Mukhtasar Sunan Abi Dawud lil-Mundhiri
- Author died
- 656 AH
- Editions
- t Hallaq
Mukhtasar Sunan Abi Dawud (Abridgment of Sunan Abi Dawud) is a hadith compendium by the Egyptian Shafi'i traditionist Abd al-Azim al-Mundhiri (581–656 AH / 1185–1258 CE), abridging the canonical collection Sunan Abi Dawud by Abu Dawud al-Sijistani (202–275 AH / 817–889 CE) . It is considered one of the foremost abridgments of Abu Dawud's collection and functions simultaneously as an abridgment and a concise commentary .
Background and Source Text
Al-Mundhiri based his abridgment on the recension of Sunan Abi Dawud transmitted through Abu Dawud's student Abu Ali al-Lu'lu'i (d. 333 AH / 944–945 CE), which represents one of the most widespread and authentic Eastern transmissions of the work . The bibliographer Hajji Khalifa recorded that al-Mundhiri titled his abridgment al-Mujtaba .
Methodology
Al-Mundhiri structured the work by summarizing the narrations of the original collection while adding critical hadith commentary to each report :
- Cross-Referencing (Takhrij): Following each hadith, al-Mundhiri notes which of the other five major hadith compilers—Muhammad ibn Ismail al-Bukhari, Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj, al-Tirmidhi, al-Nasa'i, and Ibn Majah—recorded the narration, whether with identical wording or with similar phrasing .
- Evaluation of Defects (Ilal): Where a hadith contains a weakness (da'f) or a subtle defect (illa), al-Mundhiri explicitly identifies and analyzes the flaw .
- Authentication through Attribution or Silence: When a report is transmitted by al-Bukhari, Muslim, or the authors of the three Sunan without any noted defect, al-Mundhiri contents himself with stating who transmitted it, which serves as his affirmation of its authenticity (tashih) . If Abu Dawud alone transmitted the report and it carries no hidden defect, al-Mundhiri remains silent regarding its status, an omission understood by scholars as an implicit ruling that the hadith is sound (sahih) or at least acceptable (hasan) in his assessment .
Influence and Derivative Works
Al-Mundhiri's work had a significant impact on later hadith scholarship and served as the direct basis for subsequent commentaries and refinements:
- Ibn al-Qayyim's Tahdhib: While residing in Mecca, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (691–751 AH / 1292–1350 CE) composed Tahdhib Sunan Abi Dawud wa-Iydah 'Ilalih wa-Mushkilatih, refining and augmenting al-Mundhiri's Mukhtasar . Ibn al-Qayyim praised al-Mundhiri's abridgment for its precision, arrangement, and identification of defects, while expanding upon areas where al-Mundhiri had remained silent or left his critique incomplete, authenticating omitted narrations, and addressing obscure matn variants .
- Later Commentaries: Major commentators on Sunan Abi Dawud, including Ibn Raslan and later authors such as the commentator in Awn al-Ma'bud, drew heavily upon al-Mundhiri's critical remarks, referencing his evaluations and noting instances of his silence on individual narrations . Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti also composed a work titled Zahr al-Ruba 'ala al-Mujtaba in connection with it .
Editions
The work has been edited by Muhammad Subhi Hasan Hallaq and published in three volumes by Maktabat al-Ma'arif in Riyadh (1431 AH / 2010 CE) .
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