al-Izdihar fi ma aqadahu al-shuara min al-ahadith wal-athar
- Author died
- 911 AH
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- al-Izdihar fi ma aqadahu al-shuara min al-ahadith wal-athar
Al-Izdihar fi ma aqadahu al-shuara min al-ahadith wal-athar (The Blossoming: On What Poets Versified of Hadiths and Traditions) is a specialized literary and hadith treatise by the Egyptian scholar al-Jalal al-Suyuti (849–911 AH / 1445–1505 CE) collecting Arabic poetry that incorporates prophetic traditions and early narrations.
Purpose and Scope
Al-Suyuti arranged the work as a focused monograph (juz') compiling verses in which poets versified or adapted (‘aqd) hadiths of the Prophet ﷺ and early reports (athar). In the opening of the book, he outlines three primary scholarly benefits for assembling these materials:
- Serving as evidence for the widespread circulation and soundness of specific hadiths in the first generation of Islam (al-sadr al-awwal), a practice relied upon by several earlier hadith scholars.
- Providing suitable material for inclusion in hadith dictation assemblies (majalis al-imla').
- Supplying citations for rhetorical analysis within the discipline of badi‘, specifically illustrating the rhetorical devices of versification (al-‘aqd), borrowing (al-iqtibas), and stylistic harmony (al-insijam).
Method and Sources
The author structures the text by citing hadiths and traditions alongside the transmission paths or narrative contexts in which poets rendered their meanings into verse. Al-Suyuti derives these accounts from major classical compilations, including al-Mu‘afa ibn Zakariyya’s al-Jalis wal-Anis, al-Khatib al-Baghdadi’s Tarikh Baghdad and Kitab al-Bukhala', Ibn ‘Asakir’s Tarikh Dimashq, al-Bayhaqi’s Shu‘ab al-Iman, and Ibn al-Najjar’s biographical history.
The compilation includes verses attributed to poets and scholars across early Islamic history who rendered prophetic sayings into meter, such as Hassan ibn Thabit, Abu Nuwas, and Humayd ibn Thawr al-Hilali.
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