Selections From The Fath Al-Bari pdf download

Selections From The Fath Al-Bari (Commentary on Şahih al-Bukhari) by Ibn Hajar Al-Asoalani followed by Twenty Fatwas on Life after Death Translated by Abdal Hakim Murad

SELECTIONS FROM THE FATH AL-BARI

This booklet intends to introduce non-Arabic speakers to one of the most seminal genres of Muslim religious literature, namely, the hadith commentary.

It is surprising that no translations at present exist from this voluminous and influential body of writing, given that there are few hadith that can be understood adequately without reference to the often-complex debates which have taken place concerning them between the scholars.

These discussions have included investigations of the precise linguistic and lexicological meaning of the Prophetic speech, studies of the isnād, debates over the circum- stances surrounding the genesis of each hadith (asbāb al-wurūd), and issues of abrogation by stronger or later hadiths or by Qur’ānic texts.

For this reason, no Muslim scholar of repute uses a hadith before checking the commentaries to ascertain its precise meaning, context, and application.

The importance of this literature may be gauged by the fact that at least seventy full commentaries have been written on Imām al-Bukhāri’s great Şahih. The best-known of these include al-Kawākib al-Darāri by Imām Shams al-Dīn al- Kirmānī (d.786), Umdat al-Qāri by Imām Badr al-Dīn al-‘Ayni (d.85s),- and the Irshād al-Sāri by Imam Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Qastallāni (d.923).

However, the most celebrated is without question the magnificent Fatḥ al-Bāri (“Victory of the Creator) by Imām Ibn Hajar al-Asqalāni, a work which was the crown both of its genre and of the Imām’s academic career.

It is appreciated by the ulema for the doctrinal soundness of its author, for its complete coverage of Bukhāri’s material, its mastery of the relevant Arabic sciences, the wisdom it shows in drawing lessons (fawā’id) from the hadiths it expounds, and its skill in resolving complex disputes over variant readings.

For Bukhārī’s text has not come down to us in a single uniform version, but exists in several narrations’ (riwāyāt), of which the version handed down by al-Kushmayhani (d. 389) on the authority of Bukhāri’s pupil al-Firabrī is the one most frequently accepted by the ulema.

Ibn Hajar frequently uses the Kushmayhani variant as his standard text, but gives his reasons, often in complex detail, for preferring other readings where these seem to have particular merit.

In doing this he makes it clear that he is authorised, through the ijāza-system, for all the riwāyāt he cites.