Taqrib al-Bughya bi-Tartib Ahadith al-Hilya
- Author died
- 807 AH
- Editions
- Dār al-Kutub al-‘Ilmīyah
Taqrib al-Bughya bi-Tartib Ahadith al-Hilya (Facilitating the Goal by Arranging the Hadiths of the Hilya) is a hadith work by the Egyptian scholar Nur al-Din al-Haythami (d. 807 AH / 1405 CE) that rearranges the prophetic narrations scattered throughout Abu Nu'aym al-Isbahani's biographical compendium Hilyat al-Awliya' wa-Tabaqat al-Asfiya' into thematic chapters.
Background and Composition
Al-Haythami compiled the work at the suggestion of his primary teacher, Zayn al-Din al-'Iraqi, after students had asked al-'Iraqi to extract and assemble the elevated prophetic narrations (marfu') from Hilyat al-Awliya' to assist them in hadith verification and sourcing (takhrij). Al-'Iraqi's son, Wali al-Din al-'Iraqi, also encouraged al-Haythami, noting that the task would not overburden him because it required only thematic rearrangement. The collection was among the last works al-Haythami undertook; he died leaving it in draft form (musawwad), after which his student Ibn Hajar al-'Asqalani finalized and transcribed it.
Method and Structure
The book is structured according to traditional legal and topical headings (such as prayer and jihad), gathering the hadiths that were originally distributed across the biographical profiles of Sufis, ascetics, and early scholars in Abu Nu'aym's original work. The work is strictly a thematic rearrangement (tartib) rather than an independent extraction of unique surplus narrations (zawa'id). Later bibliographical writers, including al-Suyuti in Dhayl Tadhkirat al-Huffaz and Muhammad ibn Ja'far al-Kattani in al-Risala al-Mustatrafa, inadvertently referred to the compilation under the title Zawa'id al-Hilya.
Transmission and Publication
The text is preserved in a two-volume manuscript held at the Egyptian National Library (Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyya, MS 904 Hadith). It has been published in a modern edition edited by Muhammad Hasan Isma'il (Dar al-Kutub al-'Ilmiyya, Beirut, 1420 AH / 1999 CE).
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