Hadith Inna lillahi tisatan wa tisiin isman li Abi Nuaym al-Asbahani
- Author died
- 430 AH
- Editions
- Maktabat al-Ghurabā’ al-Athariyyah
Hadith Inna lillahi tis'atan wa tis'in isman (Arabic: حديث إن لله تسعة وتسعين اسما, lit. 'The Hadith: Indeed, Allah Has Ninety-Nine Names') is a specialized hadith monograph (juz') compiled by the hadith scholar and historian Abu Nuaym al-Asbahani (d. 430 AH / 1038 CE), dedicated to gathering and documenting the transmission lines and textual variations of the prophetic tradition regarding the ninety-nine divine names .
Scope and Method
The work belongs to the genre of single-hadith monographs designed to collect all available chains of transmission (turuq) for a single prophetic statement exhaustively . In this treatise, Abu Nu'aym records the primary hadith narrated by Abu Hurayrah: إن لله تسعة وتسعين اسما مائة إلا واحدا من أحصاها دخل الجنة ("Indeed, Allah has ninety-nine names, one hundred minus one; whoever enumerates them will enter Paradise") .
Abu Nu'aym tracks the numerous transmission paths originating from Abu Hurayrah through several prominent Successors, notably al-A'raj—via paths such as those through Abu al-Zinad, Sufyan ibn Uyayna, Musa ibn Uqba, and Warqa ibn Umar—as well as Muhammad ibn Sirin . Beyond Abu Hurayrah, he documents alternative, rarer chains attributed to other Companions, including Ali ibn Abi Talib, Salman al-Farsi, Abdullah ibn Abbas, and Abdullah ibn Umar .
The text also documents textual divergences across narrations, distinguishing between variants using the term ahsaaha (أحصاها, "enumerated them") and those reading hafizaha (حفظها, "memorized them"), as well as differing numerical expressions and versions containing an explicit enumeration (sard) of the ninety-nine names, such as the chains transmitted through al-Walid ibn Muslim and Zuhayr ibn Muhammad .
Scholarly Reception and Editions
The treatise served as a reference for subsequent hadith scholars examining the authenticity and paths of the hadith of the divine names. Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani cited Abu Nu'aym's isnads extensively in works such as al-Amali al-Mutlaqah and his monograph Takhrij hadith al-asma' al-husna, noting that while the chains leading to Abu Hurayrah are numerous, the narrations transmitted from other Companions recorded by Abu Nu'aym have weak chains despite their rarity .
The work was edited by Mashhur ibn Hasan Al Salman under the title Juz'un fihi turuq hadith: Inna lillahi tis'atan wa tis'ina isman and published by Maktabat al-Ghuraba' al-Athariyyah in Medina in 1413 AH (1993 CE) .
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