Musnad al-Shafii - Tartib Sanjar
- Author died
- 204 AH
- Editions
- Ghiras Publishing and Distribution Company
Musnad al-Shafi'i – Tartib Sanjar is a rearranged redaction of the hadith narrations of the jurist and founder of the Shafi'i legal school, Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafi'i (150–204 AH / 767–820 CE), organized into thematic chapters by the Shafi'i jurist and Mamluk emir Sanjar ibn Abd Allah al-Jawali (653–745 AH / 1255–1344 CE; another report gives his birth as 652 AH) .
Background and Purpose
The original collection known as Musnad al-Shafi'i was not assembled as an independent hadith work by al-Shafi'i himself. Instead, its contents were extracted from the hadith reports that Abu al-Abbas Muhammad ibn Ya'qub al-Asamm (d. 346 AH) had heard directly from al-Shafi'i's student al-Rabi' ibn Sulayman al-Muradi (d. 270 AH), primarily from Kitab al-Umm and other treatises, along with four narrations transmitted through al-Buwayti . The extraction was carried out either by Abu Amr (also called Abu Ja'far) Muhammad ibn Ja'far ibn Matar al-Naysaburi (d. 360 AH) for al-Asamm, by Ibn Matar for himself, or by al-Asamm directly .
Because the compiler extracted these reports haphazardly under book headers rather than systematically ordering them by subject or narrator (musnad), the text suffered from considerable repetition and difficulty of consultation, which prompted later scholars to reorganize it .
Sanjar's Method and Commentary
Sanjar al-Jawali studied and transmitted Musnad al-Shafi'i through the judge of al-Karak (also referred to as the judge of al-Shawbak), Danyal ibn Shakli (also recorded as Danyal ibn Mankali), and related it on multiple occasions . He restructured the text into a well-ordered arrangement (tartiban hasanan) and composed an accompanying multi-volume commentary with scholarly assistance . In compiling his commentary, he synthesized the earlier works of Ibn al-Athir (Shafi al-Iyy fi Sharh Musnad al-Shafi'i) and Abu al-Qasim al-Rafi'i (Sharh Musnad al-Shafi'i), augmenting them with additional commentary and explanations drawn from al-Nawawi's commentary on Sahih Muslim .
Editions
Sanjar's arrangement of the Musnad was edited by Maher Yasin Fahl and published in a single volume by Gheras Publishing and Distribution in Kuwait (first edition, 1425 AH / 2004 CE) .
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