Kitab al-Arbaeen fi Manaqib Ummahat al-Mumineen
- Author died
- 620 AH
- Editions
- Dar Al-Fikr
Kitab al-Arbaeen fi Manaqib Ummahat al-Mumineen ("The Book of Forty [Hadiths] on the Merits of the Mothers of the Believers") is a hadith collection compiled by the Damascene Shafi'i jurist and traditionist Abu Mansur Ibn Asakir (550–620 AH / 1155–1223 CE) devoted to the virtues of the wives of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.
Author and Context
The author, Abu Mansur Abd al-Rahman ibn Muhammad ibn al-Hasan ibn Hibat Allah ibn Asakir (also referred to as Fakhr al-Din Ibn Asakir), served as the leading Shafi'i scholar of Damascus in his time and was the nephew of the historian Ali ibn Asakir. In compiling the work, he relied extensively on his family's transmission chains, frequently citing narrations received through his uncle, the hadith master Abu al-Qasim Ali ibn al-Hasan ibn Asakir, his uncle Hibat Allah ibn al-Hasan, and his teacher Mas'ud ibn Muhammad al-Naysaburi. The book was formally recited and studied in the presence of the author at the Companions' Enclosure (Maqsurat al-Sahabah) in the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus.
Structure and Method
The collection contains forty prophetic traditions arranged thematically around the status and virtues of the Mothers of the Believers (Ummahat al-Mu'minin). It begins with specific sections on individual wives, starting with Khadijah bint Khuwaylid and Aisha, and concludes with collective traditions regarding the Prophet's wives, their inclusion among the household, and the invocation of blessings upon them.
The author provides his full chains of transmission (asaneed) for each hadith and intermittently appends scholarly notes concerning the narrators, textual variants, and levels of authenticity. In his epilogue following the fortieth hadith, Ibn Asakir notes that he included several narrations directly from Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim for blessing, even though specialists of forty-hadith compilations typically sought unconventional routes, explaining that his primary objective was the hadith texts themselves.
Manuscript and Editions
A manuscript copy of the work is preserved in the Zahiriyya Library in Damascus. The text has been printed in several modern editions, including:
- An edition edited by Muhammad Muti' al-Hafiz and Ghazwah Budayr (Damascus: Dar al-Fikr, 1986).
- An edition edited by Muhammad Abd al-Aziz (Cairo: Maktabat al-Turath al-Islami, 1990).
- An edition edited by Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al-Disuqi (Cairo: Maktabat al-Quran).
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