al-Irshad fi Marifat Ulama al-Hadith lil-Khalili
- Author died
- 446 AH
- Editions
- Maktabat al-Rushd
al-Irshad fi Ma'rifat 'Ulama' al-Hadith (Guidance in Knowing the Scholars of Hadith) is a biographical dictionary of hadith transmitters and scholars compiled by the judge and hadith scholar Abu Ya'la al-Khalili (d. 446 AH / 1054 CE) .
Structure and Scope
The book opens with an introductory passage beginning with praise of God and remarks on legal and hadith knowledge . Al-Khalili arranged the biographical entries geographically according to cities and regions, tracing the transmitters and scholars who resided in or entered each territory down to his own generation . Alongside biographical notices, the work incorporates assessments of narrator reliability and deficiency (al-jarh wa al-ta'dil) as well as technical hadith methodology, such as al-Khalili's classification and appraisal of isolated narrations (al-afrad) . The work has also been referenced in biographical literature under variant titles, including al-Irshad fi Ma'rifat al-Muhaddithin and al-Irshad fi 'Ulama' al-Buldan .
Transmission and Reception
The book was dictated by al-Khalili and transmitted through his student Abu al-Fath Isma'il ibn 'Abd al-Jabbar al-Maki in Qazvin, through whom subsequent transmitters, including Abu Tahir al-Silafi, received the text . Shams al-Din al-Dhahabi noted that al-Khalili's high standing and mastery of hadith defects ('ilal) and transmitters are readily apparent from examining the book, while observing that it also contains numerous errors (awham jammah), as though written from memory . In the 9th century AH, the Hanafi scholar Qasim ibn Qutlubugha (d. 879 AH) reorganized the entries of the work into alphabetical order .
Editions
al-Irshad has been edited by Muhammad Sa'id 'Umar Idris and published in three volumes by Maktabat al-Rushd in Riyadh (1409 AH / 1989 CE) .
Answer updated