Research Information System
KİTAP DÜNYASI YAYINLARI, İstanbul, 2023
Imām al-Bukhārī’s (d. 256/870) al-Jāmiʿ al- ṣaḥīḥ, which is considered “the book with the
highest authenticity/the lord of the books” (Aṣah al-kutub/Sayyid al-kutub baʿda Kitābillāh) following the Book of Allah, the Qur’ān, came under some criti- cisms after the
classification period.
Although its original title includes the phrase “a concise
book that compiles the ḥadīths that are ṣahīh and musnad” (al-
Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ al-musnad al-mukhtaṣar), Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī is a source that contains not only “muttaṣil”
(contiguous) ḥadīths but also many “muʿallaq”
narrations that are far from being ittiṣāl. Alt- hough these
unique taʿlīqs are not the main purpose of the
book, they have been a subject
of debate among ḥadīth scholars
in terms of their authenticity and weakness, and such narra- tions have
partially been the cause of some of the criticisms voiced against Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī since its classification. Al- Dāraqutnī (d. 385/995) included a small number of muʿallaq ḥadīths in “al-Ilzāmāt wal-Tatabbuʿ”, the first independent work
to criticise the sanads of the Ṣaḥīḥayn. This is an indica- tion that such narrations in al-Jāmiʿ did not lead to a negative approach among the muḥaddiths
of that period.
The present
study revisits an issue that is not well known
in the scholarly circles
although it was addressed under a separate heading in the author’s master’s
thesis, entitled “Some Criti- cisms against al-Bukhārī”, which was completed many years ago at Dokuz Eylül
University and was prepared to perform healthy analyses based on al-Bukhārī’s classification style.
The present study consists of three sections:
The
first section discusses the definition of “taʿlīq”, its types and its usage in al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ, based on the works of Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī (d.
852/1448) and the explanations offered by his
teacher Zayn al-Dīn al-ʿIrāqī (d. 806/1403) and his student
al-Sakhāwī (d. 902/1496). It shows that most of the
muʿallaq ḥadīths narrated with jazm or tamrīḍ forms are ṣaḥīḥ according
to the criteria set by al-Bukhārī or other muḥaddiths and schol-
ars studying jarḥ and taʿdīl, but a small number of them can be considered weak.
The second section is a refutation against M. Fuad Sezgin’s
(d. 2018) idea, mentioned in his book “Studies
on the Sources of al-Bukhārī” (1956), that all taʿlīqs in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī express “wijāda”. The present study
shows that the claims in the aforementioned study, far from solving
the problem of muʿallaq ḥadīths, contain many distortions and contradictions.
The third chapter
discusses Ibn Ḥazm’s (d. 456/1063) cri- tique
of the ḥadīth about “maʿāzif” (musical
instruments), which al-Bukhārī narrated as a muʿallaq ḥadīth. Ibn Ḥazm ar-
gued that the ḥadīth was munqaṭiʿ but not ṣaḥīḥ. However, ḥadīth scholars rejected his view and claimed that it
was mut- taṣil. The present study revealed that Ibn Ḥazm also contradict- ed the principle that he himself had
established.
The following brief
conclusions can be drawn about the “muʿallaq”
narrations in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī that are narrated through taʿlīq:
1. 1181 of the 1341
muʿallaq
narrations in al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ are mentioned elsewhere in the book as “mawṣūl,
musnad and muttaṣil” ḥadīths (i.e., the
broken part in the sanad chain being completed).
2.
Some of the individually narrated 160 ḥadīths have
been compiled in al-Bukhārī’s another book, other than Ṣaḥīḥ al- Bukhārī, and some of these have not been narrated at all.
3. Although there are small number of narrations that Imām al-Bukhārī did not compile in his Ṣaḥīḥ or in any other book and failed to make their isnād muttaṣil, such narrations have been one of the reasons for the criticisms voiced against al-Jāmiʿ al- ṣaḥīḥ for a long time.