Bahjat al-Mahafil wa Ajmal al-Wasail bi al-Tarif bi Ruwat al-Shamail
- Author died
- 1041 AH
- Editions
- Markaz al-Nu‘mān lil-Buḥūth wa-al-Dirāsāt al-Islāmiyyah wa-Taḥqīq al-Turāth wa-al-Tarjamah
Bahjat al-Mahafil wa Ajmal al-Wasail bi al-Tarif bi Ruwat al-Shamail (The Delight of Gatherings and the Most Beautiful Means in Identifying the Transmitters of the Shamail) is a biographical hadith dictionary by the Egyptian Maliki scholar Burhan al-Din al-Laqqani (d. 1041 AH / 1631 CE), dedicated to identifying and profiling the narrators appearing in al-Tirmidhi's al-Shamail al-Muhammadiyyah .
Purpose and Composition
Al-Laqqani stated in his prologue that he compiled the work as a concise guide to identifying the transmitters of al-Shamail, seeking divine reward through his service to the Prophetic tradition . He noted that he restricted each entry to the bare minimum required to identify the narrator in order to keep the book accessible and unencumbered by excessive detail . He also remarked that he was unaware of any prior scholar who had dedicated an independent work exclusively to the transmitters of al-Shamail .
The author completed the final redaction and revision of the manuscript on the 1st of Rabi' al-Thani 1037 AH (1627 CE), approximately four years before his death, making it one of his later writings .
Content and Method
The book begins with an introductory section covering several methodological and historical topics:
- The author's chains of transmission back to al-Tirmidhi's al-Shamail, highlighting his primary teacher Abu al-Naja Salim al-Sanhuri .
- A concise biography of al-Tirmidhi .
- A technical hadith discussion on how narrations describing the physical attributes and moral character of the Prophet ﷺ are classified as marfu' (attributed to the Prophet) .
- An overview of the transmission criteria established by the leading hadith authorities, including al-Tirmidhi .
In the biographical body of the text, al-Laqqani drew substantially from al-Husayni's al-Tadhkirah bi-Marifat Rijal al-Kutub al-Asharah, adopting its concise phrasing . For the biographies of the Companions, he relied on Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani's al-Isabah fi Tamyiz al-Sahabah, and occasionally consulted his Taqrib al-Tahdhib . He paid special attention to the genealogies and relational names (ansab and nisbas) of the narrators, taking Ibn al-Athir's al-Lubab fi Tahdhib al-Ansab as his primary reference . In addition to biographical data, al-Laqqani occasionally commented directly on the root text of al-Shamail, discussing difficult phrasing or noting textual variations found across manuscript transmissions .
Manuscripts and Publication
Multiple manuscript copies of Bahjat al-Mahafil have been preserved in collections across the Muslim world and Europe, including the al-Azhar Library, Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyya, the Library of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the Berlin State Library, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris .
The work was edited by Shadi ibn Muhammad ibn Salim Al Nu'man and published in Sanaa, Yemen (1432 AH / 2011 CE), based on four manuscript copies .
Answer updated