Download PDF | From Khurasan to al-Andalus Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī in the Maghreb in Light of Two Early Manuscripts, By Muntasir Zaman, 2021.
33 Pages
Introduction
Students of hadith are well aware that many Maghrebi scholars preferred Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim over Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī for aesthetic and structural reasons.1 This preference, however, should not detract from their laudable efforts in studying, explicating, and transmitting the latter. Despite being geographically distant from the hadith networks of “the long fourth century AH,” 2 Maghrebi scholars from the fifth century onwards were responsible for some of the most important recensions (e.g., al-Aṣīlī’s), manuscripts (e.g., Ibn Manẓūr’s),3 commentaries (e.g., Ibn Baṭṭāl’s), abridgments (e.g., al-Muhallab’s al-Mukhtaṣar al-naṣīḥ), and supplementary works (e.g., al-Jayyānī’s Taqyīd al-muhmal) on Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī. 4
In the tenth century, the Wattasid Sultan Abū al-ʿAbbās (d. 960 AH) endowed a chair in the prestigious al-Qarawiyyīn to teach the Ṣaḥīḥ alongside its most prominent commentary The ripple effects of this rigorous scholarship were felt throughout the Muslim lands,6 albeit with some hurdles along the way. 7 Recent scholarship has shed light on the history of hadith studies in the Maghreb with particular reference to the Ṣaḥīḥ. 8 This paper hopes to contribute to the ongoing discussion by providing a cursory analysis of two exceptionally early manuscripts of Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī transcribed in al-Andalus.
One of these manuscripts was studied by the Moroccan hadith expert ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī (d. 1962) in the early twentieth century. The other was discovered recently and deserves the attention of the scholarly community, for it is likely the earliest complete manuscript of the Ṣaḥīḥ available today. The tale of these Andalusian manuscripts begins with a fifth century scholar from Khurasan whose recension of the Ṣaḥīḥ proved instrumental in the spread of the work in the Islamic West.9
Thousands of people are said to have attended auditions of the Ṣaḥīḥ under al-Bukhārī,10 but only a handful of them played an active role in its transmission, such as Muḥammad b. Yūsuf al-Farabrī (d. 320 AH), Ibrāhīm b. Maʿqil (d. 295 AH), and Ḥammād b. Shākir (d. 311 AH). Due to a myriad of factors, al-Farabrī ultimately became the most crucial heir to al-Bukhārī’s magnum opus.11 Al-Farabrī studied the Ṣaḥīḥ with al-Bukhārī three times during the final years of his life.12 Not only was he able to verify his manuscript by studying the work with the compiler multiple times, but he was also well-informed of its final form, thus making his recension the most complete and accurate. That he had access to al-Bukhārī’s holograph added to the exactness of his own manuscript.13 He continued to transmit the Ṣaḥīḥ for sixty-four years after his teacher’s demise; he outlived many ofhis peers and became the most renowned authority from whom to learn the Ṣaḥīḥ. 14 Be that as it may, narrations from the Ṣaḥīḥ via his peers have not gone extinct as they are partially preserved in secondary sources.15 Modern readers may find it difficult to fathom how a text that enjoyed such acclaim was transmitted by only a few or even one of the compiler’s immediate students.
There are a few points to bear in mind. Simply because thousands of people attended an audition of a text, not every attendee necessarily brought a copy of the work,16 which was imperative for anyone interested in transmitting it later on.17 Moreover, only a fraction of those who had personal copies would become bona fide transmitters of the text;18 it was a specialization and lifelong commitment that not everyone was willing to make.19 Once a transmitter like al-Farabrī became a prime destination to hear the Ṣaḥīḥ, for reasons outlined above, it was natural that anyone interested in hearing the work would go to him instead of other less known transmitters; this gradually led to the disappearance of the other recensions.20
As such, it was not only possible but completely normal that only a single student became the source for a book. If one were to take skepticism towards single strand transmissions to its logical conclusion, Harald Motzki astutely points out, “virtually all the Islamic sources we use” would be historically untenable. Prominent books like al-Shāfiʿī’s (d. 204 AH) Kitāb al-Umm, Ibn Saʿd’s al-Ṭabaqāt, and Aḥmad’s (d. 241 AH) Musnad were conveyed via single strands over several generations before they ultimately fanned out.21
In turn, al-Farabrī had a wide range of students, nearly twenty of whom are documented,22 such as Abū ʿAlī b. al-Sakan (d. 353 AH), Abū Zayd al-Marwazī (d. 371 AH), and Abū ʿAlī al-Kushānī (d. 391 AH). For our purposes, three of these transmitters were key: Abū Isḥāq al-Mustamlī (d. 376 AH), Abū Muḥammad b. Ḥammuwayh al-Sarakhsī (d. 381 AH), and Abū al-Haytham al-Kushmīhanī (d. 389 AH). One particular student studied with these three and later conveyed a critically acclaimed recension of the Ṣaḥīḥ: the Mālikī hadith scholar of Khurasan, Abū Dharr al-Harawī .
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