Silat al-Khalaf bi-Mawsul al-Salaf
- Author died
- 1094 AH
- Editions
- Dar al-Gharb al-Islami
Silat al-Khalaf bi-Mawsul al-Salaf (The Link of Successors to the Connected Heritage of Predecessors) is a comprehensive catalogue of scholarly transmissions (fahrasah or thabat) authored by the Moroccan Maliki scholar and astronomer Muhammad ibn Sulayman al-Rudani (1037–1094 AH / 1627–1683 CE) . The work records his teachers, chains of narration (asānīd), and transmitted texts across hadith, Islamic jurisprudence, and other disciplines .
Sources and Structure
In compiling his chains of transmission, al-Rudani relied primarily on the networks and transmissions of the Damascene hadith scholar Ibn Tulun . The book is organized in a medium-sized volume according to a systematic arrangement:
- It begins with broad, general chains of transmission connecting to foremost hadith authorities, such as Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani .
- It documents the "Hadith of Primacy" (hadith al-awwaliyya) .
- It provides transmission chains for the major ten collections of hadith (al-Kutub al-Ashara) .
- It surveys individual classical works arranged in alphabetical order according to their titles .
- It details chains of transmission in Islamic jurisprudence across the four Sunni legal schools, followed by other branches of learning .
- It concludes with transmission lines pertaining to Sufism (tariq al-qawm), mentioning individuals al-Rudani met and his encounters with them .
Reception and Significance
Silat al-Khalaf is widely regarded as one of the most significant transmission registers produced in the eleventh Islamic century . Abd al-Hayy al-Kattani praised it for its quality, selection, and meticulous ordering, noting that across both the Islamic East and West, no contemporary register matched it in scope aside from the Kanz of Abu Mahdi al-Tha'alibi . Kattani further remarked that al-Rudani’s expansive breath in transmission mirrored the standard of earlier classical scholars . In Uqud al-La'ali, Ibn Abidin noted that al-Rudani adopted an exhaustive approach in the work and brought forth extraordinary material .
Transmission and Modern Publication
An early manuscript copy preserved in Morocco bore an authorization (ijaza) written in al-Rudani's own hand for Muhammad ibn Abd al-Aziz ibn al-Qadi al-Fasi, dated to 1086 AH . Manuscripts are also held in repositories including the Library of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the Azhar Library in Cairo, the Veliuddin Efendi Library in Turkey, and the General Library in Rabat . A portion of the text was published in the journal of the Institute of Arabic Manuscripts in 1402 AH . The complete work was critically edited by Muhammad Hajji and published in a single volume by Dar al-Gharb al-Islami in Beirut in 1408 AH (1988 CE) .
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