Islah Ghalat al-Muhaddithin
- Author died
- 388 AH
- Editions
- Mu’assasat al-Risālah
Islah Ghalat al-Muhaddithin (Correction of the Errors of Hadith Scholars) is a specialized treatise by the jurist and traditionist Abu Sulayman al-Khattabi (d. 388 AH / 998 CE) dedicated to rectifying linguistic, grammatical, and vocalization errors commonly committed by hadith transmitters in prophetic reports.
Purpose and Contents
The work is a concise treatise (juz' latif) covering the phraseology of 143 hadiths that transmitters frequently misvocalized or mispronounced. In the book's preface, al-Khattabi explains his purpose, stating: "These are expressions from hadith transmitted ungrammatically and distortedly by most narrators and hadith scholars; we have corrected them for them and conveyed what is right, and among them are words that allow multiple aspects where we chose the clearest and most evident."
Among the corrections presented in the text:
- In the prophetic description of the sea, هو الطهور ماؤه الحلُّ مَيْتَتُه ("Its water is purifying and its dead animals are lawful"), he notes that ordinary narrators mistakenly vocalize the letter mim with a kasrah (mitatuhu), whereas it is properly maytatuhu with a fathah.
- Conversely, in the hadith من خرج من الطاعة فمات فمِيتَتُه جاهلية ("Whoever departs from obedience and dies, his death is that of the pre-Islamic era of ignorance"), he clarifies that mitatuhu is vocalized with a kasrah to denote the state or manner of death.
- In the saying إذا ذبحتم فأحسنوا الذِّبحة، وإذا قتلتم فأحسنوا القِتلة ("When you slaughter, slaughter well, and when you execute, execute well"), the forms dhibhah and qitlah take a kasrah to denote manner (kayfiyyah), whereas with a fathah (dhabhah and qatlah) they would indicate a single instance of the action.
Linguistic Assessment and Reception
Al-Khattabi was subject to scholarly critique regarding several entries in the work; critics noted that most of the vocalizations he rejected from hadith scholars possessed valid variants in Arabic grammar and dialectal usages supported by ongoing transmitted narrations.
Editions
The work has been published in multiple critical editions, including:
- An edition edited by Hatim Salih al-Damin, published by Mu'assasat al-Risalah in Beirut.
- An edition edited by Majdi al-Sayyid Ibrahim, published by Maktabat al-Qur'an in Cairo (1988).
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