al-Muwafaqat al-Awali li al-Diya al-Maqdisi_2
- Author died
- 643 AH
- Editions
- Manuscript published in the free Jawāmiʿ al-Kalim program affiliated with Islamweb
al-Muwafaqat al-Awali (The Elevated Agreements in Transmission) is a specialized hadith tract compiled by the Hanbali scholar and traditionist Diya al-Din al-Maqdisi (569–643 AH / 1173–1245 CE) to document narrations received through highly elevated chains of transmission (asānīd ‘āliyah) .
Subject and Content
In hadith terminology, a muwāfaqa occurs when a compiler narrates a prophetic report found in the canonical collections through his own independent line of transmission that connects directly to a primary collector's shaykh, achieving an elevated transmission route . In this work—also known as Muwāfaqāt al-A’immah al-Khamsah (The Agreements of the Five Imams)—al-Maqdisi assembled narrations that were jointly transmitted from a single common shaykh by five prominent compilers: al-Bukhari, Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj, Abu Dawud, al-Tirmidhi, and al-Nasa'i .
According to Haji Khalifa in Kashf al-Zunun, the tract comprises eight hadiths . Al-Maqdisi received these transmissions through teachers he met during his travels, including Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Saydalani in Isfahan, who narrated from al-Hasan ibn Ahmad al-Haddad, back to the collection of Abu Nu'aym al-Isbahani .
Transmission and Transmission History
The work was preserved and taught across successive generations of Damascene Hanbali scholars:
- Al-Maqdisi transmitted the collection at the foot of Mount Qasiyun outside Damascus to the chief judge Taqi al-Din Sulayman ibn Hamza al-Maqdisi .
- Shams al-Din Muhammad ibn Yahya ibn Muhammad ibn Sa'd al-Maqdisi read the work from his own text in Marj al-'Ubaydiyya at Marj al-Zabadani on Friday, 13 Safar 743 AH, transmitting it from Sulayman ibn Hamza .
- Ibn Tulun recorded in al-Qala'id al-Jawhariyyah that Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn 'Abd Allah ibn 'Umar al-Maqdisi likewise heard the tract under the reading of Sulayman ibn Hamza .
Manuscripts and Publication
Several manuscript copies survived in major historical collections:
- A manuscript preserved in the Zahiriyya Library in Damascus (within collective volume Majmu' 101, fols. 126–128) contains an audition certificate (samā‘) recorded before the author in 641 AH .
- Two manuscripts are preserved in the Egyptian National Library (Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyya) under the title Juz’ fīhi ahādīth ‘awālin min masmū‘āt al-Diyā’ (collective volume no. 2024 ḥadīth, and a transcript under no. 25605 b) .
The text was edited by Muhammad Muti' al-Hafiz and published as part of his biographical and bibliographical study al-Tanwih wa-al-Tabyin fi Sirat Muhaddith al-Sham Diya' al-Din .
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