Al-Lulu wal-Marjan fima اتفق عليه al-Shaykhan
- Author died
- 1388 AH
- Editions
- Dār Iḥyāʼ al-Kutub al-ʻArabīyah - Muḥammad al-Ḥalabī
Al-Lu'lu' wal-Marjan fima Ittafaqa 'Alayhi al-Shaykhan (The Pearls and Corals on What the Two Masters Agreed Upon) is a modern hadith compilation by the Egyptian scholar and indexer Muhammad Fu'ad 'Abd al-Baqi (1299–1388 AH / 1882–1968 CE), bringing together the prophetic traditions jointly transmitted by al-Bukhari and Muslim in their respective Sahih collections.
Background and Composition
The compilation was conceived at the suggestion of Muhammad al-Halabi, director of the Cairo publishing house Dar Ihya' al-Kutub al-'Arabiyyah, who requested that 'Abd al-Baqi compile the agreed-upon (muttafaq 'alayh) hadiths and present the specific text from Sahih al-Bukhari that most closely matched the wording transmitted by Muslim. 'Abd al-Baqi noted that satisfying this condition involved considerable difficulty, as earlier scholars had not restricted themselves to such precise textual matching; Ibn Hajar al-'Asqalani, for instance, defined mutual agreement simply as sharing the same companion narrator for the core narration, even if variations occurred in specific phrasings. To navigate this, 'Abd al-Baqi drew upon two of his own reference projects: his concordance Qurrat al-'Aynayn bi-Atraf al-Sahihayn to identify and enumerate the agreed-upon traditions, and his manuscript work Jami' Masanid Sahih al-Bukhari to pinpoint the closest corresponding texts within al-Bukhari's corpus.
Methodology and Structure
'Abd al-Baqi structured the work according to the thematic books and chapters of Sahih Muslim, adopting its arrangement because Muslim gathered all transmission paths, textual additions, and variations of a given topic into a single place. He intentionally avoided following the layout of Sahih al-Bukhari, observing that al-Bukhari frequently dispersed parts of a single narration across various topical headings to derive jurisprudential rulings, which sometimes caused scholars to overlook narrations located outside their expected chapters.
Under each entry, 'Abd al-Baqi recorded the text of the hadith as found in Sahih al-Bukhari, followed by a citation identifying its location in al-Bukhari by book title, chapter heading, and reference number. In his introduction, 'Abd al-Baqi stated that the book contained 2,006 hadiths, attributing the variation between his total and the 1,368 hadiths in Muhammad Habib Allah al-Shinqiti's Zad al-Muslim to differing treatments of verbal, action-based, and tacitly approved traditions; in printed editions, the sequential numbering concludes at 1,906 hadiths.
Scholarly Reception
The work is widely utilized as a standard compilation of mutually agreed-upon hadiths, which represent the highest tier of authenticity in traditional hadith ranking. 'Abd al-Muhsin al-'Abbad described it as the finest work compiled on the subject, and 'Abd al-Karim al-Khudayr commended its arrangement as superior to older alphabetical arrangements like Zad al-Muslim. Regarding the author's background, Ibrahim al-Lahim remarked that while 'Abd al-Baqi was not a specialized hadith scholar or theorist, his editorial and indexing work rendered substantial service to modern hadith scholarship.
Publication History
The work was first published in Cairo by Dar Ihya' al-Kutub al-'Arabiyyah ('Isa al-Babi al-Halabi) between 1369 and 1370 AH in three volumes. It was later reissued and photographically reprinted by multiple publishers, including a facsimile edition by Dar al-Hadith in Cairo (1407 AH / 1986 CE, distributed by Dar al-Rayyan) retaining the original pagination and numbering, as well as reprints by Dar Ihya' al-Turath al-'Arabi in Beirut.
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