Fath al-Ghaffar al-Jami li-Ahkam Sunnat Nabiyyina al-Mukhtar
- Author died
- 1276 AH
- Editions
- Dār ‘Ālam al-Fawā’id
Fath al-Ghaffar al-Jami li-Ahkam Sunnat Nabiyyina al-Mukhtar (The Opener of the Forgiver: The Compendium of Rulings from the Sunnah of Our Chosen Prophet) is an expansive legal hadith compendium composed by the Yemeni scholar al-Hasan ibn Ahmad al-Rubai (c. 1200–1276 AH / c. 1786–1860 CE). Based upon Majd al-Din Ibn Taymiyyah's Muntaqa al-Akhbar, the work synthesizes legal traditions (ahadith al-ahkam) across numerous classical collections alongside critical hadith evaluations and lexical glosses.
Composition and Purpose
Al-Rubai began compiling the draft in Sanaa on 1 Muharram 1232 AH (1816 CE) at approximately thirty-two years of age and completed it on 12 Ramadan 1240 AH (1825 CE), spending eight years, seven months, and several days on its compilation. He completed transcribing the clean copy on Tuesday, 12 Dhu al-Hijjah 1241 AH, and subsequently reviewed and collated it against source manuscripts with students on Thursday, 20 Dhu al-Hijjah of the same year.
In his introduction, al-Rubai stated that two primary motives led him to author the work: first, his experience during journeys across remote areas where reference works and summaries were unavailable, necessitating a portable yet comprehensive reference work that could serve as a travel companion; second, the dispersion and loss of primary books from his region. He initially hesitated to undertake the project until his teacher, al-Hasan ibn Yahya al-Kibsi (d. 1238 AH), encouraged him to complete it.
Sources and Methodology
Al-Rubai adopted Majd al-Din Ibn Taymiyyah's al-Muntaqa as his core foundation, reordering chapters, removing duplicates, and altering chapter titles. He substantially supplemented it with hadiths from numerous major collections, including:
- Jami' al-Usul by Ibn al-Athir
- Bulugh al-Maram, Talkhis al-Habir, and Fath al-Bari by Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani
- Majma' al-Zawa'id by Nur al-Din al-Haythami
- Al-Targhib wa-l-Tarhib by Abd al-Azim al-Mundhiri
- Al-Jami' al-Kabir and al-Jami' al-Saghir (with its supplement) by Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti
- Al-Badr al-Munir and Khulasat al-Badr al-Munir by Ibn al-Mulaqqin
- Jami' al-Masanid by Ibn Kathir
- Al-Mustadrak by al-Hakim al-Naysaburi
For obscure vocabulary (gharib al-hadith), he drew upon lexical and hadith reference texts such as Gharib Jami' al-Usul, al-Suyuti's abridgment of Ibn al-Athir's al-Nihayah, al-Mutarrizi's al-Mughrib, al-Jawhari's al-Sihah, al-Fayruzabadi's al-Qamus, and al-Fattani's Majma' Bihar al-Anwar.
Al-Rubai adhered to the transmission shorthand established in al-Muntaqa:
- Akhrajahu denotes transmission by al-Bukhari and Muslim.
- Rawahu al-khamsah ("the five recorded it") denotes narration by Ahmad ibn Hanbal and the four Sunan compilers.
- Rawahu al-jama'ah ("the group recorded it") denotes all six along with Ahmad.
- Muttafaq 'alayh denotes Ahmad, al-Bukhari, and Muslim.
- Any other compiler is cited by name.
Following each narration, al-Rubai cited authoritative rulings on authentication, grading, or weakness; when no prior explicit verdict was available, he quoted biographical transmitter evaluations (al-jarh wa-l-ta'dil) regarding the narrators in the chain.
Structure and Contents
The work contains 39 thematic books (kutub), encompassing 6,529 sequentially numbered hadiths, excluding additional variant wordings. A single hadith is occasionally repeated across different chapters when it addresses multiple legal rulings. Al-Rubai concluded the jurisprudence sections with Kitab al-Jami', dedicated to ethical topics and general matters of conduct.
The author appended a concluding section (mulhaq) detailing his transmission licenses (ijazat) and chains of narration (asand) for canonical hadith compilations and the writings of figures such as Majd al-Din Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Ibn al-Wazir, Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, and al-Sakhawi.
Title Variants and Editions
While the author explicitly titled the book Fath al-Ghaffar al-Jami li-Ahkam Sunnat Nabiyyina al-Mukhtar on his autograph manuscript and in the preface, variant titles appeared in later biographical and bibliographical literature. His contemporary al-Shajani listed it in al-Tiqsar as Fath al-Ghaffar li-Jam' Ahkam Sunnat al-Mukhtar—which was corrected in a marginal note to the author's title—and Muhammad Zabarah similarly recorded it under that phrasing in Nayl al-Watar. The first printed edition in Egypt altered the phrasing to Fath al-Ghaffar al-Mushtamil 'ala Ahkam Sunnat Nabiyyina al-Mukhtar.
The work was highlighted by the Syrian scholar Muhammad Bahjat al-Baytar in the journal of the Arab Scientific Academy in Damascus upon the release of its first volume in 1390 AH (1970 CE). A critical four-volume edition was published in 1427 AH (2006 CE) by Dar 'Alam al-Fawa'id under the supervision of Ali ibn Muhammad al-'Umran, relying on a manuscript transcribed in 1311 AH by Ahmad ibn Ali al-Tayr from the author's autograph preserved in the Western Library of the Great Mosque of Sanaa.
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