Qut al-Mughtadhi ala Jami al-Tirmidhi
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- 911 AH
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- Qut al-Mughtadhi ala Jami al-Tirmidhi
Qut al-Mughtadhi ala Jami al-Tirmidhi (Nourishment for the Fed on al-Tirmidhi's Collection) is a concise hadith commentary and marginal gloss written by the Egyptian scholar Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti (d. 911 AH / 1505 CE) on the hadith collection of Abu Isa al-Tirmidhi.
Background and Composition
Al-Suyuti conceived the work as part of a broader scholarly project to provide concise commentaries (ta'aliq) on the canonical hadith compilations—namely the Six Books, the Muwatta of Malik, and the Musnads of al-Shafi'i and Abu Hanifah. In his preface, al-Suyuti identifies the work as the fourth installment in his commentary series on the Six Books, written in the same manner as his gloss on Sahih al-Bukhari (al-Tawshih), Sahih Muslim (al-Dibaj), and Sunan Abi Dawud (Mirqat al-Su'ud).
Structure and Methodology
The work opens with an introductory section examining scholars' explanations of al-Tirmidhi's unique terminology and hadith grading formulas, such as hasan sahih (fair and sound), hasan sahih gharib (fair, sound, and solitary), and gharib (solitary).
Al-Suyuti adopts a concise, lemma-based method (al-sharh bi-al-qawl), introducing selected excerpts from al-Tirmidhi with the phrase "his saying" (qawluhu) followed by brief annotations. Rather than providing an exhaustive word-by-word commentary across every report, he focuses selectively on ambiguous, intricate, or difficult elements in the chains of transmission (asanid) and hadith texts (mutun), leaving out passages he deemed clear. His notes incorporate:
- Linguistic and grammatical analysis: Clarifying rare vocabulary, vocalization, and variant readings across manuscript lines or Arabic dialects.
- Hadith criticism: Highlighting transmission defects ('ilal), such as variations between connected (mawsul) and interrupted (mursal) chains or raised (marfu') and halted (mawquf) attributions, framed to benefit intermediate students without unnecessary length.
- Substantive disciplines: Brief benefits touching on rhetoric, creed, and jurisprudence.
In compiling his gloss, al-Suyuti relied primarily on three major earlier commentaries on al-Tirmidhi: 'Aridat al-Ahwadhi by Ibn al-Arabi (d. 543 AH), al-Nafh al-Shadhi by Ibn Sayyid al-Nas (d. 734 AH), and its completion by Zayn al-Din al-Iraqi (d. 806 AH). For lexical definitions, he drew heavily on Ibn al-Athir's al-Nihayah fi Gharib al-Hadith. He frequently quotes previous authorities—including al-Nawawi, Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, al-Qadi Iyad, al-Tibi, and al-Mizzi—often presenting their viewpoints without asserting his own preference.
Reception, Abridgments, and Editions
Qut al-Mughtadhi served as a standard reference for later commentators on al-Tirmidhi, including Abd al-Rahman al-Mubarakfuri, Muhammad Yusuf al-Bannuri, Rashid Ahmad al-Gangohi, and Muhammad Qasim al-Nanawtwi. The work was abridged by the Moroccan scholar Ali ibn Sulayman al-Dimnati al-Bijamma'wi (d. 1306 AH) alongside his summaries of al-Suyuti's other commentaries on the canonical collections.
The text was printed in Cairo (1298 AH) and in India (1299 AH; Delhi, 1342 AH on the margins of Jami' al-Tirmidhi). It was later critically edited by Nasir ibn Muhammad ibn Hamid al-Ghuraybi as a doctoral dissertation at Umm al-Qura University in Mecca.
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