al-Ihsan fi Taqrib Sahih Ibn Hibban
- Author died
- 739 AH
- Editions
- Mu’assasat al-Risālah
al-Ihsan fi Taqrib Sahih Ibn Hibban (al-Iḥsān fī Taqrīb Ṣaḥīḥ Ibn Ḥibbān, "The Benefaction in Bringing Near the Sahih of Ibn Hibban") is a rearranged edition of the hadith collection Sahih Ibn Hibban, organized by the Hanafi jurist and traditionist al-Amir Ibn Balban al-Farisi (d. 739 AH / 1338 CE) .
Background and Purpose
The original collection by Abu Hatim Ibn Hibban al-Busti (d. 354 AH), titled al-Musnad al-Sahih 'ala al-Taqasim wa-al-Anwa', followed a novel organizational scheme divided into five overarching categories (commands, prohibitions, informative reports, permissible matters, and specific actions of the Prophet ﷺ), subdivided into hundreds of individual types . Because it was neither arranged along standard topical legal chapters (abwab) nor by narrators' names (masanid), locating specific traditions within it proved difficult, leading many scholars to neglect the original text .
Roughly 385 years after Ibn Hibban's death, al-Amir 'Ala' al-Din Abu al-Hasan 'Ali ibn Balban ibn 'Abd Allah al-Farisi (who died in Cairo in 739 AH) restructured the collection . Ibn Balban noted in his introduction that despite the immense value of Ibn Hibban's work, its intricate structure had hindered scholars from benefiting from its contents; he therefore set out to rearrange the hadiths systematically by subject matter to facilitate their retrieval .
Structure and Method
Ibn Balban redistributed the entirety of Ibn Hibban's hadiths into conventional thematic juristic books and chapters (abwab fiqhiyya), following the layout standard in classical sunan works . While retaining Ibn Hibban's chains of transmission, texts, and scholarly commentary, he relocated each report under its relevant legal topic . The collection contains around 7,500 hadiths, numbered at 7,491 in modern printings .
Reception, Editions, and Related Works
Following its compilation, Ibn Balban's arrangement became the standard medium through which Sahih Ibn Hibban was studied, circulated, and cited . The hadiths of Ibn Hibban's collection were also utilized in other specialized works: Ibn al-Mulaqqin (d. 804 AH) summarized it, Abu al-Fadl al-Iraqi (d. 806 AH) indexed its narrators and text segments (atraf), and Nur al-Din al-Haythami (d. 807 AH) extracted its extra narrations beyond the two Sahihs in Mawarid al-Zam'an fi Zawa'id Ibn Hibban .
In the modern period, several scholarly editions and studies of al-Ihsan appeared:
- Ahmad Muhammad Shakir began editing the work and published its first volume in Egypt in 1952 before his death in 1958 .
- Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut completed a comprehensive critical edition with extensive hadith verification, published by Mu'assasat al-Risalah in Beirut in 18 volumes (17 text volumes and one index volume) in 1408 AH / 1988 CE .
- Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani evaluated the authenticity of its narrations in his 12-volume study al-Ta'liqat al-Hisan 'ala Sahih Ibn Hibban, published by Dar Bawazir .
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