Kanz al-Ummal fi Sunan al-Aqwal wa al-Afal
- Author died
- 975 AH
- Editions
- T al-Risala
Kanz al-Ummal fi Sunan al-Aqwal wa al-Afal (The Treasure of the Doers regarding the Sunnah of Sayings and Deeds) is an encyclopedic hadith compendium by the Indian scholar al-Muttaqi al-Hindi (d. 975 AH / 1567 CE), in which he reorganized the comprehensive hadith collections of Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti according to legal and thematic chapters.
Background and Composition
Al-Suyuti had compiled Jam' al-Jawami' (also known as al-Jami' al-Kabir) aiming to assemble all available prophetic hadiths, dividing it into two sections: prophetic sayings (qism al-aqwal), arranged alphabetically by the initial words of the report, and prophetic actions (qism al-af'al), arranged alphabetically by the names of the Companion narrators. He also abridged the sayings section in al-Jami' al-Saghir and supplemented it with a sequel (Ziyadat al-Jami' al-Saghir). Finding that al-Suyuti's alphabetical and musnad arrangements made it difficult for researchers to locate narrations on specific legal subjects without prior knowledge of the precise opening words or narrator names, al-Muttaqi al-Hindi undertook a multi-stage thematic restructuring of these collections.
The compilation developed in sequential stages:
- Manhaj al-Ummal fi Sunan al-Aqwal: al-Muttaqi al-Hindi first merged al-Jami' al-Saghir and its Ziyadah, organizing them according to jurisprudential chapters (abwab al-fiqh).
- Al-Ikmal li-Manhaj al-Ummal: He then classified the remaining narrations of the sayings section of Jam' al-Jawami' under the same legal chapters.
- Ghayat al-Ummal fi Sunan al-Aqwal: He combined Manhaj al-Ummal and al-Ikmal into a unified work, while keeping the narrations of al-Ikmal distinguished because the contents of al-Jami' al-Saghir were considered more authentic, more concise, and freer of repetition.
- Reorganization of the actions section: He classified the deeds section of Jam' al-Jawami' into the same thematic headings.
Finally, al-Muttaqi al-Hindi integrated all these parts into a single compendium, titling it Kanz al-Ummal fi Sunan al-Aqwal wa al-Afal. He completed the work in Jumada al-Ula 957 AH.
Structure and Methodology
The work encompasses hadiths drawn from over eighty classical Sunnah sources and totals more than 46,000 narrations (counted at 45,959 in printed editions). Its overarching structure organizes the major book titles (kutub) alphabetically by their topical names on the model of Jami' al-Usul by Ibn al-Athir. Within each individual chapter, al-Muttaqi al-Hindi presents the narrations of Manhaj al-Ummal first, followed by those of al-Ikmal, and concludes with the narrations of the actions section (qism al-af'al), thereby keeping the verbal reports and reports of physical actions distinct within each topic.
Al-Muttaqi al-Hindi followed al-Suyuti's method of omitting full chains of transmission, recording only the uppermost narrator (usually the Companion). He transcribed al-Suyuti's reference symbols (rumuz) indicating source collections and preserved al-Suyuti's appended remarks regarding authenticity, goodness, or weakness. In following al-Suyuti's symbols, the letter qaf (ق) indicates an agreed-upon narration (muttafaq 'alayh, recorded by both al-Bukhari and Muslim) when occurring in the sayings section, whereas in the actions section it denotes al-Bayhaqi. Because it depends entirely on al-Suyuti's compilations, the work also incorporates weak and fabricated narrations present in the underlying sources.
Abridgment, Reception, and Editions
Al-Muttaqi al-Hindi subsequently condensed the compendium into an abridgment titled Muntakhab Kanz al-Ummal fi Sunan al-Aqwal wa al-Afal, eliminating repetitions and reducing the material to approximately 32,000 hadiths across four volumes.
The work was widely celebrated by later scholars for rendering al-Suyuti's vast hadith corpus accessible. Abd al-Haqq al-Dihlawi reported in Akhbar al-Akhyar that Abu al-Hasan al-Bakri al-Shafi'i remarked: "Al-Suyuti placed a favor upon the worlds, and al-Muttaqi placed a favor upon him."
Kanz al-Ummal was published in Hyderabad in eight volumes (1312–1313 AH / 1894–1896 CE). It was later published in Beirut with vocalization and glosses by Bakri Hayyani and indexes by Safwat al-Saqqa. An alphabetical index of the hadith incipits (atraf) was prepared by Nadim and Usama al-Mar'ashli. The abridgment, Muntakhab Kanz al-Ummal, was printed in Cairo on the margins of Ahmad ibn Hanbal's Musnad.
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