Al-Mulakhkhaṣ

Al-Mulakhkhaṣ fī Uṣūl al-Ḥadīth (The Summary of the Principles of Ḥadīth), subtitled With Clarification of Ḥanafī Terminology, is a working primer in muṣṭalaḥ al-ḥadīth (the science of ḥadīth terminology) composed by Shaykh ʿAbd al-ʿAẓīm al-Balyāwī of Jāmiʿat Maẓāhir ʿUlūm, Sahāranpūr, with particular attention to where the Ḥanafī jurists diverge from the muḥaddithūn in their classification of aḥādīth. Drawing on his years of teaching Tadrīb al-Rāwī, Qafw al-Athar and Sharḥ Nukhbat al-Fikr, the author first dictated its entries to his students, who had asked for a concise text they could memorise. The second edition added examples and an essay on the history of the science. The text reads as a sequenced progression: the authority of ḥadīth and the development of its sciences first, then the categories of aḥādīth by number of narrators, by acceptance and rejection, by soundness gradation and by the structural features of the sanad.

The arrangement on these pages follows the original sequence, opening with the book's front matter: the author's preface and foreword, and the commendation and endorsement from Maẓāhir ʿUlūm. Each entry is a single muṣṭalaḥ category or a single distinction; the entries are short by design, intended to be read in order rather than separately consulted as a dictionary. Read together, they prepare the reader for longer works such as Ibn Ḥajar's Nukhbat al-Fikr and his own commentary Nuzhat al-Naẓar, and for the rijāl literature of Taqrīb al-Tahdhīb and Tahdhīb al-Kamāl.