Dhakhirat al-Huffaz
- Author died
- 507 AH
- Editions
- Dār al-Salaf
Dhakhirat al-Huffaz (Arabic: ذخيرة الحفاظ, lit. 'Treasure of the Hadith Masters') is a hadith reference work compiled by the traditionist and historian Ibn al-Qaysarani (448–507 AH / 1056–1113 CE) . It serves as an alphabetical restructuring and index of the weak, uncorroborated, and fabricated narrations collected in Ibn Adi’s biographical dictionary al-Kamil fi Du'afa' al-Rijal .
Background and Title
The work is also known by the fuller titles Dhakhirat al-Huffaz al-Mukhraj 'ala al-Huruf wa-l-Alfaz ("The Treasure of the Hadith Masters Arranged by Letters and Words"), al-Dhakhira fi al-Ahadith al-Da'ifa wa-l-Mawdu'a ("The Treasure Concerning Weak and Fabricated Hadiths"), and Tartib Ahadith al-Kamil ("The Arrangement of the Hadiths of al-Kamil") .
In al-Kamil, Ibn Adi had cataloged narrators subject to criticism, citing under each biography specific traditions transmitted by that narrator to demonstrate flaws, eccentricities (manakir), and defects ('ilal) . Ibn al-Qaysarani extracted these isolated narrations from their biographical entries to facilitate rapid searching by hadith text rather than narrator biography .
Structure and Scope
The book reorganizes the narrations strictly according to the alphabetical order of their opening words (al-huruf wa-l-alfaz) . For each tradition, Ibn al-Qaysarani cites the text alongside its chain of transmission or the problematic narrator identified by Ibn Adi, providing concise critical evaluations of the narrators and indicating points of weakness .
The corpus compiled by Ibn al-Qaysarani contains 6,597 hadiths .
Editions
Dhakhirat al-Huffaz was edited by Abd al-Rahman ibn Abd al-Jabbar al-Faryawa'i and published in 1416 AH (1996 CE) by Dar al-Salaf in Riyadh and Dar al-Da'wah . In his edition, al-Faryawa'i appended a supplement (istidrak) of 836 additional narrations from al-Kamil that had been omitted from the primary text, bringing the total number of traditions in the published work to 7,433 .
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