al-Nafh al-Shadhi Sharh Jami al-Tirmidhi
- Author died
- 734 AH
- Editions
- T al-Sumayi
al-Nafh al-Shadhi Sharh Jami al-Tirmidhi (The Fragrant Scent in the Commentary on Jami' al-Tirmidhi) is an extensive commentary on Jami' al-Tirmidhi composed by the hadith scholar and biographer Ibn Sayyid al-Nas (d. 734 AH / 1334 CE) .
Title and Composition
Ibn Sayyid al-Nas originally titled the work al-'Arf al-Shadhi, but his student al-Safadi suggested changing it to al-Nafh al-Shadhi so that al-Nafh would form a rhyming pairing with al-Sharh, a suggestion the author accepted . Other variant titles cited in secondary notices include al-Munaffah al-Shadhi (or al-Munaqqah al-Shadhi) and al-Fawh al-Shadhi, the latter recorded by Ibn Tulun . The author explained that his motivation for compiling the work was to preserve the scholarly material and original insights that emerged while studying and teaching the collection, preventing them from being lost .
The work remained incomplete due to the author's death; Ibn Sayyid al-Nas halted midway through the chapter titled Bab ma ja'a anna al-arda kullaha masjidun illa al-maqbarata wa-al-hammam ("What Has Been Related Concerning the Entire Earth Being a Mosque Except the Graveyard and the Bathhouse") .
Structure and Method
The commentary opens with two extensive prefaces before the main text :
- The first preface provides a biography of al-Tirmidhi, his teachers, his standing and memory, his transmission from al-Bukhari, his burial place, and the chain of transmission of his Jami' down to al-Mahbubi .
- The second preface examines Jami' al-Tirmidhi itself, discussing its compilation, its reception by contemporary scholars, the categorization of its narrations, its single tripartite (thulathi) chain, and the branches of hadith methodology it encompasses, adding five categories to those previously enumerated by Abu Bakr Ibn al-'Arabi and Ibn Rushayd .
In the body of the commentary, Ibn Sayyid al-Nas cites and explains each chapter heading before addressing the text of the hadiths . His method includes rigorous extraction (takhrij) of each narration, as well as the narrations alluded to by al-Tirmidhi under each heading (ma yashiru ilayhi al-Tirmidhi fi al-bab), rectifying omissions in the original text . He conducts detailed critical examinations of isnads, transmitter reliability, and hidden defects ('ilal) . Alongside hadith criticism, he explains uncommon vocabulary (gharib), grammatical parsing (i'rab), legal rulings derived from the text, points of legal disagreement among jurists, and relevant principles of legal theory (usul al-fiqh) .
Reception and Continuations
The Shafi'i biographer al-Udfuwi (d. 748 AH) observed that had Ibn Sayyid al-Nas restricted his commentary to hadith criticism and isnad analysis, he would have completed it, but his ambition to match the comprehensive methodology of his teacher Ibn Daqiq al-'Id prevented him from reaching the end .
Because the commentary was left unfinished, Zayn al-Din al-'Iraqi (d. 806 AH) authored a continuation (Takmilat Sharh al-Tirmidhi), picking up directly where Ibn Sayyid al-Nas had stopped, though al-'Iraqi also died before finishing it; further continuation efforts were undertaken by al-'Iraqi's son Abu Zur'ah Ibn al-'Iraqi and later by al-Sakhawi . Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti drew substantially upon al-Nafh al-Shadhi, alongside Ibn al-'Arabi's 'Aridat al-Ahwadhi and al-'Iraqi's Takmila, when compiling his own commentary, Qut al-Mughtadhi 'ala Jami' al-Tirmidhi .
Carl Brockelmann attributed an abridgment of al-Nafh al-Shadhi to Muhammad ibn 'Aqil al-Balisi (d. 729 AH), but this attribution is disputed because al-Balisi died before Ibn Sayyid al-Nas and is recorded elsewhere as having abridged al-Tirmidhi's primary collection itself rather than the commentary .
Editions
Portions of al-Nafh al-Shadhi were edited and published in two volumes by Ahmad Ma'bad 'Abd al-Karim (Riyadh: Dar al-'Asimah, 1409 AH / 1989 CE) . A later multi-volume edition of the surviving text was edited by Abu Jabir al-Ansari, 'Abd al-'Aziz Abu Rihla, and Salih al-Lahham (Riyadh: Dar al-Sumay'i, 1428 AH / 2007 CE) .
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