Mujam Shuyukh al-Tabari
- Author died
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- al-Dar al-Athariyyah
Mu‘jam Shuyūkh al-Ṭabarī (A Biographical Dictionary of al-Ṭabarī's Teachers) is a biographical reference work authored by the contemporary hadith scholar Akram Ziyada al-Faluji (Akram ibn Muḥammad Ziyāda al-Fālūjī al-Atharī), dedicated to documenting, identifying, and evaluating all direct teachers from whom the classical scholar Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari narrated in his published works preserved with chains of transmission (isnāds) .
Purpose and Scope
The work was conceived as part of an extensive project examining the narrators found throughout the transmitted corpora of Ibn Jarir al-Tabari, serving as the foundational volume alongside planned companion dictionaries, including al-Mu‘jam al-Kabīr fī Tarājim Ruwāt al-Ṭabarī and al-Mu‘jam al-Ṣaghīr li-Ruwāt al-Ṭabarī .
The author indexed and analyzed the direct authorities cited across more than 45,000 transmitted reports appearing in al-Ṭabarī's four primary published source texts: Jāmi‘ al-Bayān ‘an Ta’wīl Āy al-Qur’ān (his Quranic exegesis), Tārīkh al-Umam wa-al-Mulūk (his chronicle of history), Tahdhīb al-Āthār (including its surviving and missing sections), and the theological treatise Ṣarīḥ al-Sunnah .
Altogether, the book comprises 774 biographical entries, encompassing over 400 distinct direct teachers of al-Ṭabarī (excluding unnamed or ambiguous narrators) . Among these:
- Approximately 225 teachers are also narrators found within the Six Books (al-Kutub al-Sittah) .
- Around 120 teachers are recognized in external biographical and evaluative works of al-jarḥ wa-al-ta‘dīl (criticism and appraisal) despite not transmitting in the Six Books .
- Only about 70 direct teachers lacked dedicated biographical entries in earlier accessible biographical works .
Method and Structure
Entries are arranged alphabetically according to the given name of each teacher . For each figure, al-Fālūjī provides:
- A detailed biography, listing their notable teachers and students .
- Verbatim judgments of classical authorities regarding their reliability (jarḥ wa-ta‘dīl) .
- An exact listing and numbering of every narration transmitted by al-Ṭabarī from that teacher across the four books, categorized with specific abbreviations: ts for the Tafsīr, th for Tahdhīb al-Āthār, tq for the missing section of Tahdhīb al-Āthār, tx for the Tārīkh, and ṣr for Ṣarīḥ al-Sunnah .
- Standardized symbolic notations adopted from Yusuf ibn al-Zaki al-Mizzi's Tahdhīb al-Kamāl to identify which compilers of the Six Books also narrated from them .
- Primary source citations immediately following each biographical profile .
A major focus of the methodology is textual and onomastic rectification, in which the author resolves scribal misreadings (taṣḥīf), textual corruptions (taḥrīf), missing names, and identifies anonymous or vaguely referenced transmitters (al-mubhamūn) by comparing parallel transmission lines across hadith, tafsir, and biographical literature, as well as cross-referencing al-Ṭabarī's own works .
Reception and Publication
The work was prefaced with endorsements by five contemporary Jordanian scholars of hadith: Basim ibn Faysal al-Jawabirah, Salim ibn 'Id al-Hilali, Ali ibn Hasan al-Halabi, Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Razzaq al-Ra'ud, and Mashhur ibn Hasan Al Salman . They praised its comprehensive coverage of al-Ṭabarī's direct sources, its role in distinguishing obscure narrators, and its utility for students of hadith and Quranic exegesis .
The first edition was published in one volume in 1426 AH / 2005 CE as a joint publication by al-Dār al-Athariyyah (Jordan) and Dār Ibn ‘Affān (Cairo) . While the author prepared over twenty thematic and statistical indices for the dictionary, several comprehensive indexes were withheld from the printed volume to reduce publication costs .
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