al-Mustadrak 'ala al-Sahihayn

Al-Mustadrak 'ala al-Sahihayn ("The Supplement to the Two Sahihs") is the work of al-Hakim Abu 'Abd Allah al-Naysaburi (d. 405 AH). In it he gathered, with his own chains, hadiths whose narrators he judged to be of the kind al-Bukhari and Muslim relied on, but which the two had not included in their Sahihs. He dictated its preface on Monday 7 Muharram 373 AH. ⁴

It is one of the largest hadith books, holding thousands of hadiths, and its author sometimes goes to great lengths gathering the routes of a single hadith, as with "Adorn the Qur'an with your voices" and "There is no marriage without a guardian". ⁵

Al-Hakim opens by saying that God honoured this community with chains of transmission passed on by one upright person from another, and raised up in every age imams who vouched for the narrators of reports, among them al-Bukhari and Muslim, who composed two refined books of sound reports. He then points out that neither of them ever claimed that nothing was sound beyond what he had included. ⁴

He says that in his own day a group he calls innovators had arisen who taunted the transmitters of reports that all the hadith they held sound did not reach ten thousand. ⁴ Leading scholars of Nishapur and elsewhere, he says, asked him to compile a book of hadiths transmitted with chains of the kind the two masters relied on. ⁶

He defines his condition as bringing out "hadiths whose narrators are trustworthy, of the kind the two masters or one of them relied on", resting on the principle, accepted by all the jurists of Islam as he puts it, that additions to chains and texts made by trustworthy narrators are accepted. He also says he had defended the two masters against the criticisms made of them in his book al-Madkhal ila al-Sahih. ⁶

The book is arranged in books by legal and thematic subject, beginning with the Book of Faith straight after the preface. ⁷ In the numbered Dar al-Kutub al-'Ilmiyya edition, volume 3 holds three consecutive books: the Book of the Hijra, no. 29 (pp. 3-20, from hadith 4257); the Book of Campaigns and Expeditions, no. 30 (from p. 21, from hadith 4297); and the Book of Knowing the Companions, no. 31 (from p. 64, from hadith 4403). The volume ends at hadith 6709. ⁸

Al-Hakim opens the Book of the Hijra by saying that most of its reports are sound with the two masters, who both included the Companions' disagreement over how long the Prophet ﷺ stayed in Mecca. He then gives 'Ali's report that the stay in Mecca lasted thirteen years and says that the reports agree on this with what the two masters included from Ibn 'Abbas. ²

The Book of Knowing the Companions is a run of chapters headed "the virtues of so-and-so" or simply "so-and-so". It begins with the four caliphs and the Prophet's household, moves on to the early converts, the men of Badr and the martyrs, and then to a long series of Companions grouped by tribe. In each, al-Hakim brings together reports on lineage, conversion, battles and death alongside hadiths with full chains. ⁹

Al-Hakim usually follows a hadith with his verdict: "sound on the condition of the two masters, and they did not include it", or "on Muslim's condition", or "sound in chain, and they did not include it". Ibn Hajar infers from his practice that when the two masters or one of them had included the narrators of a hadith, al-Hakim said "on their condition" or "on the condition of one of them", and when some of its narrators had not been included by them he said only "sound in chain". Ibn Hajar cites al-Hakim's remark on the hadith "Mercy is taken away only from the wretched": had this Abu 'Uthman been al-Nahdi, he would have graded it on the condition of the two masters. ¹⁰

Ibn Hajar divides the book's hadiths into three classes. The first is hadiths whose narrators the two masters relied on together, free of hidden defects; these are few where the two have no parallel, and many of them are in fact in the Sahihs, added by al-Hakim in error. The second is hadiths whose narrators the two included only as corroboration and supporting evidence, not as proof; this is "the mainstay of the book", and most of it does not fall below the grade of hasan. The third is hadiths whose narrators they never included at all, among which a hadith seldom reaches the grade of sound. ¹¹

Ibn Hajar also notes that al-Hakim did not distinguish the sound from the good, calling all of it sound, following his teachers Ibn Khuzayma and Ibn Hibban. ¹²

One of his views that drew debate was that the two masters required a hadith to be transmitted from its Companion by two narrators, so that he would explain their omission of a hadith by its Companion having only one transmitter. Al-Wadi'i answers this with the Companions listed by al-Daraqutni in [[work/al-ilzamat-ala-sahih-al-bukhari|al-Ilzamat]] whom the two masters included although each had only one transmitter, such as Mirdas al-Aslami, 'Adi ibn 'Amira and 'Itban ibn Malik. ¹³ Al-Hakim himself relates that al-Daraqutni asked him why the two masters left out the hadith of Usama ibn Sharik (may God be pleased with him); he replied that only Ziyad ibn 'Ilaqa transmitted from Usama, and al-Daraqutni answered with Companions they included who had a single transmitter. Al-Wadi'i reads this as al-Hakim conceding the point. ¹⁴ Al-Wadi'i also notes places where al-Hakim contradicts his own view, as when he says of the hadith of Matar ibn 'Ukamis that the two masters included a number of Companions who each had only one transmitter. ¹⁵

Hadith critics agreed on al-Hakim's high standing and aimed their criticism at his laxity in the Mustadrak in particular. Al-Wadi'i writes that scholars objected to nothing in him but his laxity in this book, and that in his other books he is like any other respected scholar. ¹⁶

• Al-Dhahabi rejected Abu Sa'd al-Malini's claim to have found in it no hadith on the two masters' condition, calling it "obstinacy and excess". He estimated that what meets their condition or that of one of them is perhaps a third of the book or less, that about a quarter has chains that are fair, good or sound, and that the rest is objectionable and strange, with some hundred hadiths among them "which the heart testifies are false", which he collected in a separate booklet. He still called it "a useful book", and abridged it. ³ In the version Ibn Hajar quotes, al-Dhahabi puts what meets their condition or that of one of them at "about half", with about a quarter sound or good in chain. ¹⁷ In Tadhkirat al-Huffaz he wrote that he wished al-Hakim had never compiled the Mustadrak, since his poor handling of it lowered his merits. ³
• The hafiz 'Abd al-Ghani ibn 'Abd al-Wahid al-Maqdisi, as Ibn Hajar reports from a dictation of 595 AH, found only three hadiths on the condition of al-Bukhari and Muslim that they had not included, among them Anas's hadith "A man of the people of Paradise is about to come in to you" and the report of al-Hajjaj ibn 'Ilat's conversion. ¹⁸
• Ibn al-Salah described al-Hakim as "taking wide strides in the condition of soundness and lax in pronouncing it", and chose a middle course: what he alone declared sound, with no other imam's authentication, is if not sound then hasan and may be used as proof, unless a defect appears in it. ¹⁹
• Ibn Kathir listed what the book contains: sound hadiths genuinely missing from the Sahihs, which are few; sound hadiths that the two masters or one of them did include without al-Hakim realising it; and good, weak and fabricated ones. ¹⁹
• Ibn Hajar paired the Mustadrak with Ibn al-Jawzi's book of fabrications: the one leads readers to think the unfabricated fabricated, the other to think the unsound sound, so only a specialist can benefit from either. In Lisan al-Mizan he passes on the excuse that al-Hakim compiled it late in life, when some decline and inattention had come over him. ²⁰
• Ibn Taymiyya held that hadith specialists do not rely on al-Hakim's authentication alone, even though most of what he declares sound is sound, and that the authentications of Ibn Hibban, al-Tirmidhi, al-Daraqutni, Ibn Khuzayma and Ibn Manda are more exacting. ²¹
• Al-Zayla'i counted him among the most lax, because he graded chains on the two masters' condition when they had not relied on all its men in that combination, for example when some of its men were al-Bukhari's and others Muslim's. ²²

One of the best-known charges is that al-Hakim listed 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Zayd ibn Aslam in his book on weak narrators, stating that he transmitted fabricated hadiths from his father, and then included a hadith of his in the Mustadrak with the verdict "sound in chain"; Ibn Hajar counts this among the oddities of al-Hakim's work. ¹² Al-Wadi'i also quotes al-Khatib al-Baghdadi's report that the hadith scholars objected to his placing the hadith of the bird among those he claimed met the two masters' condition. ²³

Al-Hakim himself acknowledged that his memory weakened with age: he is reported as saying that when he discussed a chapter he now needed to consult his books, because he had grown old. ¹⁶

• [[work/talkhis-al-mustadrak|Talkhis al-Mustadrak]] by al-Dhahabi: an abridgement in which al-Dhahabi comments on al-Hakim's verdicts. It was printed beneath the text in the Hyderabad edition, which says that in it he "drew attention to [al-Hakim's] laxity and his authentications". ²⁴ Al-Wadi'i holds that the Talkhis cannot replace the original, because al-Dhahabi drops part of the chain and the defect may lie in the part dropped. ²⁵
• [[work/al-tatabbu-li-ma-fi-al-mustadrak-min-awham|Tatabbu' awham al-Hakim allati sakata 'alayha al-Dhahabi]] by Muqbil ibn Hadi al-Wadi'i: a collection of notes he had kept since studying at the Institute of the Meccan Haram, drawn from al-Munawi's Fayd al-Qadir, the books of al-Albani and his own students' research. ²⁶ He mentions that Salih ibn Qa'id al-Wadi'i collected the hadiths al-Hakim added that are in fact in the two Sahihs or one of them, and that they number more than three hundred and fifty. ²⁷

• The Hyderabad edition, printed at the press of the Majlis Da'irat al-Ma'arif al-Nizamiyya, first printing, with 1341 AH on the title page of volume 3 and al-Dhahabi's Talkhis beneath the text; later scholars' volume and page references are to this printing. ^{24 28}
• The Dar al-Haramayn edition, Cairo 1417 AH/1997 CE, with al-Dhahabi's critiques and al-Wadi'i's Tatabbu'; its corrector notes that it was prepared from the earlier printing, not from a manuscript. ²⁹
• The Dar al-Kutub al-'Ilmiyya edition, edited by Mustafa 'Abd al-Qadir 'Ata, which its title page calls the first to number the hadiths and to collate several manuscripts, with excerpts from al-Dhahabi's Talkhis and Mizan, al-'Iraqi's Amali and al-Munawi's [[work/fayd-al-qadir|Fayd al-Qadir]]. ³⁰
• The Dar al-Ta'sil edition, 1435 AH/2014 CE, which its title page describes as edited for the first time on the oldest manuscripts and printed in its correct order, with an inductive study of al-Hakim's verdicts and identification of the narrators in its chains; its ninth volume holds the indexes of incipits and narrators. ³¹

Whatever has been said of it, the Mustadrak remains one of the largest stores of chains after the two Sahihs. Al-Wadi'i, one of its sternest critics, says that al-Hakim was lax in authentication "and his book cannot be done without". ⁵ Sa'd ibn 'Ali al-Zanjani called its author the best compiler among the hadith masters of his time. ³² See also the question it raised, how al-Hakim's authentications in the Mustadrak are to be treated, and the condition of the two masters.