al-Baith al-Hathith ila Ikhtisar Ulum al-Hadith
- Author died
- 774 AH
- Editions
- Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyyah
al-Baith al-Hathith ila Ikhtisar Ulum al-Hadith (commonly known as Ikhtisar Ulum al-Hadith) is a handbook on hadith terminology and methodology by the Damascene historian and Shafi'i jurist Ibn Kathir (701–774 AH / 1301–1373 CE) . It was written as an abridgment and critical refinement of Ibn al-Salah's foundational work Ma'rifat Anwa' Ilm al-Hadith (d. 643 AH) .
Composition and Scope
Ibn Kathir undertook the work to present the essential principles of hadith criticism in an accessible, structured format . While Ibn al-Salah had divided the sciences of hadith into sixty-five distinct categories following al-Hakim al-Naysaburi, Ibn Kathir noted that several related categories could be integrated and reordered for greater coherence and concision . In addition to condensing Ibn al-Salah’s text, Ibn Kathir enriched the work with points extracted from al-Bayhaqi's al-Madkhal ila Kitab al-Sunan, a book he had also abridged .
Throughout the text, Ibn Kathir incorporates independent assessments and critical comments beginning with "I say" (qultu) . He explicitly cites judgments and teachings from his own masters, including Jamal al-Din al-Mizzi and Taqi al-Din Ibn Taymiyyah, and cross-references his own biographical dictionary on narrators, al-Takmil fi Ma'rifat al-Thiqat wa-al-Du'afa' wa-al-Majahil, across three specific categories (types 45, 56, and 60) .
Title and Nomenclature
In primary manuscript sources and contemporaneous biographical notices, the book is titled Ikhtisar Ulum al-Hadith or Mukhtasar Ulum al-Hadith . The expanded, rhyming title containing the phrase al-Ba'ith al-Hathith ("The Prompt Impetus") appears in later literature, such as Siddiq Hasan Khan's (d. 1307 AH) Abjad al-Ulum .
When the book was first printed at al-Matba'a al-Majdiyya in Mecca, its editor Muhammad Abd al-Razzaq Hamza styled it as Ikhtisar Ulum al-Hadith aw al-Ba'ith al-Hathith ila Ma'rifat Ulum al-Hadith (also given as al-Ba'ith al-Hathith fi Ikhtisar Ulum al-Hadith) to align with the classical convention of rhymed prose (saj') . Consequently, the work became widely known simply as al-Ba'ith al-Hathith among students of hadith, a attribution also noted by Carl Brockelmann in his survey of Arabic literature .
Commentary and Modern Reception
In the twentieth century, a curriculum committee headed by the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, Muhammad Mustafa al-Maraghi, selected Ibn Kathir's text as a primary curriculum manual for the Faculty of Usul al-Din and selected portions for the Faculty of Sharia . Due to the scarcity of printed copies at the time, the Egyptian scholar Ahmad Shakir (1309–1377 AH) was encouraged to edit the text and append an analytical commentary explaining its discussions and clarifying intricate points of terminology .
In the introduction to his second edition (1370 AH / 1951 CE), Shakir clarified that Ibn Kathir’s original work was named Ikhtisar Ulum al-Hadith . To reconcile the author's original title with the widespread popularity of the title introduced in Hamza's edition, Shakir formally assigned the name al-Ba'ith al-Hathith specifically to his own commentary, titling the combined publication al-Ba'ith al-Hathith Sharh Ikhtisar Ulum al-Hadith . The text with Shakir's commentary has seen numerous subsequent printings, including editions featuring further annotations by Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani and Ali Hasan al-Halabi .
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