al-Mujam al-Kabir lil-Tabarani

al-Mu'jam al-Kabir (The Great Dictionary) is a comprehensive hadith compendium and biographical work on the Companions of the Prophet compiled by the hadith master Abu al-Qasim al-Tabarani (260–360 AH / 873–971 CE) Tadwin al-Sunna al-Nabawi…+1. It is the largest of al-Tabarani's three mu'jam works and stands among the most extensive source collections of prophetic traditions al-Arij fi Ilm Usul al-Ta…+1.

Scope and Structure

Unlike traditional hadith dictionaries that are arranged according to the compiler's own immediate teachers—such as al-Tabarani's al-Mu'jam al-Awsat and al-Mu'jam al-Saghir—al-Mu'jam al-Kabir is arranged by the earliest narrators, namely the Companions (al-Sahaba) al-Arij fi Ilm Usul al-Ta…+1. It includes approximately 1,600 male and female Companions arranged in alphabetical order Majallat al-Jami'a al-Isl…+1. Al-Tabarani departed from alphabetical ordering at the very beginning to place the Ten Promised Paradise (al-'Ashara al-Mubashsharun bi-l-Janna) first, stating that none should take precedence over them Tadwin al-Sunna al-Nabawi…+1.

The work served a dual purpose: gathering prophetic narrations with their chains of transmission (asānīd) and documenting biographical information regarding the Companions Majallat al-Jami'a al-Isl…+1. For each Companion, al-Tabarani typically recorded details concerning their lineage, physical descriptions, virtues, historical standing, and dates of death before introducing their transmitted hadiths under the heading "and among what he narrated" (wa-mimmā asnada) Majallat al-Jami'a al-Isl…+1. For those who possessed no direct narrations—such as those who died early or were martyred during the Prophet's lifetime—al-Tabarani recorded their biographies relying on accounts from biographical and military expedition literature (al-maghāzī) Majallat al-Jami'a al-Isl…+1. He also noted individuals whose status as Companions was disputed Majallat al-Jami'a al-Isl….

Method and Content

Al-Tabarani applied distinct criteria depending on the volume of each Companion's transmissions:

• For Companions who transmitted few hadiths (al-muqillūn), he sought to compile all of their known narrations Tadwin al-Sunna al-Nabawi…+1.
• For prolific narrators (al-mukthirūn), he recorded only selected traditions rather than their complete corpus Majallat al-Bayan+1. Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani and al-Suyuti noted that among the prolific narrators, al-Tabarani included substantial sections only for Abdullah ibn Abbas and Abdullah ibn Umar, while providing limited narrations for figures such as Anas ibn Malik, Jabir ibn Abd Allah, Abu Sa'id al-Khudri, and A'isha Majallat al-Bayan+1.
• The entire musnad of Abu Hurayra was omitted from the collection because al-Tabarani had compiled it into a separate, independent monograph Tadwin al-Sunna al-Nabawi…+1.

Within individual entries, al-Tabarani frequently organized narrations by topical legal chapters (al-abwāb al-fiqhiyya) and documented transmission variants (ikhtilāf al-ruwāh), as well as glossing rare or obscure vocabulary (gharīb) Majallat al-Jami'a al-Isl…+1.

Size and Reception

Classical bibliographers gave varying estimates of the total size of the original text. Ibn Mandah stated that the work comprised 200 parts (juz'), Shams al-Din al-Dhahabi described it as spanning eight volumes, Hajji Khalifa recorded 25,000 hadiths, and other reports transmitted by Ibn Dihya and Muhammad ibn Ja'far al-Kattani cited up to 60,000 traditions across twelve volumes Tadwin al-Sunna al-Nabawi…+2. Ibn Dihya evaluated it as the largest mu'jam in the world, noting that when hadith scholars use the term al-Mu'jam without qualification, they mean this work al-Risala al-Mustatrafa l….

Later scholars produced several derivative works based on al-Mu'jam al-Kabir:

• Ala' al-Din Ali ibn Balaban al-Farisi (d. 739 AH) rearranged the entire work according to thematic legal chapters al-Arij fi Ilm Usul al-Ta….
• Nur al-Din al-Haythami extracted its additional narrations (zawā'id) not found in the Six Books into al-Badr al-Munir fi Zawa'id al-Mu'jam al-Kabir, which he later incorporated into his broader compendium Majma' al-Zawa'id wa-Manba' al-Fawa'id upon the advice of his teacher Zayn al-Din al-Iraqi Tadwin al-Sunna al-Nabawi….

Editions and Surviving Manuscript Portions

The work was first published in Iraq edited by Hamdi Abd al-Majid al-Salafi in twenty-five numbered volumes based on a manuscript preserved at the Topkapi Palace Library in Istanbul Tadwin al-Sunna al-Nabawi…+2. This initial edition contained gaps where manuscripts were missing, specifically volumes 13, 14, 15, 16, and 21, yielding 21,547 numbered narrations (or approximately 22,021 in related counts) Tadwin al-Sunna al-Nabawi…+2.

A missing segment covering several Companions named Abdullah (including portions of the musnads of Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al-As, Abdullah ibn Ja'far, and others) was later discovered and published independently by al-Salafi in 1415 AH containing 475 hadiths, as well as in part by Tariq ibn Iwadullah (242 hadiths), and subsequently incorporated in later multi-volume completions Turuq al-Takhrij bi Hasab…+1.