al-Sunan al-Kubra - al-Nasai
- Author died
- 303 AH
- Editions
- T al-Risala
al-Sunan al-Kubra (The Great Collection of Prophetic Traditions), also referred to as al-Sunan al-Kabir, is an expansive compilation of hadith authored by the traditionist al-Nasai (215–303 AH / 829–915 CE; an alternate report gives his birth year as 214 AH) . It represents his original, comprehensive collection of prophetic reports, legal rulings, and critical evaluations of transmission chains, from which his more widely circulated six-canonical-book work, al-Mujtaba (or al-Sunan al-Sughra), was derived .
Composition and Relation to al-Mujtaba
When compiling al-Sunan al-Kubra, al-Nasai exercised strict caution regarding his transmitters; he sought divine guidance (istikhara) regarding whether to narrate from certain teachers about whom he harbored doubts and chose to abandon them, thereby accepting lower transmission chains (nuzul) rather than higher chains through disputed narrators . For instance, despite possessing elevated transmissions from Qutayba ibn Sa'id from Ibn Lahi'ah, he refrained from reporting them due to critics' disagreements over Ibn Lahi'ah .
A widely transmitted narrative related by Abu Ali al-Ghassani states that after al-Nasai composed al-Sunan al-Kubra, a ruler—identified in another account as the emir of al-Ramla—asked him if every report in the collection was sound (sahih) . When al-Nasai answered in the negative, the ruler requested a compilation restricted exclusively to sound reports, prompting al-Nasai to abridge the work into al-Mujtaba, leaving out narrations whose chains he had criticized for defects . While scholars like al-Iraqi endorsed this report, later commentators noted that it lacks a continuous chain of narration . A differing view held by al-Dhahabi and Ibn Nasir al-Din attributed the abridgment of al-Mujtaba to al-Nasai's student Ibn al-Sunni, though the majority of scholars maintain that al-Nasai himself produced the abridgment .
Structure and Scope
al-Sunan al-Kubra is considerably larger than al-Mujtaba and resembles a comprehensive compendium (jami' or musannaf) . It includes several substantial thematic books absent from the abridgment, such as:
- Kitab al-Siyar (Campaigns and Expeditions)
- Kitab al-Manaqib (Virtues and Merits)
- Kitab al-Nu'ut (Divine Attributes/Descriptions)
- Kitab al-Tibb (Medicine)
- Kitab al-Fara'id (Inheritance Laws)
- Kitab al-Walimah (The Wedding Feast)
- Kitab al-Ta'bir (Interpretation of Dreams)
- Kitab Fada'il al-Qur'an (Virtues of the Quran)
- Kitab al-Ilm (Knowledge)
- Kitab al-Tafsir (Quranic Exegesis)
Some of these sections were initially written as independent monographs and subsequently integrated by al-Nasai into the larger collection, such as Fada'il al-Qur'an . According to Abu Ali al-Ghassani, al-Sunan al-Kubra contains all the thematic books present in al-Mujtaba with the exception of only two: Kitab al-Iman wa-Shara'i'uh (Faith and its Prescriptions) and Kitab al-Sulh (Reconciliation) .
Methodological Characteristics
Al-Nasai structured al-Sunan al-Kubra by harmonizing the methodologies of al-Bukhari and Muslim . He adopted al-Bukhari's approach to detailed chapter titles (tarajim) and the extraction of nuanced legal conclusions from texts, alongside Muslim's technique of collating disparate transmission paths (turuq) of a narration in a single place .
His method in the work features:
- Exposing Hidden Defects ('Ilal): Highlighting variations among transmitters and determining the preserved (mahfuz) form of a narration against erroneous paths .
- Clarification of Transmitters: Resolving unstated or ambiguous names (mubhamat), identifying homonymous figures (al-muttafiq wa-al-muftariq), and distinguishing between names and patronymics (kunya) .
- Strict Narrator Standards: Applying stringent criteria for accepting narrators; scholars such as Abu Ali al-Nisaburi, al-Hakim al-Naysaburi, al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, and Sa'd ibn Ali al-Zanjani noted that al-Nasai's conditions for narrators were stricter than those of Muslim, and at times stricter than both al-Bukhari and Muslim .
Transmission and Scholarly Reception
al-Sunan al-Kubra was transmitted from al-Nasai by multiple students, including his son Abd al-Karim, Abu Bakr Ibn al-Sunni, Hamza al-Kinani, Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn Rashiq al-Askari, Muhammad ibn Abd Allah ibn Zakariyya ibn Hayyawayh, Muhammad ibn al-Qasim al-Andalusi, Ali ibn Abi Ja'far al-Tahawi, Ahmad ibn Ahmad al-Muhandis, and Muhammad ibn Mu'awiya ibn al-Ahmar, who introduced the text to al-Andalus .
The work received high praise among hadith scholars. Abd al-Rahim al-Makki described al-Nasai's compilation as the most noble of all works, stating that nothing like it had been produced in Islam . Ibn Rushayd al-Sabti evaluated it as the most ingeniously categorized and finely constructed among the Sunan books .
Major traditionists made al-Sunan al-Kubra the primary basis of their indexing works (atraf). Ibn Asakir incorporated its contents into al-Ishraf ala Ma'rifat al-Atraf, and al-Mizzi integrated it into Tuhfat al-Ashraf bi-Ma'rifat al-Atraf, where references to al-Nasai's narrations typically indicate al-Sunan al-Kubra rather than al-Mujtaba . Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani supplemented al-Mizzi's collection with omissions from Ibn al-Ahmar's transmission in al-Nukat al-Ziraf . Additionally, Ibn al-Mulaqqin (d. 804 AH) authored a volume on its unique additions over the other principal hadith collections (Zawa'id al-Sunan) .
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