''Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq al-Sanʿani'' () is an early

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 ...

collection compiled by the Yemeni hadith scholar ʽAbd al-Razzaq al-Sanʽani (744–827). As a collection of the '' musannaf'' genre, it contains over 18,000 traditions arranged in topical order.

History

Compilation

Abd al-Razzaq al-Sanʿani likely compiled the ''musannaf'' in the second half of the second Hijri century after studying under

Ma'mar ibn Rashid Ma'mar ibn Rashid () was an eighth-century hadith scholar. A Persian ''mawla'' ("freedman"), he is cited as an authority in all six of the canonical Sunni hadith collections. He was a student of and is considered one of the most important sourc ...

Ibn Jurayj Abd al-Malik ibn Abd al-Aziz ibn Jurayj (, 80 AH/699 CE - 150 AH/767 CE) was an eighth-century ''faqīh'', exegete and hadith transmitter from the Taba' at-Tabi'in. Biography Ibn Jurayj was born in Mecca in 80 AH/699 CE. His father Abd al-Aziz w ...

and

Sufyan al-Thawri Abū ʿAbd Allāh Sufyān ibn Saʿīd ibn Masrūq ibn Ḥamza al-Thawrī al-Muḍarī al-Kūfī (; 716–778 CE / 97–161 AH), commonly known as Sufyān al-Thawrī (), was a Sunni Muslim scholar, jurist, ascetic, traditionist, and eponymous ...

during their respective visits to Yemen. In a sample of 3,810 traditions analysed by Harald Motzki, the majority were largely transmitted from the three. As these three had compiled their own individual written hadith collections, al-Sanʿani's ''musannaf'' is considered to be a collation of older works. There are also relatively small numbers of traditions from

Sufyan ibn ʽUyaynah Abū Muḥammad Sufyān ibn ʽUyaynah ibn Maymūn al-Hilālī al-Kūfī () (725 – ) was a prominent eighth-century Islamic religious scholar from Mecca. He was from the third generation of Islam referred to as the Tabi' al-Tabi'in, "the followe ...

Abu Hanifa Abu Hanifa (; September 699 CE – 767 CE) was a Muslim scholar, jurist, theologian, ascetic,Pakatchi, Ahmad and Umar, Suheyl, "Abū Ḥanīfa", in: ''Encyclopaedia Islamica'', Editors-in-Chief: Wilferd Madelung and, Farhad Daftary. and epony ...

and

Malik ibn Anas Malik ibn Anas (; –795) also known as Imam Malik was an Arab Islamic scholar and traditionalist who is the eponym of the Maliki school, one of the four schools of Islamic jurisprudence in Sunni Islam.Schacht, J., "Mālik b. Anas", in: ''E ...

, among many others.

Textual history and reconstruction

The ''musannaf'' was considered lost until its manuscripts were rediscovered, edited and published by Habib al-Rahman al-'Azmi in 1972.Paul Cobb, The Lineaments of Islam: Studies in Honor of Fred McGraw Donner, p. 147. The extant work is compiled from manuscripts hailing from different paths of transmission (''riwayāt''), although approximately 90% of the material can be traced back to a transmitter named Ishaq ibn Ibrahim al-Dabari. Ishaq likely received the ''musannaf'' in written form from his father, a student of Abd al-Razzaq, but ostensibly omitted him from the ''riwaya'' as he was awarded an ''

ijazah An ''ijazah'' (, "permission", "authorization", "license"; plural: ''ijazahs'' or ''ijazat'') is a license authorizing its holder to transmit a certain text or subject, which is issued by someone already possessing such authority. It is particul ...

'' directly from Abd al-Razzaq after attending his lectures as a child. Abd al-Razzaq included his recension of Ma'mar ibn Rashid's ''Book of Expeditions'' () in the ''musannaf'', which has been reconstructed using a partial manuscript in Ishaq''s ''riwaya'' dated to 747.

Reliability

In an article published in the ''

Journal of Near Eastern Studies The ''Journal of Near Eastern Studies'' is an academic journal published by the University of Chicago Press, covering research on the ancient and medieval civilizations of the Near East, including their archaeology, art, history, literature, ling ...

,'' Motzki argues that the ''musannaf'' is a source of authentic traditions from the first Hijri century, stating that the wholesale rejection of hadith literature "deprives the historical study of early Islam of an important and useful type of source." However, he added that the ''musannaf'' "cannot be regarded as completely truthful. This even Muslims themselves did not claim."

Publications

* Rāshid, Maʿmar ibn, et al. ''The Expeditions: An Early Biography of Muhammad''. Edited and translated by Sean Anthony, NYU Press, 2015. * al-Sanʿānī, ʿAbd al-Razzāq, ''al-Muṣannaf''. Edited by Habib al-Rahman al-'Azmi, Beirut, 1970–1972.

References