G. Juynboll – Encyclopedia of Canonical Hadith

Автор: G. Juynboll
Название книги: Encyclopedia of Canonical Hadith
Формат: PDF
Жанр: История
Страницы: 839
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

When I was still an undergraduate, I was employed for half a year by Leiden University
Library. I was to take temporary charge of the Oriental reading room in order to relieve its
keeper who was going on leave. One of the great privileges of this job was that I was
granted free access to the oth erwise closed stacks of the oriental collection, enabling me
to browse to my heart’s delight. Some years later, on one of my wanderings amid the stacks,
I was one day intrigued by volume one of a series published in India, Tufat al-ashrf bima
rifat al-arf by Ysuf b. Abd ar-Ramn al-Mizz (d. 742/1341). Upon opening it I was
astonished to find that it contained virtu ally only names found in chains of adth transmitters.
This series, once com pleted, was supposed to list all the isnds of Prophetic traditions brought together
in the Six Books, eventually Islam’s revered canonical hadth corpus. But the traditions
were only referred to in this work by text snippets or a few salient features. At that time
I thought that I probably would never have use for a book seemingly solely devoted to
isnds and for the next few years I forgot about it. However, as from the mid-seventies
I was working on de signing a method for identifying the originators of adths which were
(right ly or wrongly) attributed to the Prophet Muammad. Gradually it began to dawn upon
me that the common link phenomenon, as recognized in the fifties by J. Schacht, might come
in handy. Thus, as from June 1993, I embarked up on reading all the thirteen volumes of
the work. Mizzi’s Tufa and subse quently the usefulness it proved to have for my research
prompted me to dedicate the present volume to the late Abd a-amad Sharaf ad-Dn, the
Tufa’s Indian editor. For the Tufa turned out to be the indispensable sourcebook for finding
plausible answers, at least in my eyes, to my ques tions.
At this point I should like to acknowledge my indebtedness to J.J. Wit kam, Leiden
University Library’s erstwhile keeper of Oriental manuscripts. Throughout the years
during which I have been researching and writing this book he, together with his staff,
has always been most helpful in accommo dating me and my private trolley of various yards
of books in the Oriental reading room. Finally, I should like to express my gratitude to
all those friends and colleagues who have helped me in one way or another or other wise
encouraged me in all those years it took me to compile this book, espe cially L.I. Conrad
and W. van der Molen.
The index/glossary, which can at the same time be utilized as a concor dance of prominent
words and phrases, is intended to be exhaustive, but it is probably not faultless. I would
be grateful for any mistakes and shortcomings to be brought to my notice.