Hashiyat al-Suyuti ala Sunan al-Nasai
- Author died
- 911 AH
- Editions
- Maktab al-Matbu'at al-Islamiyyah
Hashiyat al-Suyuti ala Sunan al-Nasai, formally titled Zahr al-Ruba ala al-Mujtaba (The Flowers of the Hills upon the Chosen Collection), is a concise hadith commentary written by the Egyptian scholar Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti (d. 911 AH / 1505 CE) on the Sunan al-Sughra (also known as al-Mujtaba) of al-Nasai (d. 303 AH / 915 CE) .
Composition and Purpose
Al-Suyuti completed the work in Rabi' al-Awwal 904 AH (1498 CE) . In his introduction, he noted that it was the fifth installment in a planned series of concise commentaries on the six canonical hadith collections, written in the same manner as his glosses on Sahih al-Bukhari, Sahih Muslim, Sunan Abi Dawud, and Jami' al-Tirmidhi . Al-Suyuti remarked that he was motivated to compile it because more than six hundred years had passed since al-Nasai authored his collection without any widely circulated commentary or gloss having been dedicated to it .
Content and Method
The work opens with an introductory section discussing the methodology and criteria of the hadith compilers, citing Ibn Tahir al-Qaysarani regarding the tripartite classification of narrations transmitted by Abu Dawud and al-Nasai: authentic narrations recorded in the two Sahih collections, narrations meeting their criteria, and narrations cited without a definitive assertion of authenticity where defects are indicated for expert scholars .
Al-Suyuti structured his commentary as a brief marginal gloss (ta'liqa latifa) . His methodology is characterized by:
- Omitting discussions of chapter headings (tarajim) .
- Providing extremely brief biographical notices of transmitters interwoven directly with the text .
- Clarifying difficult vocabulary and obscure phrasing concisely, while generally avoiding chain-of-transmission analysis .
- Noting textual variants in the wording of narrations .
- Selectively excerpting legal rulings and scholarly insights from earlier authorities such as Yahya ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi and Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani .
Abridgments and Publication History
The commentary was abridged by the Moroccan scholar Ali ibn Sulayman al-Dimnati al-Bijamma'i (d. 1306 AH / 1888–1889 CE) under the title 'Arf Zahr al-Ruba, which was published in Cairo in 1299 AH .
Zahr al-Ruba has been printed repeatedly alongside the text of Sunan al-Nasai, frequently accompanying the marginal commentary of the Hanafi scholar Abu al-Hasan Muhammad ibn Abd al-Hadi al-Sindi (d. 1136 AH or 1138 AH in Medina), which supplements al-Suyuti's notes with more expansive legal and grammatical explanations . It was also included in a collective commentary published in Delhi in 1898 CE alongside notes by al-Sindi and others .
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