al-Targhib wa-l-Tarhib min al-Hadith al-Sharif (al-Mundhiri)

Al-Targhib wa-l-Tarhib min al-Hadith al-Sharif is Zaki al-Din 'Abd al-'Azim b. 'Abd al-Qawi al-Mundhiri's (d. 656 AH) collection of hadiths encouraging good deeds and warning against their opposites. ³ In his preface he says that once he had finished dictating his Mukhtasar of Abu Dawud and al-Khilafiyyat wa-Madhahib al-Salaf, a student asked him to dictate a comprehensive book on encouragement and warning, free of the length that chains and long discussion of defects bring; so he dictated a small book, limited to reports that explicitly encourage or warn, leaving aside the Prophet ﷺ's bare actions except rarely. ⁴

He gives the hadith, then names the compilers of the well-known books who transmit it — sometimes only some of them, for brevity — and indicates whether its chain is sound, good or weak unless the compiler is one who undertook to include only sound reports; this, he says, makes giving the chain unnecessary. ⁵ He leaves aside the finer hidden defects, which only the great critics can hope to judge. ⁵

He has a convention for the opening word. Reports whose chain is sound, good or close to them — and also mursal, broken or interrupted ones, or those with an unnamed or disputed narrator — open with "from" ('an), and he then notes their defect; reports whose chain includes someone called a liar, forger, suspect, universally abandoned or very weak open with "it is related" (ruwiya), so that a weak chain is signalled twice: by "it is related" and by the absence of comment at the end. ⁶ He gave the disputed narrators a chapter of their own at the end of the book, in alphabetical order, briefly stating the criticism and praise of each. ^{6 2}

He holds that every hadith he cites to Abu Dawud on which Abu Dawud is silent is as Abu Dawud said and does not fall below good, and he points out cases where Abu Dawud was lenient in keeping silent, al-Tirmidhi in declaring good, or Ibn Hibban and al-Hakim in declaring sound — not as criticism of them but as a measure for the discerning reader. ⁷

He says he included all material of this kind from Malik's Muwatta', Ahmad's Musnad, Sahih al-Bukhari, Sahih Muslim, Abu Dawud's Sunan and Marasil, al-Tirmidhi's Jami', al-Nasa'i's al-Sunan al-Kubra and al-Yawm wa-l-Layla, Ibn Majah's Sunan, al-Tabarani's three Mu'jams, the Musnads of Abu Ya'la and al-Bazzar, Ibn Hibban's Sahih and al-Hakim's Mustadrak, except what escaped him or he forgot while dictating. ⁸ He added hadiths from Ibn Khuzayma's Sahih, the books of Ibn Abi al-Dunya, al-Bayhaqi's Shu'ab al-Iman and al-Zuhd al-Kabir, and Abu al-Qasim al-Asbahani's al-Targhib wa-l-Tarhib, taking everything from the last that was not in the other books and omitting what in it was shown to be fabricated. ⁹ When a hadith is in the seven core books he rarely cites it to any other. ⁷

After finishing he placed a table of its books and chapters at the front; the books open with Knowledge, then Purity, Prayer and Supererogatory Prayer, each chapter headed "Encouragement to ..." or "Warning against ...". ¹⁰ The fourth volume ends with sections on the description of Paradise and then the chapter on disputed narrators. ²

Al-Maktaba al-Qayyima, Cairo, in four volumes, collated with several copies and including additions missing from the earlier printing, together with al-Targhib wa-l-Tarhib min al-Qur'an al-Hakim by Muhammad Munir al-Dimashqi; its footnotes gloss rare words and give notices on the compilers. ^{3 8}