(), , is a hadith collection compiled by the Yemeni Islamic scholar Hammam ibn Munabbih ( or ). It is sometimes quoted as one of the earliest surviving works of its kind. The ''Sahifat'' exists in three somewhat variant recensions, one of which is in

Ahmad ibn Hanbal Ahmad ibn Hanbal (; (164-241 AH; 780 – 855 CE) was an Arab Muslim scholar, jurist, theologian, traditionist, ascetic and eponym of the Hanbali school of Islamic jurisprudence—one of the four major orthodox legal schools of Sunni Islam. T ...

's ''Musnad''.

Discovery and publication

It is the oldest surviving collection of

hadith Hadith is the Arabic word for a 'report' or an 'account f an event and refers to the Islamic oral tradition of anecdotes containing the purported words, actions, and the silent approvals of the Islamic prophet Muhammad or his immediate circle ...

, it exists in various manuscript collections and printed versions are widely available.R. Marston Speight, ‘A Look at Variant Readings in the Hadith’, Der Islam, 2000, 77, 169 The original manuscript for the text has been lost, but the text survives through secondary copies of it. It was first discovered and published in the 20th century by Muhammad Hamidullah. This publication was a collation of two manuscript copies of Sahifa Hammam ibn Munabbih, one found in a library in

Damascus Damascus ( , ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in the Levant region by population, largest city of Syria. It is the oldest capital in the world and, according to some, the fourth Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. Kno ...

and the other in a library in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

. The collection contains 138 hadith.

Sources

According to

, Hammam ibn Munabbih was a disciple of Abu Hurairah. Abu Hurairah is the authority from whom he relates the narrations comprising the sahifah in their isnads (chains of narration), noting "this is what Abū Ḥurayra told us, on the authority of Muhammad the Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him". One issue in the study of Hammam's sources is the plausibility of the age at which Hammam could have transferred his traditions from Abu Hurairah. It is typically accepted that Hammam's death date of 749/750 is more plausible than that of 719, in which case Hammam's death date is 73 years after that of Abu Hurairah. In this scenario, Hammam may have had to learn his narrations at the age of fifteen from Abu Hurairah when the latter was at a considerably advanced age.

Literature

R. Marston Speight has studied the variation in the wording between equivalent hadith found across the collections in the Sahifat, that of the Musnad of

, as well as

Sahih al-Bukhari () is the first hadith collection of the Six Books of Sunni Islam. Compiled by Islamic scholar al-Bukhari () in the format, the work is valued by Sunni Muslims, alongside , as the most authentic after the Qur'an. Al-Bukhari organized the bo ...

and

Sahih Muslim () is the second hadith collection of the Six Books of Sunni Islam. Compiled by Islamic scholar Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj () in the format, the work is valued by Sunnis, alongside , as the most important source for Islamic religion after the Q ...

Editions

*''Ṣaḥı̄fat Hammām ibn Munabbih. 1st ed., edited by Rifʿat Fawzı̄ ʿAbd al‐Muṭṭalib. Cairo: Maktabat al‐Khānjı̄. (1985) *''Sahifah Hammam ibn Munabbih : the earliest extant work on the Hadith'' Muhammad Hamidullah tr. Muhammad Rahimuddin, Centre culturel islamique (Paris, France); 1979

References

{{Authority control 8th-century Arabic-language books Sunni literature Sunni hadith collections

Discovery and publication

Sources

Literature

Editions

See also

References