Majma al-Bahrayn fi Zawaid al-Mujamayn al-Awsat wa al-Saghir li al-Tabarani
- Author died
- 807 AH
- Editions
- Maktabat al-Rushd
Majma al-Bahrayn fi Zawaid al-Mujamayn (The Confluence of the Two Seas on the Additional Narrations of the Two Lexicons) is a hadith compilation by the Shafi'i hadith scholar Nur al-Din al-Haythami (735–807 AH / 1335–1405 CE) that collects the supplementary narrations (zawa'id) found in al-Tabarani's al-Mu'jam al-Awsat and al-Mu'jam al-Saghir that are absent from the Six Books of hadith.
Scope and Structure
The book extracts all narrations from al-Tabarani's middle (al-Awsat) and minor (al-Saghir) dictionaries that were not recorded by the compilers of the Six Books, whether the text is entirely unique or represents an addition to a shared narration. In cases of partial textual additions, al-Haythami explicitly indicated the variation with phrases such as "recorded by so-and-so except for such-and-such" or "I cited it for the sake of such-and-such." In addition to al-Tabarani's two dictionaries, al-Haythami incorporated narrations from al-Tirmidhi's al-Shama'il as well as sections of al-Nasa'i's al-Sunan al-Kubra that were omitted from his al-Mujtaba, including passages on day and night supplications, Quranic exegesis, military expeditions, virtues, medicine, marital relations, and parts of fasting.
Unlike his later synthesis, al-Haythami retained the full chains of transmission (asanid) for every narration in this work. He arranged the material topically according to legal chapters (abwab fiqhiyya), beginning with the Book of Faith (Kitab al-Iman) and concluding with the Book of Renunciation (Kitab al-Zuhd), placing one or more pertinent hadiths under each specific chapter heading to facilitate rapid reference.
Composition and Relation to Other Works
Al-Haythami originally compiled separate zawa'id monographs for major hadith collections, including the musnads of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Abu Ya'la al-Mawsili, and al-Bazzar, and al-Tabarani's al-Mu'jam al-Kabir, while combining al-Tabarani's al-Awsat and al-Saghir together into this single collection.
Subsequently, his mentor Zayn al-Din al-'Iraqi advised him to merge all of these individual zawa'id compilations into one comprehensive reference work, strip the full chains of transmission to avoid repetition, and append critical assessments of the narrators' reliability. Al-Haythami complied, producing his celebrated compendium Majma' al-Zawa'id wa-Manba' al-Fawa'id.
Manuscripts and Publication
The text survives in several manuscript copies, including:
- A complete manuscript held at the Maktabat al-Haram al-Makki in Mecca (MS 812 Hadith), transcribed in Cairo in 857 AH, comprising 508 large pages with 39 lines per page.
- A manuscript held in the Ahmet III collection at Topkapi Saray in Istanbul (MS 463), preserving the first half of the work across 232 folios, copied and owned by Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Muzaffari.
The work was edited by Abd al-Quddus ibn Muhammad Nazir and published in Riyadh by Maktabat al-Rushd in 1413 AH (1992 CE) in nine volumes, including indices.
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