Khalil al-Arabi
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Abu Abd Allah Khalil ibn Muhammad al-Arabi (fl. 1414–1429 AH / 1994–2008 CE) is a contemporary Egyptian hadith specialist and researcher in biographical evaluation (rijal), best known for his biographical reference work al-Fara'id 'ala Majma' al-Zawa'id.
Name and scholarly activities
His full name is Abu Abd Allah Khalil ibn Muhammad ibn Awad Allah al-Mutayri al-Arabi, and he is variously identified in his works and modern bibliographical citations as Khalil ibn Muhammad al-Arabi or Khalil ibn Awad Allah al-Mutayri al-Arabi. Active in Cairo, he worked on manuscript verification and critical editing, completing an edition of Najm al-Din al-Ghazzi's Itqan ma yahsun min al-akhbar al-da'irah 'ala al-alsun ("Mastery of What is Sound Among Circulating Reports") in Ramadan 1414 AH / 1994 CE. He also devoted special attention to the corpus of al-Dhahabi, compiling a two-volume work gathering al-Dhahabi's critical assessments regarding transmitter evaluation (al-jarh wa-l-ta'dil).
Hadith criticism and reception
Al-Arabi's principal specialized work in transmitter criticism is al-Fara'id 'ala Majma' al-Zawa'id: Tarjamat al-Ruwat alladhin lam ya'rifhum al-Hafiz al-Haythami ("The Rare Gems on Majma' al-Zawa'id: Biographies of Transmitters Whom al-Hafiz al-Haythami Did Not Recognize"). In this work, he identified and documented the obscure narrators in Nur al-Din al-Haythami's Majma' al-Zawa'id whose identities al-Haythami had declared unknown or was unable to trace, cross-referencing their profiles against early biographical collections such as those of al-Bukhari, Ibn Abi Hatim, and Ibn Hibban.
The work was first published around 1421 AH / 2000 CE in Cairo and Riyadh, followed by a revised edition published in Doha, Qatar in 1429 AH / 2008 CE. Contemporary hadith scholars, including Muhammad Amr ibn Abd al-Latif, consulted and cited his determinations when rectifying missed identifications and textual corruptions in al-Haythami's judgments on transmitters.
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List of Works
This specialized biographical and hadith-criticism reference work identifies and documents the hadith transmitters whom Nur al-Din al-Haythami declared unknown or could not trace in his collection Majma al-Zawaid wa-Manba al-Fawaid.