Risala fi Fardiyyat Ittiba al-Sunna, wa al-Kalam ala Taqsim al-Akhbar wa Hujjiyyat Akhbar al-Ahad - ضمن Athar al-Mualimi
- Author died
- 1386 AH
- Editions
- Dar Alam al-Fawa'id lil-Nashr wal-Tawzi'
Risala fi Fardiyyat Ittiba al-Sunna, wa al-Kalam ala Taqsim al-Akhbar wa Hujjiyyat Akhbar al-Ahad (Treatise on the Obligation of Following the Sunnah, the Discussion on the Classification of Reports, and the Authoritativeness of Solitary Reports) is a treatise on legal theory (usul al-fiqh) by the Yemeni scholar Abd al-Rahman al-Muallimi al-Yamani (d. 1386 AH / 1966 CE) . It addresses the legal obligation of adhering to the Prophetic Sunnah, the epistemic classification of transmitted reports according to legal theorists, and the evidentiary authority of solitary hadith reports (ahad) .
Manuscript and Publication
The author did not provide a formal title or a preface for the work; after the basmala, he began directly under the heading "Fard Ittiba al-Sunna" (The Obligation of Following the Sunnah) . A unique manuscript copy is preserved in the library of the Holy Mosque in Mecca (Maktabat al-Haram al-Makki) under MS 4665 (pp. 21–67), contained within a long-format notebook . The draft exhibits numerous strikethroughs, marginal insertions, and additions, with more than thirty lines per page . The treatise was later edited by Muhammad Uzayr Shams and published as the ninety-second work in al-Muallimi's collected works (Athar al-Muallimi), appearing as the opening treatise of the nineteenth volume, dedicated to legal theory (Majmu Rasail Usul al-Fiqh) .
Content and Structure
The treatise begins by affirming the consensus of Muslims on the obligation to follow authentic Prophetic reports as a matter known by necessity in Islam, asserting that differentiating between the Qur'an and the Sunnah amounts to separating God from His messengers . Al-Muallimi reviews and refutes four principal objections raised by deniers of the Sunnah's authority—including the claim that the Qur'an contains an exhaustive explanation of all things—and demonstrates that the Sunnah legislates matters not explicitly detailed in the Qur'an .
The text then examines the standard tripartite division of transmitted reports among legal theorists:
- Reports definitively known to be false .
- Reports definitively known to be true .
- Reports whose truth or falsehood is not definitively established .
After evaluating the first two categories, al-Muallimi dedicates a section to investigating whether the narrations in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim convey certain knowledge (ilm) . Under the section on solitary reports (akhbar al-ahad), which fall under the third category, he argues for the obligation and consensus regarding acting upon single-narrator reports . He addresses rational and scriptural objections against their use, providing linguistic and exegitical analyses of verses cited by critics, such as وَلَا تَقْفُ مَا لَيْسَ لَكَ بِهِ عِلْمٌ ("And do not pursue that of which you have no knowledge") and إِنَّ الظَّنَّ لَا يُغْنِي مِنَ الْحَقِّ شَيْئًا ("Indeed, conjecture avails nothing against the truth") . In the concluding section, he analyzes specific historical reports in which the Prophet ﷺ, Abu Bakr, and Umar ibn al-Khattab asked for corroborating witnesses before accepting individual narrations, clarifying their contextual meanings individually .
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