al-Riwayat al-Tafsiriyya fi Fath al-Bari
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- Waqf al-Salam al-Khayri
al-Riwayat al-Tafsiriyya fi Fath al-Bari (The Exegetical Narrations in Fath al-Bari) is a specialized academic study by Abd al-Majid al-Shaykh Abd al-Bari that compiles, documents, and analyzes the exegetical traditions cited throughout Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani's commentary Fath al-Bari .
Background and Purpose
The work was conceived as a doctoral dissertation following a suggestion from Hikmat Bashir Yasin . The author undertook the project due to the scholarly stature of Ibn Hajar and the recognition that Fath al-Bari constitutes a rich repository of Quranic commentary containing more than 3,500 exegetical reports scattered across its volumes . The compilation stage required approximately a full year to read through Fath al-Bari line by line and extract each narration onto dedicated sheets alongside its chapter and verse references, a task complicated by Ibn Hajar's dispersion and segmentation of these reports .
Structure and Contents
The book is structured into an introduction, two main parts, a conclusion, and technical indexes:
- Introduction (al-Muqaddima): Outlines the significance of the subject, the motivations for undertaking it, the research plan, writing methodology, and acknowledgments .
- Part One (al-Bab al-Awwal): An analytical study of Ibn Hajar and Fath al-Bari, arranged into four chapters:
- Chapter One: An eleven-section biographical overview of Ibn Hajar, covering his name and lineage, birth, upbringing and family, education, travels, teachers, students, school of jurisprudence (madhhab), writings, scholarly standing, and death .
- Chapter Two: A study of Fath al-Bari, examining Ibn Hajar's general method, his methodology in interpreting Quranic verses, and scholarly praise for the commentary .
- Chapter Three: Ibn Hajar's contributions to Quranic sciences (ulum al-Quran) in Fath al-Bari, detailing his interpretation of the Quran by the Quran, by the Sunnah, and by Companion statements, alongside his treatment of occasions of revelation (asbab al-nuzul), abrogation (naskh), variant readings (qira'at), and rare vocabulary (gharib al-Quran) .
- Chapter Four: An examination of the exegetical reports in Fath al-Bari, analyzing Ibn Hajar's presentation of narrations, his critical appraisal and grading of reports, his method of citation, and his primary source materials .
- Part Two (al-Bab al-Thani): The corpus of exegetical narrations extracted from Fath al-Bari, organized sequentially according to the surahs and verses of the Quran .
- Conclusion and Indexes: A summary of research findings, followed by nine detailed indexes covering cited Quranic verses, prophetic hadiths, non-prophetic reports (athar), biographical figures, geographical places, tribes and nations, theological sects, bibliography, and subject headings .
Methodological Findings
In analyzing Ibn Hajar's approach to exegetical narrations, the author notes that Ibn Hajar consistently attributed reports to their original source compilers with rare exceptions . Rather than providing full chains of transmission (isnad), he typically quoted chains from their point of convergence or identified specific transmission defects ('ilal) . Furthermore, Ibn Hajar frequently segmented narrations across different chapters to highlight variant wordings and conflicting transmission pathways across sources .
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