al-Mawduat lil-Saghani
- Author died
- 650 AH
- Editions
- Dār al-Maʼmūn lil-Turāth
al-Mawduat (The Fabrications), also known as Mawduat al-Saghani, is a hadith treatise compiled by the Hanafi jurist and lexicographer Abu al-Fada'il al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Saghani (d. 650 AH / 1252 CE) to identify and classify fabricated hadiths falsely ascribed to the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.
Background and Purpose
In his opening prologue, al-Saghani writes that he was prompted to compile the work after witnessing the proliferation of forged hadiths in his era. He observed that popular storytellers (quṣṣāṣ) propagated such narrations from pulpits and in public assemblies, while scholars and ascetics cited them in colleges (madāris) and Sufi hospices (khawāniq), driven by widespread ignorance of the prophetic sunnah and a scarcity of qualified hadith specialists. He cited prophetic warnings against narrating attributed statements known to be false in order to caution scholars against uncritically transmitting fabricated reports found in earlier works.
Scope and Contents
The work gathers numerous circulated narrations and delivers critical judgments confirming their forged (mawḍūʿ) character. In addition to individual traditions, al-Saghani identifies entire corpuses and compilations whose contents he designates as fabrications. Among these are:
- al-Arbaʿūn al-Wadʿāniyyah, the forty-hadith collection attributed to Ibn Wadʿān, beginning with the report on death and concluding with the narration concerning the angel at the door.
- The spurious testaments attributed to Ali ibn Abi Talib (waṣāyā ʿAlī), excluding the introductory narration comparing Ali's rank to Aaron.
- Faḍl al-ʿUlamāʾ (The Merit of Scholars), attributed to the traditionist Sharaf al-Balkhī.
Reception and Scholarly Criticism
The treatise achieved wide circulation across Islamic regions as a concise reference on forged traditions. Later hadith authorities, including Muhammad ibn Ja'far al-Kattani and Muhammad Tahir al-Fatani, noted that al-Saghani was among the strict traditionists (al-mushaddidūn) in hadith criticism, placing him in the same bracket as Ibn al-Jawzi for declaring narrations fabricated when they were merely weak (ḍaʿīf) or supported by alternative transmission routes.
Several later scholars composed rebuttals or tracked his specific judgments:
- Zayn al-Din al-'Iraqi authored a dedicated tract and addressed al-Saghani's rulings across his dictation sessions (amālī), demonstrating that multiple narrations deemed forged by al-Saghani reached the rank of good (ḥasan) or weak rather than wholly fabricated.
- Mulla 'Ali al-Qari systematically examined al-Saghani’s declarations of fabrication in his own compilations on forged reports, frequently re-evaluating his claims where hadith narrators were merely graded as weak without explicit accusation of mendacity.
Editions
The text has been published in several modern editions, including:
- An edition edited by Najm ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Khalaf (published in 1401 AH / 1980 CE by Dār Nāfiʿ).
- An edition edited by Abū al-Fidāʾ ʿAbd Allāh al-Qāḍī, published together with al-Saghani's related treatise al-Durr al-Multaqat (published in 1405 AH / 1985 CE by Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyyah, Beirut).
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