Among the first to compose a work on this subject was al-Qāḍī Abū Muḥammad al-Rāmahurmuzī1 (265 to 360 AH), then al-Ḥākim Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Naysābūrī2 (321 to 405 AH), and then Abū Nuʿaym al-Aṣfahānī3 (336 to 430 AH).4
After them came ʿAllāmah al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī5 (392 to 463 AH), who composed al-Kifāya on the rules of narration, and al-Jāmiʿ li-Ādāb al-Shaykh wa al-Sāmiʿ on its etiquette; and there is scarcely any branch of the disciplines of ḥadīth in which he has not authored a separate book. Then Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ6 (476 to 544 AH) composed al-Ilmāʿ ilā Maʿrifat Uṣūl al-Riwāya wa-Taqyīd al-Samāʿ, and there were others besides.7
Then came al-Ḥāfiẓ Abū ʿAmr ibn al-Ṣalāḥ (577 to 643 AH), who composed his magnum opus Maʿrifat Anwāʿ ʿIlm al-Ḥadīth, more commonly known as Muqaddimat Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ. He took up al-Khaṭīb's scattered works, gathered the various aims dispersed throughout them and added to them choice useful material drawn from other works, so that what had been scattered elsewhere was now assembled in his book. For this reason people devoted themselves to it and followed its path, and there is no counting how many have versified it, abridged it, drawn additions out of it, kept to it alone, opposed it or defended it, as al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar has said.8 His book became the principal point of reference, and every abridgement and expansion comes back to it, as ʿAllāmah al-Suyūṭī has said.9
Those who worked on it, by way of versification, abridgement, commentary or marginal note, or who built on what others had built on it, include:
Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ's book remained the sole source for the science of muṣṭalaḥ for about two hundred years. Then al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar10 composed his concise yet comprehensive treatise Nukhbat al-Fikr fī Muṣṭalaḥ Ahl al-Athar, which he subsequently expounded under the title Nuzhat al-Naẓar fī Tawḍīḥ Nukhbat al-Fikar. The scholars turned to it and came to rely on it in the science of muṣṭalaḥ for its concision, its orderly arrangement, its sifting, its careful verification and its inclusion of a number of important additions absent from the Muqaddima of Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ. From that point on, the Nukhba and its commentary became the focus of study and reflection for the scholars of athar.
Among those who worked upon it are:11
Later, Imām Raḍī al-Dīn ibn al-Ḥanbalī al-Ḥanafī (908 to 971 AH) extracted, from the books that had been composed before him, the Nukhba together with its commentaries and marginalia, which are themselves a distillation of the Muqaddima of Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ and its commentaries and marginalia. His book is, as he titled it, Qafw al-Athar fī Ṣafw ʿUlūm al-Athar. To it he added, in concise form, the positions of the leading Ḥanafī scholars on the disputed questions, and in this there is much benefit.
This is the summary of what Shaykh ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Abū Ghuddah has said in his introduction to Qafw al-Athar.12
I say, for my part: there are two matters here.
First: Nukhbat al-Fikr was among the earliest of Ibn Ḥajar's works, since Kamāl al-Dīn al-Shumunnī had already finished versifying it by the year 814 AH; and many of Ibn Ḥajar's positions changed afterwards, as can be seen from his other works. Yet most of the mutaʾakhkhirūn follow the Nukhba and its commentary, Nuzhat al-Naẓar, and pay no attention to the positions Ibn Ḥajar takes in his other books, let alone the positions of others.
Second: Ibn al-Ḥanbalī worked in various sciences, and his work in the science of ḥadīth is very slight, as is known from the inventory of his works. For this reason his book contains, in certain places, anomalous positions which others have not agreed with; and what he mentions of the Ḥanafī positions he mentions concisely, as noted, and on certain matters he omits them altogether.
It is for these reasons that I composed this treatise. Although I have drawn most of the topics from the Muqaddima of Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, the Nukhba and its commentary and Qafw al-Athar, I have done so with reference to the books of the mutaqaddimūn. Whatever seemed to me closer to the truth, to the position of the majority and to the practice of the muḥaddithūn, I have adopted; whatever was contrary to that, even if well known among the mutaʾakhkhirūn, I have set aside and drawn attention to. Allāh is the One who grants success to the truth, and He is sufficient for me and the best of guardians. May Allāh send peace and blessings upon His Noble Prophet; and our final prayer is: all praise belongs to Allāh, Lord of all the worlds.
Al-Qāḍī Abū Muḥammad al-Rāmahurmuzī (c. 265 to 360 AH) titled his work al-Muḥaddith al-Fāṣil bayna al-Rāwī wa-l-Wāʿī. It treats the etiquette of the narrator, the student and the muḥaddith; the methods of receiving and transmitting ḥadīth; and the efforts of the muḥaddithūn in the pursuit of knowledge. [tr.] ↩
ʿAllāmah al-Ḥākim's book Maʿrifat ʿUlūm al-Ḥadīth was neither ordered systematically nor refined; even so, it was a valuable treatise covering fifty sections dealing with the rules of narration. [tr.] ↩
Abū Nuʿaym al-Aṣfahānī (336 to 430 AH) wrote al-Mustakhraj ʿalā Maʿrifat ʿUlūm al-Ḥadīth li-l-Ḥākim, adding to ʿAllāmah al-Ḥākim's work; even so, several sections remained incomplete. [tr.] ↩
Shaykh Muḥammad ʿAwwāma weighs ʿAllāmah al-Rāmahurmuzī's claim to priority in this discipline against ʿAllāmah al-Ḥākim's, in his edition of al-Suyūṭī's Tadrīb al-Rāwī (Dār al-Yusr and Dār al-Minhāj, first edition, 1437/2016), 2/72 to 74. He retains the word min in Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar's sentence, so that al-Rāmahurmuzī is among the first to compose in the discipline and not simply the first: ʿAllāmah Ibn Ḥibbān (d. 354 AH) was his contemporary and had written in it, ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī (d. 234 AH) preceded them both, and Ibn Ḥajar himself, in al-Majmaʿ al-Muʾassas (1/186), called al-Muḥaddith al-Fāṣil the first book composed in ʿulūm al-ḥadīth "in all likelihood". Al-Rāmahurmuzī he allows the priority of having been the first to gather several of the types of ʿulūm al-ḥadīth between two covers; but his book takes in only a few of the chapters since settled upon as ʿulūm al-ḥadīth, and none of what one might call their backbone. "The one who brought those is al-Ḥākim, in his book Maʿrifat ʿUlūm al-Ḥadīth, so he is the one who deserves to be given the description of priority" «إنما الذي جاء بها هو الحاكم في كتابه «معرفة علوم الحديث» فهو الجدير بأن يُعطى وصف الأولية» (2/74). [tr.] ↩
ʿAllāmah al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī (392 to 463 AH) composed al-Kifāya fī ʿIlm al-Riwāya on the rules of narration, and al-Jāmiʿ li-Akhlāq al-Rāwī wa-Ādāb al-Sāmiʿ on its etiquette, and wrote separate treatises on most of the disciplines of ḥadīth criticism. Al-Ḥāfiẓ Abū Bakr ibn Nuqṭa said: "Every fair-minded observer knows that the muḥaddithūn after al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī are dependent upon his books," quoted by Ibn Ḥajar in Nuzhat al-Naẓar fī Tawḍīḥ Nukhbat al-Fikar (ed. ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ḍayf Allāh al-Ruḥaylī, third edition, 1443/2021), p. 43, where it reads: «كلُّ مَن أَنْصف عَلِم أنّ المحدِّثين بعد الخطيب عيالٌ على كُتُبِهِ». [tr.] ↩
Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ (476 to 544 AH), the author of the renowned al-Shifāʾ bi-Taʿrīf Ḥuqūq al-Muṣṭafā ﷺ. He named his treatise in muṣṭalaḥ: al-Ilmāʿ ilā Maʿrifat Uṣūl al-Riwāya wa-Taqyīd al-Samāʿ. [tr.] ↩
Dr Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Shāmī makes the composition of these first works a response to the Muʿtazila. His al-Naqḍ ʿalā Abī al-Qāsim al-Kaʿbī is a study of the Qabūl al-Akhbār wa-Maʿrifat al-Rijāl of the Muʿtazilī Abū al-Qāsim al-Kaʿbī al-Balkhī, who attacked the imāms of ḥadīth and their principles in it; al-Shāmī writes that "whoever reflects on what the scholars did will see plainly that most of the earliest works of ʿulūm al-ḥadīth were laid down in the first place to answer the doubts of the Muʿtazila and of the other sects opposed to the way of ahl al-ḥadīth and the Sunnah" «إن المتأمِّل في صنيع العلماء ليُدرِك بجلاءٍ أن جلَّ مؤلفات علوم الحديث الأولى وضعت بالأساس للرَّدِّ على شُبهات المعتزلة، وغيرهم من الفِرَق المخالفة لنهج أهل الحديث والسُّنَّة» (Majmaʿ al-Buḥūth al-Islāmiyya, al-Azhar, first edition, 1445/2024, 1/92). He reads ʿAllāmah al-Rāmahurmuzī's al-Muḥaddith al-Fāṣil as in effect a reply to al-Kaʿbī's book (1/87), and finds the same purpose in al-Ḥākim (1/89), in al-Khaṭīb, whose prefaces "answer the Muʿtazila plainly" and may have al-Kaʿbī particularly in view since his views had spread in Baghdad (1/89), and in Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ's al-Ilmāʿ (1/91). [tr.] ↩
The words are Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar's, at the close of his survey of the works composed in this discipline in Nuzhat al-Naẓar fī Tawḍīḥ Nukhbat al-Fikar, the work cited elsewhere in this book as Sharḥ Nukhbat al-Fikr: ed. ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ḍayf Allāh al-Ruḥaylī, third edition, 1443/2021, p. 46. ʿAllāmah al-Suyūṭī quotes the same survey in the introduction to Tadrīb al-Rāwī. [tr.] ↩
ʿAllāmah al-Suyūṭī's words are in his Itmām al-Dirāya li-Qurrāʾ al-Niqāya, in the chapter on ʿilm al-ḥadīth: ed. Ibrāhīm al-ʿAjūz, Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, first edition, 1405/1985, p. 47. [tr.] ↩
Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Maḥmūd ibn Aḥmad ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī al-Shāfiʿī (773 to 852 AH), more commonly known as Ibn Ḥajar, Qāḍī al-Quḍāt and Amīr al-Muʾminīn fī al-Ḥadīth. [tr.] ↩
Kamāl al-Dīn al-Shumunnī (766 to 821 AH) commented on the Nukhba before Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar himself did. ʿAllāmah al-Sakhāwī reports in al-Jawāhir wa al-Durar (ed. Ibrāhīm Bājis, Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 1419/1999), 2/678, that Ibn Ḥajar finished his own commentary on 1 Dhū al-Ḥijjah 818 while al-Shumunnī had finished his, Natījat al-Naẓar fī Nukhbat al-Fikar, in Ramadan 817, that al-Shumunnī's is the larger of the two, and that by the words of his preface, "the master of the house knows best what is in it" «صاحب البيت أدرى بالذي فيه», Ibn Ḥajar was pointing to him; al-Shumunnī also versified the Nukhba. Al-Qāsim ibn Quṭlūbughā (802 to 879 AH), a Ḥanafī of Cairo, was one of Ibn Ḥajar's students, and calls him "our shaykh" in a passage al-Sakhāwī quotes at 1/319 of the same work; Ibn Ḥajar's will, printed at 3/1204, names him among the students of ḥadīth. His contribution here, al-Qawl al-Mubtakar, is printed on the margin of Nuzhat al-Naẓar. The last two names belong to a different book: Wajīh al-Dīn al-Gujarātī and ʿAlī al-Qārī (d. 1014 AH), the author of Mirqāt al-Mafātīḥ on the Mishkāt, commented not on the Nukhba but on Ibn Ḥajar's own Nuzhat al-Naẓar, al-Qārī drawing on al-Gujarātī. The editors of al-Gujarātī's commentary (Raebareli, 1427) record that it had been printed once, in an old lithograph, and then passed into obscurity, and it is their biography that dates his death to 29 Muharram 998. [tr.] ↩
Drawn from Shaykh ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Abū Ghuddah's introduction to his edition of Ibn al-Ḥanbalī's Qafw al-Athar fī Ṣafw ʿUlūm al-Athar. [tr.] ↩
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.
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.
Al-shādhdh is what a single narrator transmits alone, raising doubt in the mind of the critic; this is also al-munkar, and the muḥaddithūn treat the two as one.
