Sualat al-Sulami lil-Daraqutni
- Author died
- 412 AH
- Editions
- A team of researchers
Sualat al-Sulami lil-Daraqutni (Questions of al-Sulami to al-Daraqutni) is a biographical hadith work compiled by the Sufi and hadith scholar Abu Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami (d. 412 AH / 1021 CE), recording his inquiries to the hadith master al-Daraqutni (d. 385 AH / 995 CE) regarding narrator criticism and hadith defects .
Transmission and manuscript tradition
The text belongs to the su'alat (inquiry) genre of hadith literature, where students recorded oral questions put to their teachers alongside the master's critical assessments of narrators (al-jarh wa-al-ta'dil) and transmission flaws (ilal) . The work circulated through multiple transmission chains from al-Sulami:
- Through Abu Umar Abd al-Wahid ibn Ahmad al-Malihi to Abu al-Fath Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Isbahani, known as Samkuyah .
- Through Abu Sa'id Muhammad ibn Ali ibn Muhammad al-Khashshab to Abu al-Muzaffar Abd al-Mun'im ibn Abd al-Karim al-Qushayri, from whom it was transmitted to Ibn Asakir and via Jamal al-Din Abd al-Samad al-Harastani to Ibn al-Adim .
- Through Abu al-Qasim al-Fadl ibn Abi Harb al-Jurjani to Abu al-Fadl Muhammad ibn Tahir al-Maqdisi .
The primary extant copy is preserved in the Topkapı Palace Library in Istanbul (Sultan Ahmed III collection, MS 624, fols. 157a–171a), transcribed in Ramadan 728 AH by Abu Bakr ibn Ali ibn Ismail al-Ansari al-Bahnasi al-Shafi'i .
Content and structure
The work is organized alphabetically into twenty-eight lettered chapters, from Bab al-Alif through Bab al-Ya, followed by a section dedicated to narrators identified by their kunyas (Man 'urifa bi-kunyatih) and an additional concluding section . In its manuscript form, the work is divided into two parts, with the first part ending at the conclusion of the letter Mim .
In addition to inquiries regarding the reliability of individual transmitters, the compilation includes citations of earlier critics such as Yahya ibn Ma'in and al-Nasa'i, questions on the hidden defects of specific traditions, and records of questions posed by others in sessions where al-Sulami was present .
Reception and editions
Al-Dhahabi observed that al-Sulami questioned al-Daraqutni about numerous narrators "with the questioning of an expert" in the discipline . Passages and rulings from the work have been cited by subsequent scholars in biographical dictionaries and hadith commentaries, including al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, Ibn Asakir, Ibn al-Adim, al-Mizzi, Ibn al-Mulaqqin, Badr al-Din al-Zarkashi, and Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani .
The text has appeared in several printed editions:
- An edition edited by Süleyman Ateş (Riyadh: Dar al-Ulum, 1408 AH / 1988 CE), which was noted by later scholars for containing numerous misreadings and omissions .
- An edition edited by Majdi Fathi al-Sayyid (Tanta: Dar al-Sahaba lil-Turath, 1413 AH / 1993 CE) .
- An edition edited by Abu Umar Muhammad ibn Ali al-Azhari (Cairo: Dar al-Faruq al-Haditha, 1427 AH / 2006 CE) .
- An edition prepared by a team of researchers supervised by Sa'd ibn Abd Allah al-Humayyid and Khalid ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Juraysi (Mu'assasat al-Juraysi, 1427 AH / 2006 CE) .
- An academic edition prepared as a master's thesis by Khalil Hasan Hamadah at Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University .
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