Tajrid al-Sihah

Tajrid al-Sihah ("The Distillation of the Sound Collections") is the book of Razin b. Mu'awiya al-'Abdari of Zaragoza in al-Andalus, who died in Muharram 535 AH according to Ibn al-'Imad. ³ It gathered the hadiths of the six books that Ibn al-Athir calls "the mother of the hadith books and the most widely held". ⁴

Ibn al-Athir says that when he came upon the compilations combining the source-books he found them well arranged, and Razin's the largest and most comprehensive, since it contained the six books; he wanted to devote himself to it, if only by reading and copying it. ⁴ He notes that Razin based his arrangement on al-Bukhari's chapters, keeping some and dropping others. ⁴ And that Razin included Malik's fiqh from the Muwatta' and al-Bukhari's chapter headings, unlike al-Humaydi and others who combined the books but kept to hadith alone. ²

• Hadiths placed in chapters where others belonged better. ⁴
• Much repetition, and still more omission. ⁴
• Comparing it with the source-books, he found many hadiths Razin had not included, and hadiths in Razin's book he could not find in the copies he had read and heard — which he attributes to differences between copies and routes of transmission. ⁴

Ibn al-Athir first set out to rework this book into Jami' al-Usul, then abandoned its arrangement and worked from the source-books instead. ¹ Even so, he copied the hadiths he found in Razin but not in the source-books as they stood, in their places, leaving the compiler's name blank in case he found them in other copies, and drew attention to some of them early in the book. ²