al-Arbaun al-Buldaniyya li-Abi Tahir
- Author died
- 576 AH
- Editions
- Maktabat Dār al-Bayrūtī
al-Arbaʿūn al-Buldāniyya (Arabic: الأربعون البلدانية), formally titled by its author as Kitāb al-Arbaʿīn al-mustaghnī bi-taʿyīn mā fīhi ʿan al-muʿīn, is a forty-hadith collection compiled by the hadith scholar Abu Tahir al-Silafi (d. 576 AH / 1180 CE) . The work gathers forty prophetic traditions narrated through forty different teachers across forty different towns and cities .
Background and Composition
In his introduction to the work, al-Silafi notes that hadith scholars had long devoted attention to compiling forty-hadith collections (al-arbaʿīniyyāt), recording that he had personally acquired over seventy such compilations . Following repeated requests from his students and companions to compile a collection of forty hadiths for them, he assembled this text, which occupies roughly two quires (kurrāsayn) in length .
The collection was designed to reflect the breadth of al-Silafi's travels in search of hadith . Regarding its compilation, al-Silafi stated that he believed no author prior to him had produced an equivalent work, remarking that compiling such a book was possible only for someone who had engaged in extensive travel between cities during the prime of youth at the outset of seeking hadith, indifferent to dying in foreign lands or leaving behind family and wealth .
Structure and Arrangement
The work contains forty hadiths, each transmitted from a distinct shaykh in a distinct city . Al-Silafi opened the compilation with narrations obtained in the two holy sanctuaries, Mecca and Medina, explaining that beginning with them provided the finest embellishment, after which he organized the remaining locations according to his preferred sequence .
Reception and Influence
Salah al-Din al-Ala'i described the book as the first forty-hadith work compiled specifically with mutually distinct teachers and cities (mutabāyin al-shuyūkh wa-al-bilād), noting that subsequent scholars followed al-Silafi's model . Among them was his contemporary Ibn Asakir (d. 571 AH / 1176 CE), who adopted the same structural approach in his own al-Arbaʿūn al-Buldāniyya, adding the condition of narrating from forty different Companions .
Al-Sakhawi observed that the earliest pioneer of city-based compilations (al-buldāniyyāt) known to him was Abu Bakr ʿAtiq ibn ʿAli al-Samantari al-Siqilli (d. 464 AH), followed by al-Silafi, Ibn Asakir, Abu Yaʿqub Yusuf ibn Ahmad al-Shirazi, and later Abd al-Qadir al-Ruhawi (d. 612 AH) in his al-Arbaʿīn al-mutabayinat al-isnad wa-al-buldan . Later traditionists who also produced works in the buldāniyya format modeled on this genre include Sharaf al-Din al-Wani (d. 749 AH) and Abu al-Abbas Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn al-Zahiri al-Halabi (d. 696 AH) .
Modern Editions
The work has been edited and published in modern print, including an edition prepared by Abd Allah Rabih (published by Dar al-Bayruti, Damascus, 1412 AH / 1991 CE) and an edition edited by Masʿad al-Saʿdani (published by Adwaʾ al-Salaf, Riyadh) .
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