Shams al-Din al-Dhahabi
Mujam al-Shuyukh al-Kabir li al-Dhahabi
- Author died
- 748 AH
- Editions
- Maktabat al-Ṣiddīq
Mu'jam al-Shuyukh al-Kabir (The Large Biographical Dictionary of Teachers) is a biographical dictionary compiled by the Damascene hadith scholar and historian Shams al-Din al-Dhahabi (673–748 AH / 1274–1348 CE), documenting the scholars from whom he received hadith transmissions and certifications.
Scope and Content
The work is the largest of three general biographical dictionaries al-Dhahabi composed for his instructors, alongside an intermediate dictionary (al-Awsat) and a smaller one (al-Mu'jam al-Saghir, titled al-Latif). In his introduction, al-Dhahabi states that the compilation includes those teachers he personally met or who sent him written authorizations (ijazah) during his youth, as well as many who granted him licenses in adulthood. He noted that he did not exhaust every individual who had authorized him, remarking that an authorization might have been granted without his knowledge, whereas he maintained full certainty regarding those from whom he directly heard transmissions.
Arranged alphabetically, each biographical entry details the teacher's background, the hadith texts or booklets (ajza') recited or heard, and specific transmission chains. Al-Dhahabi frequently recorded the circumstances of the audition sessions, noting family members who accompanied him to hearings, including his sons Abd al-Rahman and Abd Allah. While Salah al-Din al-Safadi estimated the total number of al-Dhahabi's teachers to be around 1,300, the work features prominent scholars and lifelong colleagues of al-Dhahabi, foremost among them Ibn Taymiyyah, Jamal al-Din al-Mizzi, and Alam al-Din al-Birzali.
Textual History and Editions
The text exists in more than one authorial version:
- The earlier, unreduced draft contains 1,278 biographical notices in the Istanbul manuscript of the Sultan Ahmed III collection (also cited as 1,287 entries).
- The revised, final recension reflects al-Dhahabi's later decision to delete selected entries, leaving a total of 1,042 entries according to the Egyptian National Library manuscript (and counted in other references as 1,050).
In his bibliographical dictionary Kashf al-Zunun, Haji Khalifa mistakenly listed this abridged version under the title Mukhtasar Mu'jam al-Shuyukh, treating it as a separate summary comprising 1,000 teachers, though it represents the author's final recension rather than an independent abridgment.
The book was edited by Muhammad al-Habib al-Hila and published in two volumes by Maktabat al-Siddiq in Ta'if (first edition, 1408 AH / 1988 CE).
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