al-Mughni 'an Haml al-Asfar fi al-Asfar

Al-Mughni 'an Haml al-Asfar fi al-Asfar fi Takhrij ma fi al-Ihya' min al-Akhbar ("What spares one from carrying tomes on journeys: tracing the reports in the Ihya'") is the work of the hadith master Zayn al-Din Abu al-Fadl Abd al-Rahim ibn al-Husayn al-Iraqi tracing the hadith of al-Ghazali's Ihya' 'Ulum al-Din. It is an abridgement that gives the opening words of each hadith, its Companion, who transmitted it and its grade. ^{4 2 5} Dar al-Ma'rifa in Beirut prints it "beneath" the Ihya', and in the Shamela file it appears as footnotes under the text. ^{4 6}

Al-Iraqi says in his introduction that God enabled him to complete his discussion of the hadith of the Ihya' "in the year fifty-one", but he could not locate some of them, so he put off the fair copy until the year sixty, by which time he had found much of what had escaped him; he then began a fair copy as a medium-sized work and was slow to finish it. ^{1 2} When a group repeatedly asked him to complete it, he abridged it "to the utmost, so that it would be easy to obtain and to carry on journeys", hence its title. ^{2 5} Hajji Khalifa reports that al-Iraqi composed two works tracing the Ihya's hadith in 751, one of them large. ⁷

At the end of the Kitab al-Sha'b edition is a closing note in which al-Iraqi says he completed the draft of this work in 751 and completed the fair copy of this abridgement from it on Monday 12 Rabi' al-Awwal 790. ³

Al-Iraqi sets out his method in the introduction: ^{2 5}

• He limits himself to the opening of the hadith, its Companion, its source, and whether it is sound, good or weakly sourced, which he considers "the greatest aim" for those devoted to the hereafter and for many hadith scholars. ²
• He points out what has no basis in the standard source books. ²
• If a hadith is in both Sahihs or one of them, he refers only to that; otherwise to whichever of the remaining Six Books has it; he refers beyond the Six only for a sound reason, such as a book whose author committed to soundness or one closer to the Ihya's wording. ^{2 5}
• If al-Ghazali repeats a hadith in one chapter he mentions it only the first time; if in another chapter he mentions it and notes that it came earlier, admitting that he may have overlooked this. ⁵
• By citing a source he does not mean the exact wording, which may be verbatim, by meaning or with variation "on the rule of the mustakhraj works"; where he did not find a hadith he usually gives something that serves in its place. ⁵

Al-Iraqi's verdicts appear in the footnotes of the books the museum's entries cover. On one hadith on sincerity he says al-Tirmidhi declared it sound, and of another report that its two transmitters are "both abandoned"; ^{8 9} of a hadith in the censure of status he says "I did not find it"; ¹⁰ and of another, on contentment, that its chain is "very weak". ¹¹ Such footnotes are quoted in the entries on sincerity, the love of status, poverty and contentment with God's decree.

Al-Aydarus, in Ta'rif al-Ahya', relies on al-Iraqi when answering attacks on the Ihya's hadith: among those who answered for al-Ghazali, he says, was the hadith master al-Iraqi, who showed in his tracing that most of what al-Ghazali cites is not fabricated, and that the small remainder al-Ghazali transmitted from others or distanced himself from with the formula "it is related". ^{12 13}

• Shamela page numbers are pages of the file; the page of the closing note in the Kitab al-Sha'b edition is the scan page (printed about 3024).
• Al-Iraqi's verdicts are attributed to him; the museum does not grade hadith in its own voice.