Bughyat al-Raid lima tadammanahu Hadith Umm Zar from al-Fawaid
- Author died
- 544 AH
- Editions
- t al-Dasuqi
Bughyat al-Rāʾid limā taḍammanahu Ḥadīth Umm Zarʿ min al-fawāʾid (The Seeker's Goal Regarding the Benefits Contained in the Hadith of Umm Zar') is a monograph by the Maliki jurist and hadith scholar al-Qadi Iyad (d. 544 AH / 1149 CE) dedicated to the comprehensive commentary and textual analysis of the famous Hadith of Umm Zar' .
Title and Composition
The work is an early writing of al-Qadi Iyad; he noted in his commentary Ikmal al-Mulim that he had authored a substantial standalone book on the Hadith of Umm Zar' early in his life, and he also referred to it in his lexical work Mashariq al-Anwar .
While some biographical entries refer to it simply as Sharḥ Ḥadīth Umm Zarʿ, sources and manuscript copies record several variations of its full title:
- Bughyat al-Rāʾid limā taḍammanahu Ḥadīth Umm Zarʿ min al-fawāʾid, the most widely cited title and the one recorded by the author's son, Muhammad, in his biographical account of his father .
- Bughyat al-Rāʾid limā taḍammana Ḥadīth Umm Zarʿ min al-fawāʾid, as written by al-Qadi Iyad himself in Mashāriq al-Anwār .
- Bughyat al-Rāʾid fīmā warada fī Ḥadīth Umm Zarʿ min al-fawāʾid, found on an audited manuscript copy bearing reading certificates in the handwriting of al-Mundhiri .
- Bughyat al-Rāʾid fīmā fī Ḥadīth Umm Zarʿ min al-fawāʾid, found on a manuscript bearing the ownership mark of Ibn Khallikan .
- Bughyat al-Rāʾid fī maʿrifat mā fī Ḥadīth Umm Zarʿ min al-fawāʾid, recorded by Abd al-Hayy al-Kattani .
Subject and Structure
The subject of the work is the agreed-upon tradition in which eleven pre-Islamic women gather and each describes the character and conduct of her husband, concluding with the account of Umm Zar' . Earlier scholars had dedicated individual treatises to this narration—including Ibn Abi Uways, Abu Ubayd al-Qasim ibn Sallam, al-Darir al-Naysaburi, Ibn Qutayba al-Dinawari, and al-Khattabi—and al-Qadi Iyad synthesized and expanded upon their works into an exhaustive commentary .
Al-Qadi Iyad organized the work systematically:
- Transmission and Text: He begins by narrating the hadith through multiple chains of transmission (asānīd), recording textual variants across transmissions, and analyzing transmitter variations concerning whether the narration is fully elevated (marfūʿ) to the Prophet ﷺ or interrupted (mawqūf) at certain points .
- Narrators and Speakers: He identifies the named transmitters as well as the identities of the speaking women mentioned in the account .
- Linguistic and Rhetorical Analysis: He provides an individual exposition of each woman's speech, detailing the rare Arabic vocabulary (gharīb al-ʿArabiyya), linguistic usages, and rhetorical forms (balāgha) .
- Legal and Social Deductions: Al-Qadi Iyad derived approximately twenty legal rulings and points of jurisprudence from the text, focusing particularly on probate matters such as legal integrity (ʿadāla), chivalric propriety (murūʾa), testimony (shahāda), good marital companionship, conversational interaction with spouses, and spousal rights .
- Concluding Section: The book concludes with a dedicated chapter examining the rulings on specific spoken expressions, the legal status of humor (mizāḥ), and instances of jesting reported from the Prophet ﷺ and his companions .
Printed Editions
The work has appeared in multiple printed editions, including:
- An edition published by the Ministry of Awqaf in Morocco in 1395 AH (1975 CE) .
- An edition edited by Salah al-Idlibi, Muhammad Ajanif, and Muhammad al-Sharqawi, published by Dar al-Furqan in a single volume (238 pages), which includes as an appendix a fifteen-page treatise on the same hadith by Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti excerpted from his gloss al-Tawshīḥ .
- An edition edited by Ayman b. Hamid b. Nusayr al-Dasuqi based on five manuscript witnesses, published by Dar al-Dhakha'ir in 1439 AH (2018 CE) .
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