al-Taswiya bayna Haddathana wa Akhbarana
- Author died
- 321 AH
- Editions
- Maṭābiʿ al-Tiqniyyah
al-Taswiya bayna Haddathana wa Akhbarana (The Equivalence Between "Haddathana" and "Akhbarana") is a short hadith terminology treatise (juzʾ) by the Hanafi jurist and hadith scholar Abu Ja'far al-Tahawi (d. 321 AH / 933 CE), dedicated to proving that the transmission terms ḥaddathanā ("he narrated to us") and akhbaranā ("he informed us") are synonymous and interchangeable in hadith transmission .
Topic and Arguments
The treatise addresses a classical debate in hadith nomenclature (muṣṭalaḥ al-ḥadīth) regarding whether a narrator may use ḥaddathanā and akhbaranā without distinction or must restrict ḥaddathanā to hearing directly from the teacher's speech and akhbaranā to reading back to the teacher (qirāʾa). Al-Tahawi argued for their full equivalence (taswiya), reporting this position from early authorities including Malik ibn Anas and Abu Hanifa, and aligning with the stance of al-Bukhari .
To substantiate his position, al-Tahawi cited textual evidence from the Quran and the Prophetic Sunna demonstrating linguistic interchangeability :
- Quranic verses where ḥadīth and khabar are used in parallel, including يَوْمَئِذٍ تُحَدِّثُ أَخْبَارَهَا ("That Day it will report its news"), قَدْ نَبَّأَنَا اللَّهُ مِنْ أَخْبَارِكُمْ ("Allah has already informed us of your news"), and هَلْ أَتَاكَ حَدِيثُ الْغَاشِيَةِ ("Has there reached you the story of the Overwhelming Event?") .
- Hadith narrations such as the Prophet's statement أخبروني عن شجرة مثلها مثل المؤمن ("Inform me of a tree whose likeness is that of the believer")—used in the sense of "narrate to me" (ḥaddithūnī)—and حدثوا عن بني إسرائيل ("Narrate from the Children of Israel"), in which the subject matter is designated ḥadīth rather than akhbār .
Transmission and Reception
The book was described in early catalogs, such as the Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadim, as a concise work (ṣaghīr) . Later hadith scholars transmitted it through continuous chains of transmission; Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani recorded his isnad to the treatise in his al-Muʿjam al-mufahras through transmission from Ahmad ibn Harun al-Bardiji and other scholars . Its evidentiary points were quoted in later hadith terminology literature, including Badr al-Din al-Zarkashi's al-Nukat ʿalā Muqaddimat Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ .
Manuscripts and Publication
Manuscript copies of the treatise are preserved in the Chester Beatty Library (MS 3495) and the Zahiriyya Library in Damascus (MS 92/17) . The text was edited and published by the hadith scholar Abd al-Fattah Abu Ghudda within a collection of five hadith treatises (Khams Rasāʾil) .
Answer updated