Tiwalat al-Akhbar li-Abi Musa al-Madini
- Author died
- 581 AH
- Editions
- Tiwalat al-Akhbar li-Abi Musa al-Madini
Tiwalat al-Akhbar (Arabic: طوالات الأخبار, lit. 'The Lengthy Reports'), also known as Tiwalat al-Akhbar wa-l-Qisas wa-l-Athar (), is a specialized hadith collection compiled by the Persian traditionist and Shafii scholar Abu Musa al-Madini (501–581 AH / 1108–1185 CE) . The work is dedicated to recording unusually long prophetic traditions, historical narratives, and biographical reports with full chains of transmission and critical commentary .
Title and Structure
In biographical and bibliographical literature, the work is documented under several expanded variants, including Tiwal al-Ahadith wa-l-Akhbar wa-Ghurar al-Qisas wa-l-Athar and al-Tiwalat fi al-Wahin wa-l-Mawdu' min al-Hadith , while some bibliographers record it simply as al-Akhbar al-Tiwal . Ismail Pasha al-Babani notes that the work originally comprised two volumes .
The author compiled lengthy narrations and supplemented each entry with critical analysis (takhrij), evaluation of transmitters, collation of variant chains, and detailed philological explanations . In the extant text, al-Madini records the extended narrative of the female Companion Qayla bint Makhrama, gathering multiple chains via Sulayman ibn Ahmad al-Tabarani and Abu Nu'aym al-Isbahani, classifying the report as rare and fair (gharib hasan), and identifying it as one of the regional isolated transmissions of Basra (afrad ahl al-Basra) . He follows the text with grammatical expositions—such as discussing the dialectal phonetic substitution of 'an for 'in (al-'an'ana) in the dialect of Banu Tamim—and explanations of rare Arabic vocabulary, pre-Islamic omens, and legal phrasing .
Transmission and Reception
The book was transmitted from Abu Musa al-Madini through his student Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahid ibn Abi Sa'd al-Madini in Isfahan, who in turn transmitted it in writing to Abu al-Husayn Ali ibn Muhammad ibn Abi al-Husayn al-Yunini .
Later hadith critics and compilers cited Tiwalat al-Akhbar when assessing extended or obscure narrations:
- Murtada al-Zabidi quotes al-Madini's evaluation of the lengthy hadith of Zayd ibn Abi Awfa concerning the Prophet's establishment of brotherhood among his companions, in which al-Madini noted the rarity of the narration and identified Zayd as a Basran transmitter known solely through that text .
- Al-Dhahabi and Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani cite the book in their biographical evaluations of weak narrators, noting al-Madini's inclusion of a fabricated report regarding the trade caravan of Khadija bint Khuwaylid transmitted by Yusuf ibn Ya'qub Abu Imran al-Harrani .
- Ibn al-Muhibb al-Samit utilized the manuscript of the work in his hadith compilations .
Manuscript Preservation
A surviving part of the work is preserved in Damascus within the Umariyya composite volumes at the Al-Zahiriyya Library (Majmu' 62, item 17, folios 158–170) . Other cataloged copies and portions are held in Istanbul at the Şehid Ali Pasha collection (no. 511) and the Berlin State Library (no. 1447) .
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