al-Muntaqa - Ibn al-Jarud - Qism min Awwalihi
- Author died
- 307 AH
- Editions
- Ahmad Muhammad Muhammad Basyuni
al-Muntaqā min al-Sunan al-Musnadah (The Selection from the Supported Prophetic Traditions) is a specialized compendium of legal hadiths compiled by the Persian hadith scholar Abu Muhammad Abd Allah ibn Ali ibn al-Jarud al-Nisaburi (d. 307 AH / 919 CE; also reported as 306 AH) .
Composition and Scope
Ibn al-Jarud is reported to have spent seven years sifting through prophetic traditions to compile the work . The book functions essentially as an extraction (mustakhraj) alongside Sahih Ibn Khuzaymah, restricted to its foundational narrations . Ibn al-Jarud narrated its material through ninety-nine direct teachers (shuyūkh) .
Historical and modern counts differ on the total number of traditions in the book:
- Muhammad ibn Ja'far al-Kattani recorded that it contains approximately 800 hadiths .
- Modern enumerations by Ahmad al-Ghamidi, Muqbil al-Harbi, and the edition of Abd Allah Hashim al-Yamani place the count at 1,114 hadiths across 162 chapters .
- The numbering in the edition prepared by Abu Ishaq al-Huwayni counts 1,193 hadiths .
The vast majority of the narrations in al-Muntaqā correspond with the traditions found in the Sahihayn of al-Bukhari and Muslim, with only a small fraction not recorded by either .
Structure
The book is organized according to standard jurisprudence (fiqh) subjects, though Ibn al-Jarud kept chapter titles explicit and concise . It opens with acts of worship (ʿibādāt), beginning with ritual purification (Ṭahārah), followed by prayer (Ṣalāh), zakah, fasting (Ṣiyām), and pilgrimage (Ḥajj), concluding the worship section with funerals (Janāʾiz) .
The section on transactions (muʿāmalāt) opens with sales and trade (Buyūʿ), followed by marriage (Nikāḥ) and divorce (Ṭalāq) . The subsequent topical chapters address indemnities (Diyāt), penal codes (Ḥudūd), beverages and food, sacrificial offerings, hunting and slaughter, vows and oaths, inheritance (Farāʾiḍ), bequests, manumission, gifts (Hibāt), and judicial verdicts (Aḥkām) . The work concludes with the book of jihad, opening with migration (Hijrah) and ending with the distribution of war spoils (Fayʾ) .
Reception and Scholarly Standing
al-Muntaqā earned high standing among hadith critics for the soundness of its chains of transmission:
- Ibn Hazm placed it in Marātib al-Diyānah among the foremost works deserving veneration, alongside the Ṣaḥīḥayn and the work of Sa'id ibn al-Sakan .
- Ibn Abd al-Barr and other scholars referred to it directly as a ṣaḥīḥ work .
- Shams al-Din al-Dhahabi stated that its narrations never fall below the level of ḥasan (good), except rarely in contested hadiths subject to scholarly disagreement .
- Ibn Abd al-Hadi described its chains as remarkably clean (naẓīf al-asānīd) .
- Later scholars—including Ibn Daqiq al-Id, Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, and Muhammad al-Shawkani—regularly treated Ibn al-Jarud's inclusion of a narration as an implicit authentication (taṣḥīḥ) .
- Conversely, Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti remarked in his Alfiyyah that those who labeled al-Muntaqā entirely as ṣaḥīḥ were being lenient .
Transmissions, Commentaries, and Editions
The primary transmission of the book was carried into al-Andalus via figures such as al-Hasan ibn Yahya al-Qulzumi, al-Hasan ibn Abd Allah al-Zubaydi, and Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Mu'min . Having missed studying directly with Ibn al-Jarud prior to his death, the Andalusian scholar Qasim ibn Asbagh (d. 340 AH) authored an equivalent collection arranged on the chapters of al-Muntaqā using hadiths from his own teachers .
Among commentaries and derivative works:
- An early commentary was written by Abu Umar Yusuf ibn Abd Allah al-Andalusi titled al-Murtaḍā fī Sharḥ al-Muntaqā (also cited as al-Murtaqā fī Sharḥ al-Muntaqā by Abu Amr al-Andalusi) .
- Ibn Qutlubugha produced a selection of its elevated chains (ʿawālī) .
- Ibn Hajar cataloged its narrative pathways within his cross-referencing work Itḥāf al-Maharah .
The text was printed in Hyderabad (1306 AH) with notes by Muhammad Abd al-Jalil al-Nu'mani, in Cairo (1382 AH) edited by Abd Allah Hashim Yamani with his annotation Taysīr al-Fattāḥ al-Wadūd, and subsequently by Abu Ishaq al-Huwayni (Cairo, 1428 AH), among other editions . Academic editions and studies have also been dedicated to partial sections of the text, such as its opening portions through the book of purification .
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