al-Mujam al-Kabir lil-Tabarani min j 21
- Author died
- 360 AH
- Editions
- A team of researchers
al-Mujam al-Kabir lil-Tabarani min j 21 (A Fragment of Volume 21 of al-Mu'jam al-Kabir) is a surviving section of the major hadith compendium al-Mu'jam al-Kabir by al-Tabarani (260–360 AH / 873–971 CE), comprising an extant portion of the musnad of the Companion al-Nu'man ibn Bashir (d. 64 AH / 684 CE).
Background and Rediscovery
When Hamdi ibn 'Abd al-Majid al-Salafi originally edited and published al-Mu'jam al-Kabir in twenty-five volumes, several volumes remained unlocated despite extensive searching, specifically volumes 13, 14, 15, 16, and 21. Al-Salafi later discovered a manuscript containing missing portions, including a piece of Volume 21. He provided this manuscript piece to a team of researchers supervised by Sa'd ibn 'Abd Allah al-Humayd and Khalid ibn 'Abd al-Rahman al-Juraysi, who edited and published it.
Manuscript Source
The edition is based on a single manuscript volume preserved in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris under shelfmark no. 2011. The manuscript's title page identifies it as the fourth part of al-Mu'jam al-Kabir by al-Tabarani. The codex consists of 337 folios, with two pages per folio and twenty-nine lines per page, transcribed in a legible Naskh script by Abu Bakr ibn 'Ali al-Ansari al-Bahnasi al-Shafi'i. The copyist completed the transcription on the morning of Monday, 14 Muharram 728 AH, and the volume concludes with partially damaged certificates of audition (sama'at).
Contents
The Paris manuscript begins with text corresponding to the surviving section of Volume 13 (containing the remainder of the narrations of 'Abd Allah ibn 'Amr ibn al-'As, followed by 'Abd Allah ibn Ja'far ibn Abi Talib, and part of 'Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr). A physical lacuna follows, in which the remainder of Ibn al-Zubayr's narrations and the opening of al-Nu'man ibn Bashir's musnad are lost.
The published text of Volume 21 occupies seventeen folios of the Paris manuscript (folios 20b to 36a). It opens mid-text with a narration whose transmission chain was lost in the lacuna while its text survived: أَكُلَّ بَنِيكَ نَحَلْتَهُ ("Did you give a gift to all your sons?"). The text then gathers al-Nu'man ibn Bashir's hadiths organized by the successors who transmitted from him, including:
- Humayd ibn 'Abd al-Rahman and Muhammad ibn al-Nu'man
- 'Ubayd Allah ibn 'Abd Allah ibn 'Utbah ibn Mas'ud
- Amir al-Shabi, covering well-known narrations such as الْحَلَالُ بَيِّنٌ، وَالْحَرَامُ بَيِّنٌ ("The lawful is clear, and the unlawful is clear"), the parable of the one who upholds the limits of Allah, and the parable of believers in their mutual mercy
- Khaythama ibn 'Abd al-Rahman, al-'Ayzār ibn Hurayth, Salim ibn Abi al-Ja'd, Simak ibn Harb, 'Abd al-Malik ibn 'Umayr, Abu Ishaq al-Sabi'i, Habib ibn Salim, Abu Qilabah al-Jarmi, and Tawus, among others.
The musnad of al-Nu'man ibn Bashir concludes on folio 36a, immediately followed by the musnad of Wa'il ibn Hujr, which corresponds to the beginning of Volume 22 in al-Salafi's original printed edition.
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