The article that follows is the new essay added by the author to the second edition. It traces the origin and history of muṣṭalaḥ al-ḥadīth, the era of its codification and the principal works composed in it.
We praise Him, and we send peace and blessings upon His Noble Messenger. To proceed:
Many verses of the Qurʾān establish the authority of ḥadīth as part of the sharīʿah. Allāh, the Exalted, says:
وَمَنْ يُطِعِ اللهَ وَرَسُولَهُ فَقَدْ فَازَ فَوْزًا عَظِيمًا
And whoever obeys Allāh and His Messenger has certainly achieved a great triumph. [Sūrat al-Aḥzāb 33:71]
مَنْ يُطِعِ الرَّسُولَ فَقَدْ أَطَاعَ اللهَ
Whoever obeys the Messenger has obeyed Allāh. [Sūrat al-Nisāʾ 4:80]
قُلْ إِنْ كُنْتُمْ تُحِبُّونَ اللهَ فَاتَّبِعُونِي يُحْبِبْكُمُ اللهُ وَيَغْفِرْ لَكُمْ ذُنُوبَكُمْ
Say: 'If you should love Allāh, then follow me; Allāh will love you and forgive you your sins.' [Sūrat Āl ʿImrān 3:31]
وَمَا آتَاكُمُ الرَّسُولُ فَخُذُوهُ وَمَا نَهَاكُمْ عَنْهُ فَانْتَهُوا
And whatever the Messenger has given you, take it; and what he has forbidden you, refrain from. [Sūrat al-Ḥashr 59:7]
فَلَا وَرَبِّكَ لَا يُؤْمِنُونَ حَتَّى يُحَكِّمُوكَ فِيمَا شَجَرَ بَيْنَهُمْ
But no, by your Lord, they will not believe until they make you, [O Muḥammad], judge concerning that over which they dispute among themselves. [Sūrat al-Nisāʾ 4:65]
يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا إِنْ جَاءَكُمْ فَاسِقٌ بِنَبَإٍ فَتَبَيَّنُوا
O you who have believed, if there comes to you a deviator with information, verify it. [Sūrat al-Ḥujurāt 49:6]
And the Messenger of Allāh ﷺ has said:
مَنْ أَحْدَثَ فِي أَمْرِنَا هَذَا مَا لَيْسَ مِنْهُ فَهُوَ رَدٌّ
Whoever introduces into this affair of ours something that is not from it, it is rejected. Agreed upon. [Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 2697; Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 1718]
And in another ḥadīth:
كَفَى بِالْمَرْءِ كَذِبًا أَنْ يُحَدِّثَ بِكُلِّ مَا سَمِعَ
It is enough lying for a man that he relate everything he hears. Reported by Muslim. [Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Muqaddima 5]
Al-Baghawī cited them both in the chapter on holding fast to the Book and the Sunnah.1
These verses and aḥādīth show that success and salvation depend on holding fast to the Book and the Sunnah, that holding fast to the Sunnah entails holding fast to the Book, and that verifying (taḥqīq) the Sunnah is indispensable. Otherwise a person will narrate and act on everything he hears, and so end up holding fast to something other than the Sunnah while imagining he is holding fast to the Book and the Sunnah, falling thereby into trial and misguidance, as has come in the ḥadīth: "In the last age there will be impostors and liars who will bring you ḥadīths that neither you nor your fathers have heard. So beware of them, and keep them away from you, lest they lead you astray or cast you into trial." Reported by Muslim.
This is why Ibn ʿAdiyy,2 in the introduction to al-Kāmil3 (p. 78), said: "Just as Allāh has made obedience to him obligatory upon us, so too has He made it obligatory upon us to take him as our model, to follow in his footsteps and to scrutinise the transmission of his reports, in order to distinguish their sound from their defective and their strong from their weak." End of quotation.
Both are in al-Baghawī's Maṣābīḥ al-Sunnah, in the chapter of that name, the fifth chapter of Kitāb al-Īmān: the first is no. 101, the ḥadīth with which the chapter opens, and the second is no. 118 (ed. Yūsuf ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Marʿashlī and others, Dār al-Maʿrifa, first edition, 1407/1987, 1/150 and 1/155). [tr.] ↩
Abū Aḥmad ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAdiyy ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Jurjānī (277 to 375 AH). He had over a thousand teachers, as he mentions in his Muʿjam. [tr.] ↩
Ibn ʿAdiyy is most famous for this work, al-Kāmil fī Ḍuʿafāʾ al-Rijāl, such that he is often referred to as "Ṣāḥib al-Kāmil", the author of al-Kāmil. [tr.] ↩
The threefold division of ḥadīth study: ʿilm riwāyat al-ḥadīth, ʿilm dirāyat al-ḥadīth and ʿilm uṣūl al-ḥadīth (muṣṭalaḥ al-ḥadīth), as set out in the opening of al-Mulakhkhaṣ.
The front matter of al-Mulakhkhaṣ: the preface to the second edition, the commendation and endorsement from Maẓāhir ʿUlūm and the author's foreword
How verification of the Sunnah began in the era of the senior ṣaḥābah and developed into the era of codification and taḥqīq through the third century and beyond.
A survey of the foundational works on ḥadīth terminology from al-Rāmahurmuzī to Ibn al-Ḥanbalī's Qafw al-Athar, and the author's reasons for composing al-Mulakhkhaṣ
