adh-Dhahabi

This article deals with the historian and hadith scholar Mohammed adh-Dhahabi. For the Jordanian politician see Nadir adh-Dhahabi .

Shams ad-Dīn Muhammad ibn Ahmad adh-Dhahabī ( Arabic شمس الدين محمد بن أحمد بن عثمان بن قيماز بن عبد الله الذهبي, DMG Šams ad-Dīn Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. ʿUṯmān b. Qaimāz b. ʿAbd Allāh aḏ-Ḏahabī born. 1274 ; died 1348 in Damascus , Syria ) was a famous Muslim scholar-biographer and historian.

Origin and life

His family was of Turkmen origin; his great-grandfather lived in the Diyarbekir region . His grandfather was a carpenter and lived in Damascus; his father was a well-known goldsmith in the city, which gave him the nickname adh-Dhahabi from dhahab  /ذهب / ḏahab  / 'gold' received. Adh-Dhahabi himself initially continued his father's craft and called himself, as his handwritten entries in some manuscripts document, Ibn adh-Dhahabi ("son of adh-Dhahabi"). His contemporary biographers, however, called him adh-Dhahabi.

At the age of eighteen he devoted himself to the study of reading the Koran ( qira'at ) and the Hadith . Only with his father's approval was he allowed to begin his short study trips at the age of twenty, first to Syria, then to Jerusalem , Ramla and Nablus . On his pilgrimage he studied in prominent circles of scholars in Mecca . At the age of 22 he arrived in Alexandria in order to continue his studies with almost all the great scholars of the time in Cairo. After his return to Damascus he taught as a professor of hadith in the Madrasa Umm Salih; however, he was forbidden to succeed his teacher al-Mizzi (d. 1341) in the famous al-Ashrafiya Madrasa in Damascus. Around 1340–1342 he went blind, but did not interrupt his classes at various schools in Damascus. Already during his lifetime he was called "Hadith connoisseur / traditionarian of the era"محدث العصر / muḥaddiṯu ʾl-ʿaṣr . He died in February 1348 and was buried on Bab as-Saghir at the gates of Damascus.

Works

Adh-Dhahabi was active in various fields of Islamic science. His biographers name 215 work titles in the fields of reading the Koran, hadith, criticism of hadith, fiqh , questions of faith, scholar biographies and history .

• تأريخ الإسلام ووفيات المشاهير والأعلام / Taʾrīḫ al-islām wa-wafayāt al-mašāhīr wa-l-aʿlām  / 'History of Islam and the passing of the famous and the great scholars'.

It is the main work of adh-Dhahabī, on which he worked until the last years of his life, but which nevertheless remained incomplete because he could not record all contemporaries biographically. In its chronological structure, starting with the descent of the Prophet Mohammed and his biography, it briefly presents the historically significant events of the years in the form of an annalist , in order to then present biographically the great scholars and historical personalities who died that year. The last entries by the author refer to the year 1300. In the following generations, students of adh-Dhahabī continued to write the book up to the year 1388. The Beirut edition, which was made by ʿUmar bAbd as-Salām Tadmurī and which appeared in the second edition between 1990 and 1998, comprises a total of 53 volumes. Digitized

• al-ʿibar fī chabar man ghabar  /العبر في خبر من غَبَر / al-ʿibar fī ḫabar man ġabar

is in many ways a short version of the above mentioned work. It is arranged chronologically and records the most important events of 700 years of Islamic history with a brief biography of the most important scholars who died in those years. The work was created one year after the completion of his “History of Islam”, but it also contains information that is not preserved in it. The work is in the edition of Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn al-Munaǧǧid and Fuʾād Sayyid (Kuwait 1960–1961).

• Siyar a'lam al-nubala '  /سير أعلام النبلاء / Siyar aʿlāmi ʾn-nubalāʾ  / 'Biography of distinguished scholars'

It is a literary-biographically interesting and information-rich short version of the above-mentioned work, in which adh-Dhahabi only describes the vita of scholars chronologically and without reference to the historical events of their time. The work has been available since 1981 (Beirut) in the 7th edition (1990) in 24 volumes + register volume in the edition by Šuʿaib al-Arnaʾūṭ and Ḥusain al-Asad.

• Tadhhib at-tahdhib  /تذهيب التهذيب / Taḏhību ʾt-tahḏīb  / 'Gilding of Extension'

This work is the culmination of a series of earlier biographies of narrators of the hadith. The basic work was written by the Damascus 'Abd al-Ghani ibn Abd al-Wahid Al-Maqdisī (d. 1203 ) under the title al-Kamal fi asma' ar-ridschal  /الكمال في أسماء الرجال / al-Kamāl fī asmāʾi ʾr-riǧāl  / 'The complete about the names of men, i.e. H. the narrator of hadith '. In this work the author compiles the biographies of those narrators who appear in the six canonical collections of hadiths .

The aforementioned teacher adh-Dhahabis, the Damascus al-Mizzi, then wrote a supplement to this work and called it: Tahdhib al-Kamal fi asma 'ar-ridschal تهذيب الكمال في أسماء الرجال / Tahḏīb al-Kamāl fī asmāʾi ʾr-riǧāl  / 'Extension of the complete ... etc.'; this work is in the print edition (Beirut 1984–1992) in 35 volumes.

Adh-Dhahabi relies on this work of his teacher in his biographical work “Gilding of Extension” mentioned here, closes some gaps in al-Mizzi and supplements his biography with other scholar names.

• Mizan al-i'tidal fi naqd ar-ridschal  /ميزان الاعتدال في نقد الرجال / Mīzānu ʾl-iʿtidāl fī naqd ar-riǧāl  / 'The scales of temperance in the criticism of the traditionalists'

The three-volume work continues the tradition of critique of hadith and the biographical presentation of the narrators based on early writings of this genre. In addition to the most important dates of life, the author also documents some hadiths that are worthy of criticism and that are associated with the name of the narrator concerned. Because of its importance for the study of hadith literature in the Orient, this book has been printed several times.

• al-mushtabah fī r-ridschāl asmāʾi-him wa-ansābi-him  /المشتبه في الرجال أسمائهم وأنسابهم / al-muštabah fī r-riǧāl asmāʾi-him wa-ansābi-him

In this two-volume work, the author compiles the names and ancestry of traditionalists that have been passed down controversially and contain dubious elements (muštabah). In the introduction he recommends to his pupil to correctly mark such places in the names by placing the vowels. In the introduction, aḏ-Ḏahabī also names four sources in this genus that he uses. The work is in the edition by ʿAlī Muḥammad al-Biǧāwī (Cairo 1962).

• Ma'rifat al-qurra 'al-kibar' ala at-tabaqat wal-a'sar  /معرفة القراء الكبار على الطبقات والأعصار / Maʿrifatu ʾl-qurrāʾi ʾl-kibār ʿalā ʾṭ-ṭabaqāt wa-ʾl-aʿṣār  / 'Knowledge of the great Koran readers classified according to class and epoch'

This two-volume work is dedicated to the most famous Koran readers of the entire Islamic empire and is arranged chronologically. It begins with the third caliph Uthman ibn Affan , whose name is associated with the first "Koran editing" and ends with the mention of contemporary Koran readers who died in the first years of the 14th century. In this work, too, the author makes use of the scholarly biographies of his predecessors from the Islamic East as well as from North Africa and al-Andalus . The work was first published in 1967 in Cairo. A new edition was carried out by Šuʿaib al-Arnaʾūṭ et alii in 1984 (Muʾassasat ar-risāla. Beirut).

• Muʿdscham asch-schuyūch; al-Muʿdscham al-kabīr  /معجم الشيوخ ؛ المعجم الكبير / Muʿǧam aš-šuyūḫ; al-Muʿǧam al-kabīr  / 'Lexicon of Teachers; Das Große Lexikon 'in two volumes lists 1040 scholars in alphabetical order, with whom the author studied Islamic disciplines. The work was published in aṭ-Ṭāʾif in 1988.

• Muʿdscham muhaddithī adh-Dhahabi  /معجم محدثي الذهبي / Muʿǧam muḥaddiṯī ʾḏ-Ḏahabī  / 'Lexicon of the Traditionalists of adh-Dhahabi'

In this small book of around 200 pages (printed in Beirut 1993), adh-Dhahabi compiles, in alphabetical order, the names of those of his numerous teachers who, as traditionalists , have specialized in the transmission of hadith literature. Provided with a short biography, the author names 382 teachers of the hadith sciences in whose circle he had studied.

literature

• Carl Brockelmann : History of Arabic Literature. Second edition adapted to the supplement volumes. Vol. II. Brill, Leiden 1949, pp. 57-61 and Supplementary volume II. Brill, Leiden 1938, ISBN 90-04-14624-5 (reprint February 1996), pp. 45-47.
• Claude Gilliot: al-Ḏahabī contre la “pensée speculative”. In: Journal of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (ZDMG) 150 (2000), pp. 69-106.
• Franz Rosenthal : A History of Muslim Historiography . Brill, Leiden 1952, ISBN 90-04-01906-5 (reprint August 1999), pp. 129-30.
• Josef de Somogyi: al-Dhahabi's record of the destruction of Damascus by the Mongols in 699-700 / 1299-1301 . In: Ignác Goldziher Memorial Volume I. Budapest 1948, pp. 353–386.
• Mohammen Ben Cheneb / J. de Somogyi: Article Al- Dh ahabī , in: The Encyclopaedia of Islam . New Edition. Vol. 2 (1965), ISBN 90-04-07026-5 , pp. 214-216.
• Siyar aʿlām an-nubalāʾ . Introduction to Volume I of the work by Šuʿaib al-Arnaʾūṭ. Beirut 1990, pp. 12-140.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn al-Munaǧǧid in the introduction to the first volume, p. (ب)