al-Sunan wal-Ahkam an al-Mustafa alayhi afdal al-salat wal-salam
- Author died
- 643 AH
- Editions
- Dar Majid 'Asiri
al-Sunan wal-Ahkam an al-Mustafa alayhi afdal al-salat wal-salam (The Prophetic traditions and legal rulings from the Chosen One, upon him be the best blessings and peace) is a comprehensive collection of legal hadith compiled by the Hanbali traditionist Diya al-Din al-Maqdisi (569–643 AH / 1173–1245 CE) . The work gathers prophetic traditions pertaining to jurisprudence and legal rulings arranged according to fiqh themes .
Title and Composition
The book is commonly known as Ahkam al-Diya (The Legal Rulings of al-Diya) . Shams al-Din al-Dhahabi referenced it under the title al-Ahkam al-kubra, while Ibn Kathir referred to it as al-Ahkam al-kabir . The author's student, Abu al-Husayn al-Yunini, cited its full title as al-Sunan wal-Ahkam an al-Mustafa alayhi afdal al-salat wal-salam .
Diya al-Din al-Maqdisi explained in his introduction that he authored the compilation in response to repeated requests from contemporaries who desired a collection of legal traditions stripped of their chains of transmission (isnad) to facilitate memorization and study .
Methodology and Structure
In his introduction, al-Maqdisi outlined the methodological principles governing the work:
- Omission of chains of transmission for brevity and ease of memorization, while attributing narrations to the authoritative collectors who recorded them, such as Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Muhammad ibn Ismail al-Bukhari, Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj, Abu Dawud al-Sijistani, Abu Isa al-Tirmidhi, Ibn Majah, al-Nasa'i, al-Daraqutni, and Abu Bakr al-Bayhaqi .
- If a tradition is found in Sahih al-Bukhari or Sahih Muslim, or either of them, he restricts the attribution solely to them, prioritizing verified authenticity .
- Where text variations occur, he occasionally restricts himself to specific wordings while noting variants .
- When recording a tradition outside standard canonical collections, he cites it with his own chain of transmission if available to him .
The work is organized thematically around fiqh subjects, including chapters on purification (al-Taharah), prayer (al-Salah), the night prayer (Qiyam al-layl), fasting (al-Siyam), pilgrimage (al-Hajj), sales (al-Buyu), bequests (al-Wasaya), and torts/retaliation (al-Jinayat) . Within the section on military expeditions (al-Maghazi), Diya al-Din incorporated a specialized monograph he had compiled on the participants of the Battle of Badr, arranging their names alphabetically and noting differing historical accounts concerning them .
The author did not manage to finish the entire compilation before his death; he reached partway into the chapter on military struggle (Kitab al-Jihad) . Early biographers including al-Dhahabi and Ibn Rajab described the incomplete work as spanning roughly twenty fascicles in three volumes, noting that only a small portion remained unfinished .
Reception and Scholarly Standing
Al-Sunan wal-Ahkam received widespread acclaim among hadith specialists and jurists:
- Ibn al-Mulaqqin described it in the introduction to his al-Badr al-munir as the most beneficial of all books dedicated to legal hadith .
- Al-Dhahabi urged students of hadith in Zaghal al-ilm to transcribe and continually study three foundational compilations: al-Jam bayn al-Sahihayn, Ahkam Abd al-Haqq, and Ahkam al-Diya .
- When asked about Ibn Daqiq al-Id's al-Imam, Ibn Taymiyya highlighted Diya al-Din's compilation alongside the work of his grandfather Majd al-Din Ibn Taymiyya as benchmarks of excellence in the genre .
Extant Manuscripts and Editions
The surviving manuscript consists of two large volumes comprising nineteen parts, concluding at the end of Kitab al-Jinayat . The work was edited by Husayn ibn Ukashah, with an introductory study by Ahmad ibn Ma'bad Abd al-Karim, and published in six volumes (the sixth dedicated to indexes) by Dar Majid Asiri in Jeddah (1425 AH / 2004 CE) .
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