Introduction to al-Tirmidhī and his Kitāb al-ʿIlal al-ṣaghīr

Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī: kitāb al-zakāt, bāb mā jā’a fī faḍl al-ṣadaqa; cf. kitāb ṣifat al-janna, bāb mā jā’a fī khulūd ahl al-janna wa ahl al-nār.

Jonathan Brown, “There Are No Literalists: Early Sunnis and Open Interpretation in Theology and Law,” in Modernleşme Protestanlaşma ve Selefîleşme, ed. Murteza Bedir, Necmettin Kızılkaya and Merve Özaykal (Isar Yayınları, 2019), 171-175.

ʿAbd al-Majīd Maḥmūd, Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭaḥāwī wa atharuhu fī al-hadith (al-Maktaba al-ʿArabiyya, 1395/1975), 120.

Jonathan Brown, The Canonization of al-Bukhārī and Muslim (Brill, 2007), 9.

Sham al-Dīn al-Dhahabī, Mīzān al-iʿtidāl fī naqd al-rijāl, ed. ʿAlī Muḥammad al-Bijāwī, 4 vols. (Dār al-Maʿrifa, [n.d.]), 4:416.

Ibn Qutayba, Ta’wīl mukhtalif al-hadith, ed. Muḥammad Zuhrī al-Najjār (Dār al-Jīl, 1973), 14.

Muslim b. Ḥajjāj, Kitāb al-Tamyīz, ed. Muḥammad Muṣṭafā al-Aʿẓamī (Maṭbaʿat Jāmiʿat al-Riyāḍ, 1975), 144.

Brown, “The Rules of Matn Criticism: There Are No Rules,” Islamic Law and Society 19 (2012): 362-3.

Al-Tirmidhī states that the hadith of killing the four-time drinker was abrogated (mansūkh), which al- Nawawī later confirms was agreed on by the consensus of scholars. Others have disagreed, primarily Imam al-Suyūṭī. He argues that 1) there are roughly ten ṣaḥīḥ narrations of this hadith, and that no similarly strong evidence exists against this position; 2) that a reported instance of the Prophet not doing this is an act that might well be isolated and therefore cannot stand as evidence against a command given by the Prophet in this hadith; 3) that the Companions found drinking were exempted from harsh punishment due to their piety and service; and 4) that those people who are addicted to alcohol and perennially deviant in their conduct should be killed. Al-Albānī also held that this hadith meant a judge could execute someone who committed the offense four times if there was maṣlaḥa in this. As for the hadith of combining prayers without the excuses of rain or danger, Aḥmad al-Ghumārī demonstrated that this was an accepted position amongst early scholars and in the Mālikī school; one could combine prayers for other reasons, provided it did not become habitual. In his comments on this hadith, Nūr al-Dīn ʿItr notes that it implies that there are other excuses for combining prayers, but that there is consensus rejecting combining them for no reason (as shown in another hadith in al-Tirmidhī’s collection, which suffers from a weak transmitter: man jamaʿa bayn al-ṣalātayn min ghayr ʿudhr fa-qad jāʾa bāban min abwāb al-kabāʾir). Ibn Rajab adds that there is another hadith that al-Tirmidhī included in his work with a note that no one acted on it, namely the hadith from Jābir b. ʿAbdallāh that during the time of the Prophet ﷺ the male Companions would call out the talbiya for the women. Al-Tirmidhī says that this was a gharīb narration and that “the scholars had come to consensus that the talbiya is not done on behalf of women.” See Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī: kitāb al-ṣalāt, bāb mā jā’a fī al-jamʿ bayn al-ṣalātayn fīal-ḥaḍar; kitāb al-ḥajj, bāb kitāb al-ḥudūd, bāb mā jā’a man shariba al-khamr…; Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī, Sharḥ ʿIlal al-Tirmidhī, ed. Nūr al-Dīn ʿItr (n.p.: n.p., 1398/1978), 1:6; Aḥmad b. al-Ṣiddīq al-Ghumārī, Izālat al-khaṭar ʿamman jamaʿa bayn al-ṣalātayn fī al-ḥaḍar bidūn khawf wa lā maṭar, ed. ʿAlawī b. Ḥamīd (Dār al-Kitāb al-Thaqafī, 2006); Muḥyī al-Dīn al-Nawawī, Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim (Dār al-Qalam, n.d.), 11/12: 228; al-Suyūṭī, Qūt al-mughtadhī sharḥ Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī, apud Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī al-muḥashshā (Qadīmī Kutubkhāne, n.d.), 335; Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī, Fatāwā al-Shaykh al-Albānī, ed. ʿUkāsha ʿAbd al-Mannān al-Ṭayyibī (Maktabat al-Turāth al-Islāmī, 1994), 394.

As noted by Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, this statement suggests that al-Tirmidhī considers abrogation to be an obscure defect (ʿilla) in a hadith. In general, a hadith being abrogated would not be considered as falling within the scope of criticizing its isnād. It would be a matter of how a hadith that might well be totally reliable falls into the larger body of evidence on an issue. See Ibn Rajab, Sharḥ, 1:8.

Some editions have his name as Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Aʿlā.

This may also be al-Āmulī being referred to instead of Ibn al-Mubārak.

This procedure is called mukātaba, or giving written permission to transmit material. From the ninth to the eleventh century, this was used by scholars who had acquired reliable copies of a scholar’s book or hadith collection and who wanted to be able to transmit them directly from that scholar. Sometimes the scholar making the request had already heard this material from an intermediary, but the scholar wanted a shorter, more direct chain.

Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī (d. 256/870), the famous author of the Ṣaḥīḥ and one of al-Tirmidhī’s main teachers.

Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Dārimī (d. 255/869) of Samarqand, author of a famous Sunan, a leading hadith scholar and transmitter of al-Shāfiʿī’s teachings in Transoxiana. He was a colleague of al-Bukhārī and a teacher of al-Tirmidhī and Abū Dāwūd.

Abū Zurʿa ʿUbaydallāh b. ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Rāzī (d. 264/878), one of the two great hadith critics of Rayy (now a neighborhood in modern-day Tehran) in his day, along with his friend Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī (d. 277/890).

As John Nawas has shown in his statistical study, those known as ṣāḥib sunna were “the good guys” in the Sunni struggle against Muslim rationalists like the Muʿtazila. They predominately lived in Iraq between circa 150/750–350/950 and played a disproportionally large role in the transmission of hadiths as recorded in the Six Books. See John Nawas, “The Apellation Ṣāḥib Sunna in Classical Islam: How Sunni Islam Came to Be,” Islamic Law and Society 23 (2016): 18-19.

This is also the isnād through which Muslim narrates this report in his Ṣaḥīḥ. It continues from Ismāʿīl b. Zakariyyā Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad b. al-Ṣabbāḥ Muslim. In fact, all versions that I have found of this report ultimately stem from Ismāʿīl b. Zakariyyā. See also Ibrāhīm b. Yaʿqūb al-Jawzajānī, Aḥwāl al-rijāl, ed. Ṣubḥī al-Sāmarrā’ī (Mu’assasat al-Risāla, 1985), 35-6.

This Strife (fitna) was the Second Civil War (680-692 CE), between the followers of ʿAbdallāh b. al-Zubayr, those of the Umayyads, and the Shia.

Jābir al-Juʿfī (d. 128/745-6) had extremist Shiite beliefs, so much so that even later Shiites kept their distance from him. See Hussein Modaressi, Tradition and Survival: A Bibliographical Survey of Early Shīʿite Literature Vol. 1 (Oneworld, 2003), 92.

Ḥammād b. Abī Sulaymān (d. 120/738) was a leading scholar of Kufa and the main teacher of Abū Ḥanīfa.

Ibn Rajab states that this statement between braces { } is not found in some recensions of al-Tirmidhī’s Jāmiʿ, but he admits that al-Tirmidhī includes it elsewhere in his book (see Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī: kitāb al-ṣalāt, bāb mā jāʾa fī faḍl al-adhān). He mainly objects to its content, saying 1) that Jābir al-Juʿfī had extremist Shiite beliefs, and 2) that the statement about Jābir al-Juʿfī’s essentialness to Kufan hadith transmission is factually false. It ignores a slew of major hadith transmitters, such as al-Aʿmash and Abū Isḥāq al-Sabīʿī; Ibn Rajab, Sharḥ, 1:69-70. Abū Dāwūd says in his Sunan that he only includes one hadith from Jābir al-Juʿfī; Sunan Abī Dāwūd: kitāb al-ṣalāt, bāb man nasiya an yatashahhad wa huwa jālis.

I.e., one who can travel from his home to the mosque where Friday prayer is held and return home before nightfall.

Al-Tirmidhī also mentions this hadith in the body of his book; Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī: kitāb al-ṣalāt, bāb mā jāʾa fī kam tu’tā al-jumʿa. In his time, some scholars acted on this opinion. For the Shāfiʿī school, it is required for those who can hear the adhān; for the Ḥanbalīs and Mālikīs, it is only required for those in the city where the mosque is located.

Abū ʿAwāna’s concern is that Abān would just confirm uncritically anything anyone had attributed to al-Ḥasan.

Al-Tirmidhī is drawing attention to the fact that only Abān b. Abī ʿAyyāsh added in ʿAlqama to the isnād, and that he recorded this addition about Ibn Masʿūd’s mother in the text of the hadith from Ibn Masʿūd. That only Abān relates this makes his testimony uncorroborated, which reflects badly on his reliability as a hadith transmitter. Whether or not the qunūt was recited before or after bowing was the subject of much debate, with various narrations even from one Companion (Anas b. Mālik) differing on this, perhaps due to the Prophet ﷺ performing it differently at different times. See Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī: kitāb al-witr, bāb al-qunūt qabla al-rukūʿ wa baʿdahu.

Saʿīd b. Jubayr (d. 94/712) was a prominent scholar of the Successors who lived in Mecca and later in Kufa. He participated in the revolt against the tyrannous Umayyad governor al-Ḥajjāj and was eventually executed for this.

{} does not appear in many published editions of al-Tirmidhī’s Jāmiʿ.

In other words, anytime Muḥammad b. ʿAmr was asked about where he had heard a hadith, he would always automatically cite these same teachers.

This means he did not really have a command of the material he was transmitting because if someone suggested he had made a mistake or provide an alternative, he would just agree.

In other words, he was very careful about the smallest details of the hadiths.

Note that here we see the use of ‘ʿan/from’ in a way that does not indicate direct transmission, but merely ‘from’ without the two people ever having met.

After the 5th/11th century, mursal came to indicate hadiths that were attributed to the Prophet by a Successor who had never met him; in other words, the isnād lacks a Companion. In the early period, and in the writings of al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī (d. 463/1071), however, mursal meant any hadith that has a break in the isnād, typically occurring in the first three or four levels in the isnād. The verb ‘arsala’ literally meant ‘to cast’ a hadith to a source that one had not actually met.

I.e., without isnāds to verify them.

Many Muslim scholars in the first three generations would narrate from the Prophet ﷺ or from a Companion without citing their immediate source, as there was not yet the obsessive care with always citing one's full isnāds that would come to characterize the Sunni hadith tradition in subsequent generations. This is often pointed out by scholars of the Ḥanafī school to explain why early figures in Kufan scholarship, such as Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī and Abū Ḥanīfa's teachers, did not provide full isnāds when citing hadiths.

Classical manuals on the technical terms of the hadith sciences (muṣṭalaḥāṭ) usually state that al-Tirmidhī coined the term ‘ḥasan.’ Some modern Muslim scholars, like ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Abū Ghudda (d. 1997) and Muḥammad ʿAwwāma, point to usages of the term by al-Tirmidhī’s teacher al-Bukhārī and his teacher ʿAlī b. al-Madīnī (d. 234/849). I think it is debatable whether these usages qualify as technical, however, and al-Tirmidhī certainly was the first to provide a technical definition for the term; ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Abū Ghudda, al-Fawā’id al-mustamadda fī ʿulūm muṣṭalaḥ al-ḥadīth, ed. Mājid al-Darwīsh (Dār al-Bashā’ir al-Islāmiyya, 1426/2005), 139-51; cf. ʿAlī b. al-Madīnī, al-ʿIlal, ed. Ḥassām Muḥammad Abū Qurayṣ (Gharās, 1423/2002), 237.

Shādhdh was defined by al-Shāfiʿī as what contradicted what was transmitted by more reliable sources. The definition given by al-Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī (d. 405/1014) was what was transmitted by one, uncorroborated chain of transmission. I have favored translating the term according to al-Shāfiʿī’s definition (which became standard) because al-Tirmidhī was heavily influenced by al-Shāfiʿī and because al-Ḥākim’s definition would be redundant given the following clause in al-Tirmidhī’s text; Ibn ʿAdī, al-Kāmil fī ḍuʿafā’ al-rijāl, 7 vols. (Dār al-Fikr, 1984), 1:124; al-Ḥākim, Maʿrifat ʿulūm al-hadith, 148.

Several prominent hadith scholars, including Ibn Diḥya (d. 633/1235), al-Dhahabī (d. 748/1348), Muḥammad Zāhid al-Kawtharī (d. 1952), and Aḥmad al-Ghumārī (d. 1960) have concluded that al-Tirmidhī was very lax in rating hadiths as ḥasan and that many of those he so described are actually unreliable. See ʿUmar b. Ḥasan Ibn Diḥya, Adāʾ mā wajab min bayān waḍʿ al-waḍḍāʿīn fī rajab (al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1998), 137-38; Jamāl al-Dīn al-Zaylaʿī, Naṣb al-rāya, 4 vols. (Dār Iḥyā’ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1407/1987), 2:217-18; al-Dhahabī, Mīzān al-iʿtidāl, 4:416; al-Kawtharī, Maqālāt, 236; Aḥmad b. al-Ṣiddīq al-Ghumārī, al-Mudāwī li-ʿilal al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaghīr wa sharḥayy al-Munāwī, 6 vols. (Dār al-Kutub, 1996), 1:10.