Al-Tawdih lil-Awham al-Waqi'a fi al-Sahih by Abu Dharr Sibt Ibn al-'Ajami: A Book in Service of Sahih al-Bukhari Published for the First Time

Al-Tawdih lil-Awham al-Waqi’a fi al-Sahih by Abu Dharr Sibt Ibn al-‘Ajami

A Book in Service of Sahih al-Bukhari Published for the First Time

The article begins by observing that the treasuries of the Islamic heritage still hold important scholarly texts that have not yet received their due share of editing, publication, and introduction, even though many of them belong to the noblest and most exacting sciences, especially those closely tied to serving the Prophetic Sunnah and its authoritative books. From this category comes al-Tawdih lil-Awham al-Waqi’a fi al-Sahih (“Clarifying the Errors Occurring in the Sahih”), by the imam and hafiz Abu Dharr Ahmad ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn Khalil al-Halabi al-Shafi’i, known, like his father, as Sibt Ibn al-‘Ajami (d. 884 AH); he is the son of the hadith master Burhan al-Din Abu al-Wafa’ Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn Khalil, Sibt Ibn al-‘Ajami (d. 841 AH). The book is now printed for the first time, after long remaining among the manuscript texts that had never been made available to readers in a critical scholarly edition. This edition was prepared by Dr. Haitham ibn ‘Abd al-Mun’im ibn al-Ghareeb Saqr, under the supervision and review of Shaykh Salih ibn Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Fattah al-Azhari.

The importance of the edition, the article explains, is not limited to its being the first publication of an unprinted manuscript; it lies also in its subject. The book belongs to a precise genre of hadith works concerned with sorting out the differences, misspellings (tashif), and errors that occur in the transmissions and copies of the authoritative books, while examining their causes and forms. This is not meant to disparage the standing of Sahih al-Bukhari or cast doubt on its rank. It is rather a kind of meticulous hadith service that works to establish the transmissions, wordings, names, and copies, and it reveals how much care the scholars devoted to this foundational book.

The book gains further importance from its author. Abu Dharr Sibt Ibn al-‘Ajami was a man of knowledge in transmission and narrators, with clear attention to the hadith sciences and to Sahih al-Bukhari in particular. The book’s table of contents and the editor’s study show that this work belongs to a wider engagement by the author in serving the Sahih, which indicates that it was not the fruit of a passing observation but part of a sustained scholarly concern with this field.

The text is preceded by a preliminary study that helps the reader approach it correctly. It discusses the most prominent figures through whom the chains of transmission to al-Bukhari pass, Abu Dharr al-Harawi, the standing of the Yunini copy, and the causes and manifestations of the differences among the transmissions and copies of Sahih al-Bukhari, before moving on to introduce the author and the book. These preliminaries are necessary, the article notes, because a discussion of “the errors occurring in the Sahih” cannot be properly understood if it is cut off from its scholarly context of audition, transmission, collation, copying, and differences among the source manuscripts.

The edition also includes everything a critical edition cannot do without: establishing the book’s title, presenting the evidence that it is correctly attributed to its author, introducing its subject and method, listing its sources, and describing the manuscript copy on which it relies. As for the content of the book itself, it shows the breadth of the author’s research and the precision of his classification. He deals with many kinds of issues, including misspellings in wording, errors in names, disagreements over numbers, errors of date or place, and preferring some wordings over others. These may appear to be minor details, but to the specialists of this discipline they are at the very heart of establishing the transmission and safeguarding the book.

The book was published as the fruit of cooperation among three bodies: Dawrat al-Azhari fi ‘Ulum al-Makhtutat (al-Azhari Courses in Manuscript Studies), Mu’assasat al-Wiraqa al-Ula for Educational Consulting, and Dar al-Imam Muslim for Publishing and Distribution. This cooperation, the article says, offers a practical picture of what serious scholarly partnerships can achieve in serving the heritage when methodological training, scholarly review, and specialized publishing come together.

In conclusion, the article holds that al-Tawdih deserves the attention of researchers and students of knowledge, not only because it is printed for the first time, but because it opens a window onto a precise kind of service to Sahih al-Bukhari. It confirms that the scholars’ care for this book was not mere veneration, but also a care of verification, scrutiny, and precision, and that this is a sign of the strength of this heritage, not a point of weakness in it.

The Editor’s Words

The editor of the book writes: Sahih al-Bukhari is the summit of what the Islamic Ummah has recorded of the Sunnah of its Prophet ﷺ. Yet its exceptional accuracy and firm precision did not prevent the scholars from tracing its copies and transmissions and pausing at what might be thought to be errors in it, whether from Imam al-Bukhari himself, from those who narrated from him, or from the copyists of his book after him.

The book al-Tawdih lil-Awham al-Waqi’a fi al-Sahih, by Imam Abu Dharr Muwaffaq al-Din al-Halabi al-Shafi’i (d. 884 AH), son of Imam Abu al-Wafa’ Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn Khalil, known as Sibt Ibn al-‘Ajami (d. 841 AH), author of al-Talqih li-Fahm Qari’ al-Sahih, comes as a precise window onto those passages and an explanation of their realities, through sound scholarly investigation, abundant courtesy, and a strong method of reconciling and harmonizing.

This edition, which relies on a rare manuscript copy close to the author’s own time, is a book no researcher in the hadith sciences can do without. It also opens for the educated reader a window onto the Islamic Ummah’s concern to transmit the hadith of its Prophet ﷺ with an accuracy and trustworthiness that have few parallels in history.