Ithaf al-Mahara bil-Fawaid al-Mubtakara min Atraf al-Ashara
- Author died
- 852 AH
- Editions
- King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Quran
Ithaf al-Mahara bil-Fawaid al-Mubtakara min Atraf al-Ashara (The Gift to the Skilled: Novel Insights from the Incipits of the Ten Collections) is a major encyclopedic hadith reference work compiled by Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani (773–852 AH / 1372–1449 CE) . It indexes hadiths by their atraf (incipits) and transmission chains, serving to complement and expand upon earlier atraf compilations, particularly al-Mizzi's Tuhfat al-Ashraf bi-Ma'rifat al-Atraf .
Scope and Sources
Although the book's title refers to ten collections (al-Ashara), the work actually encompasses eleven prominent hadith sourcebooks :
- Al-Muwatta' of Malik ibn Anas
- Musnad of al-Shafi'i
- Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal
- Sunan of al-Darimi
- Al-Muntaqa of Ibn al-Jarud
- Sahih of Ibn Khuzayma
- Al-Mustakhraj of Abu Awanah
- Sharh Ma'ani al-Athar of al-Tahawi
- Sahih of Ibn Hibban
- Sunan of al-Daraqutni
- Al-Mustadrak of al-Hakim al-Naysaburi
The eleventh collection—al-Daraqutni's Sunan—was added by Ibn Hajar to compensate for the fact that he was unable to access the entirety of Ibn Khuzayma's Sahih, having located only about a quarter of it .
Method and Arrangement
Ibn Hajar arranged the material according to the "highest narrator" (the Companion who related the hadith), adopting the structural framework established by al-Mizzi in Tuhfat al-Ashraf . Under each Companion's entry, hadiths are listed alongside their isnad variations across the included collections . The author intended to order the narrations of prolific and intermediate Companions alphabetically by the Successors who narrated from them, though this was not consistently applied throughout the draft .
As noted by his student al-Sakhawi at the end of his transcription of the author's autograph manuscript, Ibn Hajar passed away before giving the work its final revision and editing (tahrir wa-tahdhib) . Consequently, certain conventions stated in the introduction—such as preserving explicit audition terms (صيغ التحديث والإخبار) rather than abbreviating them with 'an (عن)—were not uniformly sustained in the draft text .
Editions
The work was printed in Istanbul in eight volumes in 1986 . A critical edition prepared by the Sunnah and Sirah Service Center in collaboration with the King Fahd Glorious Quran Printing Complex was published in Medina in 19 volumes in 1415 AH / 1994 CE under the supervision of Zuhayr ibn Nasir al-Nasir .
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