākir, Abū al-Qāsim b. Muẓaffar 251 Ibn al-Athīr, Majd al-Dīn 10, 222 Ibn ʿAṭiyya, Muḥammad Abū al-Ajfān 134 Ibn ʿAttāb, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Muḥammad 262 Ibn Bashkuwāl, Abū al-Qāsim 257 Ibn al-Bukhārī, Fakhr al-Dīn 271 Ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd 82, 210, 234 Ibn Fahd al-Makkī 216 Ibn Ghaylān, Abū Ṭālib 230 Ibn al-Ḥadhdhāʾ, Abū ʿUmar 257 Ibn al-Ḥājib, ʿUthmān b. ʿUmar 222

329 Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, Abū Faḍl ʿAlī 18, 35, 79, 146, 171, 191, 199, 204, 208, 228, 234, 250, 271, 289, 295, 300 feats of speed reading 76–77 position on the global ijaza; his opinion on Ratan al-Hindī 37 position on the existence of jinnī companions 41 forty hadith collection composed for alḤajjār 207 his Mashyakhat Maryam 252 Ibn Ḥanbal, Aḥmad 30, 208, 223 Ibn Ḥazm, Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī 11 opposition to the ijaza 125 Ibn Hinzāba, al-Wazīr Jaʿfar b. Abī al-Fatḥ 59 Ibn Jamāʿa, Muḥammd b. Ibrāhīm 249 Ibn al-Jawzī, Abū al-Faraj ʿAbd al-Raḥmān 82 Ibn al-Jazarī, Abū Khayr Muḥammad 234 Ibn Kathīr, ʿImād al-Dīn Ismāʿīl 65, 74, 79, 146 Ibn Khayr al-Ishbīlī, Abū Bakr 128, 144, 263 on the impermissibility of citing hadith without a personal chain of transmission 9 Ibn al-Lattī, Abū al-Manjā 247 Ibn Mājah, Muḥammad b. Yazīd 228 his thulāthiyyāt 81, 223, 238 Ibn Manda, Muḥammad b. Isḥāq 80, 144 Ibn al-Mubārak, ʿAbd Allāh 14, 204 Ibn al-Murābiṭ, Abū ʿAmr 22 Ibn al-Najīb, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf b. ʿAbd al-Munʿim 233 Ibn Nuqṭa, Abū Bakr Muḥammad 68 Ibn Rajab, Abū Faraj al-Ḥanbalī 65, 217 Ibn Rushd, Abū al-Walīd Muḥammad 145 Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, Abū ʿAmr 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 24, 53, 82, 211, 235 on the debate over the citation of hadith without a chain of transmission 11 on post-canonical conditions for transmitters 23–24 on excluding auditors from audition notices 54 on transmission from non-source manuscripts 63–65 opinion on child auditors and attendees 73

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330 position on speed reading 78 opinions on ijaza 79, 128, 133, 137, 139, 143, 144, 145 Ibn Shadhān, al-Ḥasan b. Aḥmad 94, 246 Ibn Shāhīn, Abū Ḥafṣ 32 Ibn Shāhīn, Yūsuf al-Karkī Sibṭ Ibn Ḥajar 238 Ibn Sīrīn, Muḥammad 5 Ibn al-Subkī, Tāj al-Dīn 233 Ibn Ṭabarzad, ʿUmar 157, 197 Ibn Taymiyya, Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad 63, 228, 238 Ibn Ṭūlūn, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad b. ʿAlī 213, 216, 219, 225 Ibn Ṭughrīl, Nāṣir al-Dīn Muḥammad 251 Ibn al-Zabīdī, al-Ḥusayn b. al-Mubārak 163 Ideology of post-canonical hadith transmission 2, 19–20 Ijāza and children 73, 138–140, 190, 201, 297 and the problem of terminology 50, 119 Global ijāza 108, 192, 143–149 Confusion in the secondary literature 109 as a means of preserving the chain of transmission 9, 109, 127–129 as a means to buttress flawed oral transmission 78 ijāzat al-tadrīs 109 early use 113–118 general ijāza (ijāza muṭlaqa) 129–135 Conditions for 135–138 for the unborn 141–143 given in dreams 147–149 and print 285 as a form of irsāl 125 ʿAbd al-Ghanī Al-Nāblusī’s treatise on the receiving ijāzas in dreams 147–148 Ijmāʿ (scholarly consensus) 9 Al-ʿIrāqī, ʿAbd al-Raḥīm b. al-Ḥusayn 79, 144, 188, 208, 210, 225, 230, 234 Al-ʿIrāqī, Abū Zurʿa b. ʿAbd al-Raḥīm b. alḤusayn 225, 234, 249 Al-Iṣbahānī, Abū Nuʿaym Aḥmad b. ʿAbd Allāh 140 Al-Isfarāyinī, Abū Isḥāq 8, 64 Al-Ismāʿīlī, Abū Bakr 34, 245 ʿIṣmat bt. Muḥammad al-Abraqūhī 191

index ʿIyāḍ b. Mūsā al-Qāḍī 79, 82, 122, 133, 144, 237, 261 his fihrist 257–262 his al-Shifāʾ 55, 88 Al-ʿIzz, ʿIzz al-Dīn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. al-Jamāʿa 234 Al-Jabartī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān 75, 106 Jaffee, Martin 19 Al-Jawzdāniyya, Fāṭima 72 Al-Jazūlī, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥmammad 290 Jews and the Christians and the chain of transmission 2, 11–12 Jinn 39, 41, 44, 290 Jumʿa, ʿAlī 297 Jurists 6, 8, 27 Al-Juwaynī, Imām al-Ḥaramayn 7, 11 Jūwayriyya bt. al-Ḥāfiẓ al-ʿIrāqī 188 Karīma bt. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb 195, 250 Al-Kattānī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAbd al-Ḥayy 298 Al-Kattānī, Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Ḥayy 95, 200, 214 early life 277–278 his Fahras al-fahāris 283–284 his opinions on jinn transmitters 290 his al-Radʿ al-wajīz li man abā an yujīz 279 Al-Kattānī, Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Kabīr 79, 280 Al-Kattānī, Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar 288 Al-Kawtharī, Muḥammad Zāhid 284, 289 Al-Kazrūnī, Aḥmad b. Musaddad 225 Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Aḥmad b. ʿAlī 16, 30, 31, 48, 52, 63, 68, 70, 76, 86, 87, 110, 124, 136, 138, 169, 204 Tārīkh Baghdād 75 on ritual hadith reading 86 the liberalization of the ijāza 124–127 speed reading al-Bukhārī 75–76 his al-Jāmiʿ li-akhlāq al-rāwī 53, 204 Khatm genre 87, 88 Khiḍr 44, 90 Al-Kūrānī, Abū Ṭāhir Ibrāhīm 227, 271 Al-Kushmīhanī, Abū Haytham 76, 169 Al-Kutubī, Ibn Shākir 36 Kuwait 299

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index Al-Laknawī, ʿAbd al-Ḥayy 65n25, 128 on his transmission of hadith through jinn 290n62 Late-Sunni traditionalists 297, 299 Locations of hadith transmission 89–91 and women 193–195 Laylat al-Qadr 87 Al-Layth b. Saʿd 112, 265 Al-Luʾluʾī, Abū ʿAlī 68 Al-Mahdī, Muḥammad b. ʿAbbās b. al-Mahdī 255 Majallat al-Azhar 293 Al-Makkī, Abū Ṭālib 11 Al-Malik al-Ashraf 102, 282 Mālik b. Anas 7, 86, 10, 126, 135 Al-Mālikī, Abū Fatḥ 103 Mamdūḥ, Maḥmūd Saʿīd 201 Al-Manār 293 Manuscript culture 60, 61, 65, 80, 87, 91, 96, 98 Al-Maqdisī, ʿAbd al-Ghanī 64, 80, 84 Al-Maqdisī, Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wāḥid 238 Al-Maqdisī, Fāṭima bt. Khalīl 189 Al-Manzilī, al-Shihāb Aḥmad 252 Al-Marʿashlī, Yūsuf 242 Al-Marwaziyya, Karīma 69, 168, 201 Al-Mawṣilī, Abū Yaʿlā 243 Mecca 76, 79, 88, 165, 169, 170, 174, 185, 199, 205, 224, 225, 284, 300 Medina 88, 200, 213, 224, 271, 299 Miyāra, Muḥammad b. Aḥmad 104 Al-Miʿyarī, ʿImād al-Dīn Aḥmad b. ʿĪsā 249 Al-Mizzī, Jamāl al-Dīn Yūsuf b. al-Zakī 35, 63, 79, 83, 145, 204, 213, 238 Mudawwanat Ṣaḥnūn 260 Al-Muḥibbī, Muḥammad Amīn b. Faḍl Allāh 88 Muʿjam /mashyakha genre earliest surviving works 243 distinction between a muʿjam and a mashyakha 242 on the form and functions of the genre 243–248 Muʿjam al-samāʿāt al-Dimashqiyya 175, 196 Mulāzama (prolonged study with a scholar) 181

Al-Munajjid, Salāḥ al-Dīn 50 Al-Munāwala 129 Al-Mundhirī, Zakī al-Dīn 247 Muʾnisa Khātūn 210, 233 Muntakhab and Muntaqā collections 218 Musalsal hadith 92, 148 al-ḥadīth al-musalsal bi-al-muḥammadīn 277 al-ḥadīth al-musalsal bi-akhdh al-liḥya 277 al-ḥadīth al-musalsal bi-l-awaliyya 284 al-ḥadīth al-musalsal bi-l-ḍiyāfa ʿalā alaswadayn 92 al-ḥadīth al-musalsal bi-l-maḥabba 93 on the weakness of 95 Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj 34, 40, 212 Musnad Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal 197, 200, 208 Thulāthiyyāt al-Musnad 227 Al-Mustamlī, Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm b. Aḥmad 171 Muwaṭṭaʾ Mālik, 7, 88, 112, 200, 260, 261 Al-Nabahānī, Yūsuf 79, 108 Al-Nāblusī, ʿAbd al-Ghanī 43–44, 226 his treatise on the receiving ijāzas in dreams 147–148 Nadawi, Mohammad Akram 168 Al-Nahrawālī, Quṭb al-Dīn Muḥammad 32 Al-Nasāʾī, Aḥmad b. Shuʿayb 71, 223, 228, 238, 247 Al-Naysābūrī, al-Ḥākim 94 Al-Ninowy, Yahya 299 Al-Nuʿaymī, ʿAbd al-Qādir 225 Ottoman Empire 99, 101, 102, 104, 107, 108 Payment for hadith transmission 157 People of Hadith 20, 84 Pilgrimage 169, 224 Princeton University Library 89 Qalāwūn, Sultan Muḥammad 296 Al-Qalqashandī, Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad b. ʿAlī 80, 211 Al-Qārī, Mullā ʿAlī 16, 74, 226 Al-Qāsimī, Jamāl al-Dīn 280, 288 attempt to rationalize post-canonical hadith transmission 291–292

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332 Al-Qasṭalānī, Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad b. Muḥammad 76, 77, 137 Al-Qaṭīʿī, Abū Bakr Aḥmad b. Jaʿfar 220 Al-Qāwaqjī, Abū al-Maḥāsin Muḥammad 287 Al-Qayrawānī, Abū Zayd 261 Qubbat al-Nasr of the Umayyad Mosque 106 Al-Qurayshiyya, Karīma bt. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb 195 Al-Rabīʿ b. Sulaymān 114–117 Al-Rāmhurmuzī, al-Ḥasan b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān 58, 65, 70, 110, 118 defense of post-canonical seeking out short chains of transmission 27–29 Al-Ramlī, Shams al-Dīn 199 Ratan al-Hindī 36–37 Al-Rāzī, Ibn al-Ḥaṭṭāb 265 Riḍā, Rashīd 287, 296 Rihḷa genre 3 Ritual hadith reading 84–89 Al-Ruʿaynī, Alī b. Muḥammad 134 Al-Ṣafadī, Ṣalāh al-Dīn 37, 241 Ṣaḥīh al-Bukhārī 49, 69, 71, 75, 76, 79, 87, 97, 163, 169, 204, 208, 236, 261, 277 recensions of 49, 171 ritual reading of 87 citation without a personal chain of transmission 7, 10, 65 Thulāthiyāt al-Bukhārī 40, 223–227 division of manuscript in thirty parts 87 recitation in times of tribulation 292 Ṣaḥīḥayn 8, 114, 200, 212, 260 Ṣaḥīḥ Ibn Ḥibbān 208 Ṣahīḥ movement 6 Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 14, 34, 50, 61, 68, 75, 76, 87, 89, 208, 224, 244 transmission of al-Jalūdī 61 rubāʿiyyāt 228 Al-Sakhāwī, Aḥmad b. Shams al-Dīn 252 Al-Sakhāwī, Shams al-Dīn 35, 77, 79, 83, 150, 165, 168, 177, 235 his Al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ li-ahl al-qarn al-tāsiʿ 177–186 Al-Ṣāliḥiyya 89, 91, 163, 195 Al-Sallāmī, Muḥammad b. Rāfiʿ 159 Al-Samāʿāt, see audition notices

index Samhaj, al-Jinnī 40 Al-Samnānī, ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla 38 Al-Sanūsiyya, Fāṭima al-Sharīfa 201 Al-Saraqusṭī, al-Walīd b. Bakr b. Makhlad alGhamrī 122 Sard (reading without pause) 75, 77 Al-Sarkhasī, Zāhir b. Aḥmad 169, 171 Al-Sayyid, Usāma 93, 297 Sayeed, Asma 167, 175, 181 Scholarly honorifics 176, 197 Al-Shāfiʿī, Muḥammad b. Idrīs 5, 10, 11, 14, 89, 112, 113 Al-Shāfiʿī, Abū Bakr Ibn al-Bazzāz 230 Al-Sharqāwī, Abu Yaʿqūb ʿAbd al-ʿĀṭī 300 Shamharūsh/Shamhūrish 42–44, 290 Al-Shaykhūniyya 300 Short chain of transmission, see elevation Shuhda al-Kātiba 174 Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān 13, 32, 107, 226 Al-Sijistānī, Abū Dāwūd 26, 68, 212, 228 Al-Sijzī, Abū al-Waqt 164, 171, 195, 222 Al-Silafī, Abū Ṭāhir 80, 84, 127, 144, 149, 216, 232, 250, 295 on the use of non-audition manuscripts 64–65 on the use of ijaza 128 his al-Wajīz fī dhikr al-majāz wa al-mujīz 149 his invention of the arbaʿūn buldāniyya genre 215 his Muʿjam al-safar 243 issuance of ijaza to Al-Mālik al-Kāmil 295 Silent Reading 98 Sīrat Ibn Hishām 264 Al-Sindī, Muḥammad ʿĀbid 200, 280, 288 Al-Sīsī, ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ 297 Sitt al-ʿArab bt. Yaḥyā b. Qāymāz 197 Sitt al-ʿAysh, ʿĀʾisha bt. ʿAlī 181, 184, 188, 234 Sitt al-Quḍāt, Maryam bt. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān 250 Sitt al-Wuzarāʾ 163 Speed reading 75–79, 170 Source copy (aṣl) 49, 58, 76 loss of 58–60 issue of transmitting from a non-source copy 60–66 Stewart, Devin 110 Al-Subkī, Sāra bt. Taqī al-Dīn 208–209

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index Al-Subkī, Taqī al-Dīn 207 Sunan Abī Dāwūd 26, 81, 224, 228, 260, 264 Transmission of Abū ʿAlī al-Luʾluʾī 68 Sunan al-Nasāʾī 71, 224, 228 Supernatural Hadith Transmitters 36–45, 289 Al-Suyūṭī, Jalāl al-Dīn 8, 17, 40, 234, 271 on the impermissibility of post-canonical transmitter criticism 24–25 Al-Ṭabarānī, Abū Qāsim Sulaymān 6, 40, 41, 77, 229 Al-Ṭabariyya, Quraysh bt. ʿAbd al-Qādir 199 Al-Ṭabbākh, Muḥammad Rāghib 284 Al-Ṭaḥāwī, Abū Jaʿfar 118, 229 Takhrīj 254 Thabat genre on the synonymity with fihrist 264, 268 focus on oral transmission in the early stages of its development 264–268 use of autobiography in 273 citation of Sufi initiatic chains in 274 Thulāthiyāt 223–229 Al-Thawrī, Sufyān 14 Timbuktu 87 Al-Tirmidhī, Abū ʿĪsā 113, 114, 205, 228 Transmitter Criticism 23 inapplicability in the post-canonical period 24–25 Transmitting weak hadith as faḍāʾil al-ʿamāl 148 Travel 6, 27, 29, 32, 59, 64, 72, 91, 93, 126, 155, 169, 190, 201, 205, 206, 214, 217, 278, 280, 298 Al-Tujībī, al-Qāsim b. Yūsuf 228 Al-Ṭulayṭilī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Muḥammad 257

Al-ʿUlthī, Ṭalḥa b. Muẓaffar 76 Al-ʿulūm al-naqliyya 255 ʿUlūw, see elevation ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz 40 Urkumās, Muḥammad 289 Al-Uzbakī, Yūsuf b. Muḥammad Marwān 239n177, 301 Al-Wādī Āshī, Aḥmad b. ʿAlī 134 Al-Wānī, Amīn al-Dīn 228, 266 Al-Warghamī, Muḥammad b. Muḥammad 235 Al-Warkāniyya, ʿĀʾisha bt. Ḥasan 174 Weak hadith 95, 148, 287 Al-Yaʿmarī, Ibn Farḥūn 256 Yaʿqūbī, Niẓām 299 Al-Yūnīnī, Sharaf al-Dīn 248, 280 Yūsuf b. Shāhīn 238 Yusuf, Hamza 298 Al-Zabīdī, al-Ḥusayn b. al-Mubārak 164 Al-Zabīdī, Murtaḍā 106, 134, 264, 280, 290 his Alfiyyat al-sanad 272 his revival of the audition notice in Cairo 106 Al-Ẓāhirī, Fāliḥ 172, 200 Al-Zamakhshārī, Maḥmūd b. ʿUmar 135 Zaman, Muhammad Qasim 2 Zaynab bt. al-Kamāl 175, 194, 196 Zaynab bt. Makkī 196 Zeghal, Malika 294 Al-Zuhrī, Ibrāhīm b. Sa ʿd 67

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