al-Ilal al-Kabir lil-Tirmidhi = Tartib Ilal al-Tirmidhi al-Kabir
- Author died
- 279 AH
- Editions
- ‘Ālam al-Kutub
al-Ilal al-Kabir (also known as al-Ilal al-Mufrad, and surviving in the arrangement titled Tartib Ilal al-Tirmidhi al-Kabir) is a collection of hadith criticism and evaluations of hidden defects (ilal) compiled by Abu Isa al-Tirmidhi (d. 279 AH / 892 CE) . Distinct from al-Tirmidhi's shorter treatise al-Ilal al-Saghir appended to his al-Jami', the work primarily records al-Tirmidhi's critical questions to senior traditionists, chief among them his teacher al-Bukhari, concerning problematic transmissions and narrators .
Arrangement and Structure
In its original composition by al-Tirmidhi, the contents of al-Ilal al-Kabir were not organized under legal chapter headings, but remained dispersed and unarranged . The text survived through the thematic reorganization carried out by the sixth-century Andalusian jurist and judge Abu Talib al-Qadi, who sought to facilitate reference to its hadiths by structuring it after the chapter scheme of al-Tirmidhi's al-Jami' .
Abu Talib distributed the reports across the corresponding major books of al-Jami'—such as ritual purity (Kitab al-Tahara) and prayer (Kitab al-Salat)—and placed individual narrations under their matching chapter headings (abwab) . He matched hadiths to chapters if they were cited identically in al-Jami', if al-Tirmidhi had referenced them through cross-references (wa-fi al-bab an fulan), or if their legal meaning coincided with that chapter . Wherever al-Ilal lacked material for a chapter or book found in al-Jami', the heading was omitted .
For reports in al-Ilal that had no equivalent in al-Jami', Abu Talib appended dedicated sections (fusul) to the ends of the relevant books, explicitly noting their absence from al-Jami' . Comments on narrators mentioned within a specific chain of transmission were kept alongside the narration itself, while biographical remarks concerning transmitters not attached to an individual hadith were grouped at the very end of the work in a concluding chapter titled Bab al-Jami' . Abu Talib preserved all textual material from al-Ilal, avoiding the omission of passages even when their content duplicated remarks in al-Jami' without addition .
Transmission, Manuscript, and Editions
Abu Talib al-Qadi transmitted the work on the authority of his teacher, the Andalusian traditionist Ibn Bashkuwal (d. 578 AH) . Prior to the discovery of its manuscript, modern scholars considered the work lost, knowing it only through extensive citations preserved in classical works such as al-Sunan al-Kubra by al-Bayhaqi, Tahdhib Sunan Abi Dawud by Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, the commentaries on al-Tirmidhi's al-Jami' by Ibn Sayyid al-Nas and Zayn al-Din al-Iraqi, al-Zayla'i's Nasb al-Rayah, Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani's al-Talkhis al-Habir, and Badr al-Din al-Ayni's Umdat al-Qari .
The arranged text was recovered from a unique manuscript preserved in Istanbul at the Ahmet III Library (MS 530) titled Kitab fihi Ilal al-Tirmidhi al-Kabir, rattabahu ala abwab al-Jami' Abu Talib al-Qadi . Copied in a clear Maghribi hand dating to the sixth century AH, the codex comprises 77 folios of 22 lines per page and contains marginal annotations .
The text has been published in modern editions, including:
- An edition edited by Hamza Dib Mustafa (Amman: Maktabat al-Aqsa, 1406 AH) .
- An edition edited by Subhi al-Samarra'i, Abu al-Ma'ati al-Nuri, and Mahmud Khalil al-Sa'idi (Beirut: Alam al-Kutub / Maktabat al-Nahda al-Arabiyya, 1409 AH) .
Answer updated