Wafa' al-Wafa bi-Akhbar Dar al-Mustafa (al-Samhudi)

Wafa' al-Wafa bi-akhbar dar al-Mustafa is a history of Medina by Nur al-Din Ali ibn Ahmad al-Samhudi, who died in 911 AH. ¹ Its editor Muhammad Muhyi al-Din Abd al-Hamid says it is the second of three books al-Samhudi, a resident of Medina, wrote on the same subject. ²

The first was a detailed book gathering every history of Medina he could find and what he had seen himself, which he names at the start of the second book "Iqtifa' al-Wafa"; it was never finished, because he left it in the Prophet ﷺ's Mosque when he travelled to Mecca and it burned with the parts of the mosque that caught fire. ² The second is this book, a middle-sized work written at the request of one "whom it is a gain to obey and a loss to oppose", abridging the first "with moderation, not excess", with additions on the Noble Chamber, which he knew well from the building work in his day and from serving in its reconstruction. ^{2 3} The third is an abridgement of about half its length, "Khulasat al-Wafa". ³

• Chapter 1 on the names of the city. ⁴
• Chapter 2 on its merits, beginnings and end, in sixteen sections: its preference over other places, the call to live there and bear its hardships, honouring its people, the Prophet's prayers for it and the removal of its fever, its protection from the Dajjal and plague, healing by its soil and dates, its peculiarities, its sanctuary and its two hills Ayr and Thawr, the rulings of its sanctuary in eight questions, then its beginnings and end, its people's departure and the event of al-Harra, and the appearance of the fire of the Hijaz. ^{4 5}
• Chapter 3 on its inhabitants in past times, the Prophet's arrival and his affairs there in the years of the hijra, in twelve sections, among them its inhabitants after the Flood and why the Jews settled there, why the Ansar came, their genealogy, their supremacy over the Jews and their encounter with Tubba', the quarters and forts of the Ansar's clans, and their wars. ⁵

In each section al-Samhudi gathers hadith and reports with their chains and sources, citing the hadith critics' judgements on them by name, as when he quotes al-Haythami on the narrators of a hadith about the fire of the Hijaz; then he discusses scholars' views, as when he answers al-Nawawi's statement that Medina is Hijazi, not Yemeni, with what he quotes from al-Shafi'i. ^{6 7} For events in Medina he quotes witnesses, such as the letter of al-Qadi Sinan, judge of Medina, on the earthquake of 654 AH. ⁸

Volume one of Muhammad Muhyi al-Din Abd al-Hamid's edition was read; he vocalized its rare words, added modern punctuation, short marginal headings and brief notes, and signed his preface at the end of Jumada al-Ula 1374 AH, 23 January 1955, at the request of Shaykh Muhammad "al-Mankani" (as the copy read has it), a resident of Medina; the copy read is published by Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyya, Beirut. ^{9 3}