Nihayat al-Murad min Kalam Khayr al-Ibad
- Author died
- 600 AH
- Editions
- A manuscript published in the free Jawāmiʿ al-Kalim software affiliated with the Islamweb website
Nihayat al-Murad min Kalam Khayr al-Ibad (The Ultimate Aim from the Speech of the Best of Servants) is an extensive hadith compilation on legal traditions (sunan) composed with full chains of transmission (asānīd) by the Hanbali scholar and traditionist Abd al-Ghani al-Maqdisi (d. 600 AH / 1203 CE).
Overview and Structure
The work is dedicated to prophetic traditions pertaining to legal rulings and sunan, arranged with complete chains of transmission. It was planned on a massive scale, comprising approximately two hundred fascicles (ajzāʾ). However, the author did not produce a final clean fair copy (lam yubayyiḍhu) of the entire compilation before his death.
The work is documented across several biographical and bibliographical records, including Ibn Rajab al-Hanbali's Dhayl Tabaqat al-Hanabilah, Ibn al-Mulaqqin's al-I'lam bi-Fawa'id 'Umdat al-Ahkam, Ahmad ibn Ali al-Dulayji's al-Falakah wa-l-Maflukun, and Ismail Pasha al-Baghdadi's Idah al-Maknun. In some historical citations, its title appears with slight phrasing variants, such as Nihayat al-Murad fi Kalam Khayr al-Ibad or Nihayat al-Murad fi min Kalam Khayr al-Ibad.
Preservation and Availability
A surviving portion of the manuscript is preserved in Damascus at al-Maktabah al-Zahiriyyah, and a photographic copy is held at the library of the Islamic University of Madinah under entry number 490. A digital manuscript edition of the work was also included in the Jawami' al-Kalim software collection published in 2004.
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