Musnad al-Bazzar (al-Bahr al-Zakhkhar)

Musnad al-Bazzar is the work of al-Hafiz Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn Amr ibn Abd al-Khaliq al-Bazzar of Basra (d. 292 AH), who gathered his teachers' hadiths arranged by the Companions who related them and discussed their defects. ¹ Its author gave it no title; it became known as Musnad al-Bazzar, and was later called "the Large Musnad" to distinguish it from his smaller one, "the Annotated Musnad" (al-Mu'allal), as in al-Dhahabi and al-Suyuti, and "the Overflowing Sea" (al-Bahr al-Zakhkhar); the thesis author prefers its best-known name, Musnad al-Bazzar. ^{1 2} The printed edition from Maktabat al-Ulum wa-l-Hikam in Medina bears the title al-Bahr al-Zakhkhar al-Ma'ruf bi-Musnad al-Bazzar. ^{3 4}

Al-Bazzar arranged it by the Companions in order of merit and rank: first the four caliphs, then the rest of the Ten, then al-Abbas, al-Hasan and al-Husayn, and so on; within each Companion's section he grouped the hadiths by those who related from him — Thabit from Anas, then Qatada from Anas — and then by those who related from each Follower. ⁵ The thesis notes that he did not always keep to this order, since the method of exposing defects sometimes required gathering all the routes of a hadith in one place to show its defect or its corroborations. ⁵

Among its marks are his statements of sole transmission — "we know of no one who related this hadith from Anas except Qatada" — at the level of the Companion, the Follower, or every layer of the chain; his counting of the hadiths one narrator related from another; his choice of the route giving a hadith in full; and his notes on corroborating routes and differing wordings. ^{6 7 8 9} The thesis quotes Ibn Kathir's remark that Musnad al-Bazzar contains discussion of defects found in no other musnad. ^{10 3}

The thesis lists among its features: its many hadiths not found in the Six Books — citing Dr Abd Allah al-Lihyani's count of 3,698 beyond the Six Books and 1,052 beyond the Six Books and Ahmad's Musnad; its selection, which leaves out weak hadiths unless for a reason it states; its being an annotated musnad; al-Bazzar's own judgements on narrators; its many singular and rare reports, so that Ibn Hajar counted it among the places to look for them; its inclusion of 122 Companions whose hadiths do not appear in the great musnads such as Ahmad's; its good arrangement; and the rarity of fabricated reports in it. ^{10 11}

Ibn Kathir made it one of the ten books whose hadiths he gathered in Jami' al-Masanid wa-l-Sunan, and al-Haythami extracted its hadiths not in the Six Books in Kashf al-Astar an Zawa'id al-Bazzar, then combined them with the additions of other works in Majma' al-Zawa'id wa-Manba' al-Fawa'id. ^{12 10}

Al-Bazzar related it in Egypt from memory, and there Muhammad ibn Ayyub ibn al-Samut, the transmitter of the Large Musnad, related it from him. ^{13 14} For the section of the Musnad of Anas ibn Malik the thesis relies on the Azhar Library manuscript (604/1, Hadith 924), the only copy containing the Musnad of Anas: 296 folios, copied in 509 AH, containing the Musnad of Ibn Umar, the whole Musnad of Anas divided into eight parts, and a large part of the Musnad of Abu Hurayra (may God be pleased with him). ¹⁵ The section edited in the thesis has 266 hadiths, most of them related by Qatada from Anas, which al-Bazzar received from 105 teachers. ^{16 17}