al-Arbaun min Masanid al-Mashayikh al-Ishrin lil-Qushayri
- Author died
- 600 AH
- Editions
- Aḍwāʾ al-Salaf
al-Arbaʿūn min Masānīd al-Mashāyikh al-ʿIshrīn (Arabic: الأربعون من مسانيد المشايخ العشرين, lit. 'The Forty [Hadiths] from the Musnads of Twenty Shaykhs'), fully titled al-Arbaʿūn min Masānīd al-Mashāyikh al-ʿIshrīn ʿan al-Aṣḥāb al-Arbaʿīn, is a hadith compilation compiled by the Shafi'i traditionist Abū Saʿd ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar ibn Aḥmad Ibn al-Ṣaffār al-Naysābūrī (508–600 AH / 1114–1203 CE) .
Attribution and Author
The compilation is often associated with the name al-Qushayrī because its author was the maternal grandson (sibṭ) of the Nishapuri scholar Abū Naṣr ʿAbd al-Raḥīm ibn ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī . Abū Saʿd al-Ṣaffār was the last surviving student to transmit hadith directly from his grandfather Abū Naṣr . On some manuscripts and printed editions, the compiler's lineage was attributed as "Abū Saʿd ʿAbd Allāh ibn [Abī Ḥafṣ] ʿUmar ibn Abī Naṣr al-Qushayrī", though bio-bibliographical sources clarify his direct paternal descent from the Ibn al-Ṣaffār family of Nishapur .
Structure and Content
Belonging to the forty-hadith (arbaʿīniyyāt) genre, the work is arranged systematically around its transmission chains (masānīd) . The author gathered forty prophetic traditions by selecting two narrations through each of twenty distinct teachers (mashāyikh), with the chains terminating in forty different Companions (aṣḥāb) of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ .
The first teacher featured in the collection is his maternal grandfather Abū Naṣr al-Qushayrī . Other prominent authorities through whom he transmitted hadiths in the work include Muḥammad ibn al-Faḍl al-Farāwī, Zāhir ibn Ṭāhir al-Shaḥḥāmī, ʿAbd al-Ghāfir ibn Ismāʿīl al-Fārisī, ʿAbd al-Jabbār ibn Muḥammad al-Khuwārī, and his own father, ʿUmar ibn Aḥmad al-Ṣaffār .
Transmission and Reception
The book was preserved and transmitted through classical chains of audition. The author granted permission to transmit his works to later scholars, including Ibn al-Bukhārī (Fakhr al-Dīn ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad) and Shams al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī ʿUmar . Later bibliographers and hadith scholars, such as Muḥammad ibn Sulaymān al-Rūdānī in his transmission index Ṣilat al-khalaf bi-mawṣūl al-salaf ("Linking Successors with the Inherited Chains of the Predecessors"), recorded unbroken isnads tracing back directly to Abū Saʿd al-Ṣaffār for this text .
Manuscripts and Editions
Manuscript copies of the collection are preserved in major repositories, including the al-Zahiriyya Library in Damascus (registered within composite volume Majmūʿ 94, folios 173–187, bearing a certificate of audition dated 586 AH) and copied holdings in Kuwait and Mecca .
The text has been edited and published by Badr ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Badr, appearing in prints by Maktabat al-Muʿallā in Kuwait and later by Dār Aḍwāʾ al-Salaf in Riyadh .
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