Sabil al-Rashad
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- Editions
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Sabil al-Rashad: Hady Muhammad ﷺ (The Path of Righteous Guidance: The Guidance of Muhammad ﷺ) is a modern hadith collection and commentary compiled and arranged by Mahmud Muhammad Khalil and al-Sayyid Abu al-Ma'ati al-Nuri, with contributions from other participants . It gathers authentic prophetic narrations to provide a direct guide for adhering to the Sunnah in religious practice, belief, and daily life .
Purpose and Composition
The compilers articulated the purpose of the work as calling Muslims to the exclusive adherence to the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, freeing believers from obedience to personal desires or unauthoritative sources . Motivated by the proliferation of unverified, weak, and fabricated traditions in popular discourse, the compilation was designed to extract and present verified, authentic (sahih) narrations .
The material was developed through extensive examination of hadith routes across biographical evaluation and defect analysis ('ilal) literature . Following the release of the multi-volume work al-Musnad al-Jami', the compilers prepared the first edition of Sabil al-Rashad . The subsequent preparation for its second edition, published in 1441 AH / 2020 CE, incorporated further scrutiny and verification of transmission chains and hidden defects carried out during work on al-Musnad al-Musannaf al-Mu'allal .
Structure and Methodology
The arrangement of hadiths within individual topical books mirrors the structural conventions of classical hadith authorities like Muhammad ibn Isma'il al-Bukhari and Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj . For example, the section on prayer opens with its virtues, followed by prayer times, the call to prayer (adhan), prayer surfaces and orientations, the opening takbir, and successive rulings . Similarly, the section on merits (al-manaqib) begins with the virtues of the Prophets, moves to the virtues of Muhammad ﷺ, and proceeds through the Companions—commencing with Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, 'Umar ibn al-Khattab, 'Uthman ibn 'Affan, and 'Ali ibn Abi Talib—before listing the remaining Companions alphabetically .
The work spans comprehensive topics in Islamic belief, worship, transactions, and ethics, including:
- Faith (al-iman), divine decree (al-qadar), ritual purity (al-taharah), prayer, funerals, zakat, fasting, pilgrimage, marriage, divorce, and manumission .
- Sales and transactions, lost property, sharecropping, bequests, inheritance, gifts, lifetime grants, oaths, vows, legal penalties and indemnities (al-hudud wa-l-diyat), and judicial cases .
- Foods and drinks, dress and ornamentation, hunting and slaughtered animals, sacrifices, medicine and sickness, etiquette, supplications and remembrance, repentance, dream interpretation, the Quran, the Sunnah, knowledge, jihad, governance, asceticism and heart-softening traditions (al-zuhd wa-l-raqa'iq), tribulations (al-fitan), portents of the Day of Judgment, the Resurrection, Paradise, and Hellfire .
Each hadith in the text is accompanied by brief explanatory glosses for difficult vocabulary, while the footnotes contain documentation and referencing (takhrij) to primary classical hadith sources .
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