Miftah al-Saidiya fi Sharh al-Alfiya al-Hadithiya
- Author died
- 844 AH
- Editions
- Markaz al-Nu'man lil-Buhuth wa-al-Dirasat al-Islamiyyah wa-Tahqiq al-Turath wa-al-Tarjamah
Miftah al-Saidiya fi Sharh al-Alfiya al-Hadithiya (The Key to Felicity in Explaining the Hadith Thousand-Verse Poem) is a commentary and abridgment written by the Egyptian Maliki scholar Ibn Ammar al-Maliki (d. 844 AH / 1440 CE) on the renowned didactic poem on hadith terminology, Alfiyyat al-Hadith, composed by Zayn al-Din al-Iraqi (d. 806 AH / 1404 CE) .
Background and Methodology
In his introduction, Ibn Ammar explicitly designated the title of his work as Miftah al-Saidiya fi Sharh al-Alfiya al-Hadithiya . While the title suggests an independent commentary—leading some bibliographers, such as the author of Hadiyyat al-Arifin, to list it as such—Ibn Ammar explained that he relied directly on al-Iraqi's own commentary (Sharh al-Nazim), summarizing its contents and occasionally quoting al-Iraqi's phrasing verbatim while appending supplementary observations and benefits not found in the original .
The original additions introduced by Ibn Ammar focus primarily on several areas:
- Explaining terms omitted in al-Iraqi's commentary and discussing the significance of the author's precise vocabulary choices in the versification (such as his treatment of the word al-Muqtadir) .
- Clarifying and establishing the precise vocalization and orthography of difficult proper names (such as Hamd al-Khattabi, Ibn Rushayd, and al-Yamuri) .
- Providing grammatical parsing (i‘rab) for selected lines of verse and determining syntactic dependencies .
Manuscripts and Publication
The work is preserved in a manuscript at the al-Azhar Library in Cairo (MS 1325 Mustalah) . The codex consists of 187 folios with 17 lines per page and contains extensive marginal notes and corrections . It was transcribed by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahid ibn Abd Allah ibn Muhammad al-Dalasi al-Ansari al-Maliki, whose opening honorific formulas for Ibn Ammar indicate he was likely one of his students; the colophon records the completion date as 9 Dhu al-Hijjah, likely dating from the ninth century AH .
The text was edited by Shadi ibn Muhammad ibn Salim Al Nu'man and published in a single volume by Markaz al-Nu'man for Islamic Research, Studies, Heritage Verification, and Translation in Sana'a, Yemen (1432 AH / 2011 CE) .
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