Sharh Nukhbat al-Fikar lil-Qari
- Author died
- 1014 AH
- Editions
- Dar al-Arqam
Sharh Nukhbat al-Fikar lil-Qari (also titled Muṣṭalaḥāt Ahl al-Athar ʿalā Sharḥ Nukhbat al-Fikar and Sharḥ Sharḥ Nukhbat al-Fikar) is a supercommentary on Hadith terminology written by the Hanafi jurist and traditionist al-Mulla Ali al-Qari (d. 1014 AH / 1606 CE) .
Background and Context
The foundational text, Nukhbat al-Fikar fī Muṣṭalaḥ Ahl al-Athar ("The Choice of Thoughts on the Nomenclature of the People of Tradition"), was composed as a concise primer on Hadith terminology by the Shafi'i scholar Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani (d. 852 AH / 1449 CE), who subsequently wrote a continuous commentary on it titled Nuzhat al-Nazar fī Tawḍīḥ Nukhbat al-Fikar . Due to the widespread reception and structural precision of Ibn Hajar's work, successive generations of scholars produced commentaries, glosses, and versifications on both the base text and its exposition . Al-Qari composed his work after a close associate and student requested to read and study Ibn Hajar's commentary under his guidance .
Scope and Method
The work functions as an analytical supercommentary (sharḥ al-sharḥ) addressing the text of Nuzhat al-Nazar . In it, al-Qari unpacks the phraseology of Ibn Hajar, clarifies technical nomenclature across the categories of Hadith criticism—such as continuous transmission (mutawātir), solitary reports (āḥād), and degrees of reliability—and examines grammatical, lexical, and syntactical nuances in the base text . He also records textual variants across manuscript transmissions of Nuzhat al-Nazar and discusses differing interpretations offered by earlier commentators and grammarians .
Transmission and Reception
Manuscript copies of the commentary were preserved in major library collections across the Muslim world and Europe, including repositories in Cairo, Riyadh, Sanaa, Berlin, London, Princeton, and Patna . The work is widely cited in later Hadith literature and modern critical editions of Ibn Hajar's text as one of the prominent commentaries on Nuzhat al-Nazar alongside works such as al-Yawāqīt wa-al-Durar by Abd al-Ra'uf al-Munawi . In modern print, the commentary has been published under the title Sharḥ Sharḥ Nukhbat al-Fikar fī Muṣṭalaḥāt Ahl al-Athar .
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