Tarajim Rijal al-Daraqutni fi Sunanihi
- Author died
- 1422 AH
- Editions
- Dār al-Āthār
Tarajim Rijal al-Daraqutni fi Sunanihi (full title: Tarajim Rijal al-Daraqutni fi Sunanihi alladhina lam yutarjam lahum fi al-Taqrib wa-la fi Rijal al-Hakim, lit. 'Biographies of the Transmitters of al-Daraqutni in his Sunan Who Were Not Biographized in al-Taqrib nor in Rijal al-Hakim') is a biographical dictionary of hadith narrators compiled by the Yemeni traditionist Muqbil bin Hadi al-Wadii (d. 1422 AH / 2001 CE).
Scope and Structure
The book is designed as a supplementary biographical reference for narrators who appear in the isnads of the Sunan of al-Daraqutni (d. 385 AH / 995 CE) but were omitted from Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani's Taqrib al-Tahdhib (which covers the six canonical books) and al-Wadii's own biographical compilation, Rijal al-Hakim fi al-Mustadrak. It comprises biographical notices for 1,385 narrators.
The work is organized alphabetically by the given names of the transmitters, beginning with those named Abd Allah. For each entry, al-Wadii cites the specific chain of transmission from the printed edition of Sunan al-Daraqutni by volume and page number, followed by biographical material extracted from classical biographical works such as Tarikh Baghdad by al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, Tarikh Dimashq by Ibn Asakir, and Ghayat al-Nihaya fi Tabaqat al-Qurra by Ibn al-Jazari. These entries detail the narrator's teachers, students, dates of death, and assessments of reliability (ta'dil) or criticism (jarh). When no biographical data could be traced for a narrator, al-Wadii notes that the individual was not found. The work also contains a concluding appendix dedicated to correcting scribal corruptions and mistranscriptions of names found in the printed text of the Sunan.
Reception and Editions
The work was published in a single volume of 564 pages by Dar al-Athar in Sana'a, Yemen, in its first edition in 1420 AH (1999 CE).
Scholar Abdullah al-Ruhayli evaluated the work as a concise and useful reference for researchers tracking fourth-century AH transmitters and the direct teachers of al-Daraqutni, though he cautioned against hasty acceptance of all critical evaluations therein. Al-Ruhayli also criticized the book for attributing errors found in the printed edition of the Sunan to al-Daraqutni himself rather than to manuscript copyists. Subsequent researchers, such as Abd al-Karim al-Durayni in his study of narrators left unverified by al-Albani, consulted the work while noting occasional omissions and overlooked orthographic variants.
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