al-Muhadhdhab fi Ikhtisar al-Sunan al-Kabir
- Author died
- 748 AH
- Editions
- دار الوطن للنشر
al-Muhadhdhab fi Ikhtisar al-Sunan al-Kabir (The Refined Abridgment of the Great Sunan) is a hadith work by the Damascene traditionist and historian Shams al-Din al-Dhahabi (673–748 AH / 1274–1348 CE), in which he abridged and critically annotated al-Sunan al-Kabir by Abu Bakr al-Bayhaqi (384–458 AH / 994–1066 CE) .
Methodology and Scope
In his introduction, al-Dhahabi outlined his method of abridgment, clarifying that he did not shorten the hadith texts (matn) themselves, but rather abridged the chains of transmission (isnad), since it was the extensive chains that lengthened al-Bayhaqi's original compilation . He retained enough of each chain to establish the origin and source (makhraj) of the narration, omitting only the links that were already authentically established up to that named point . He preserved the full text of the narrations with the exception of a few repetitive passages occurring across closely adjacent chapter headings, where he provided only relevant portions of the text .
Al-Dhahabi supplemented the text with his own critical assessment of numerous chains of transmission according to his scholarly judgment (ijtihad), prefacing his independent critiques and legal or hadith-related remarks with the phrase "I say" (قلت) to distinguish them from al-Bayhaqi's words . He also initiated a system of sigla referencing the Six Books using standard single-letter symbols (such as khāʾ for al-Bukhari, mīm for Muslim, dāl for Abu Dawud, tāʾ for al-Tirmidhi, sīn for al-Nasa'i, and qāf for Ibn Majah) . He noted that he did not complete this indexing, expressing his hope to collate it against the cross-referencing work (al-Atraf) of his teacher Abu al-Hajjaj al-Mizzi if time allowed . For narrations outside the Six Books, he preserved their chains and sources to allow students to evaluate them against biographical evaluation (al-jarh wa-l-ta'dil) literature, categorizing narrators broadly into trustworthy and accepted, weakened and unauthoritative, or unknown .
Structure and Manuscripts
In its original handwritten form, each manuscript volume corresponded to approximately two volumes of al-Bayhaqi's ten-volume original and was divided into roughly forty sub-parts (ajza'), numbered at the top of each page . The text begins with the Book of Purification (Kitab al-Tahara) .
A primary holograph manuscript penned in al-Dhahabi's own hand, completed in 726 AH, is preserved at the Egyptian National Library (Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyya, MS 467 Hadith) . It originally comprised five volumes, of which four survive (volumes 1, 3, 4, and 5; volume 2 is missing) . The covers and endpapers of these volumes bear an endowment (waqf) deed by Sultan al-Zahir Barquq for scholars and students residing in Cairo .
Reception and Print Editions
The work was recorded by numerous classical biographers and bibliographers, including al-Dhahabi's student Salah al-Din al-Safadi, Muhammad ibn Shakir al-Kutubi (who listed it in five volumes), Ibn al-Qadi, and Hajji Khalifa in Kashf al-Zunun . Taj al-Din al-Subki commended it in his Tabaqat al-Shafi'iyya al-Kubra, describing the abridgment as "good" (hasan), while Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani remarked in al-Durar al-Kamina that al-Dhahabi "abridged al-Bayhaqi's al-Sunan al-Kubra, refining it and excelling in it" .
A four-volume portion of the text was published in Cairo, edited by Hammad Ibrahim Ahmad and Muhammad Husayn al-'Uqabi . An edition prepared by Dar al-Mishkat li-l-Bahth al-'Ilmi under the supervision of Abu Tamim Yasir ibn Ibrahim was published by Dar al-Watan in Riyadh in 1422 AH / 2001 CE .
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