Overview

Hadith commentary has been a central site of Islamic intellectual life for more than a millennium, across diverse periods, regions and sects. This is the first volume of scholarly essays ever collected on the key texts and critical themes of hadith commentary. The book unfolds chronologically from the early centuries of Islam to the modern period, and readers will discover continuities and changes as a group of international experts offer illuminating studies of Sunnis, Shi'is and Sufis who interpret and debate the meaning of hadith over a wide terrain: Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, India, and further. The volume also models a variety of methodological approaches, including social history, intellectual history, the study of religion, and digital history. By highlighting both differences and commonalities as the practice of hadith commentary circulated across distant eras and lands, this volume sheds new light on the way Muslims have historically understood the meaning of Muhammad's example.

Full Product Details

Author:   Joel Blecher (Assistant Professor of History, George Washington University) ,  Stefanie Brinkmann (Research Fellow at the “Bibliotheca Arabica Project”, Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Leipzig)
Publisher:   Edinburgh University Press
Imprint:   Edinburgh University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 1.70cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.454kg
ISBN:  

9781474461054

ISBN 10:   1474461050
Pages:   320
Publication Date:   28 February 2025
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

List of Figures Notes on Contributors Preface Introduction: What is Hadith Commentary? Joel Blecher and Stefanie Brinkmann Part I Formations and Developments in the Early and Middle Periods 1 Between Philology and Hadith Criticism: The Genre of Sharḥ Gharīb al-Ḥadīth Stefanie Brinkmann 2 The Hermeneutics of al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā: The Interpretation of akhbār al-āḥād in Kitāb al-Amālī Ali Aghaei 3 ‘Blessed are the Strangers (ghurabāʾ)’: An Apocalyptic Hadith on the Virtues of Loneliness, Sadness and Exile Youshaa Patel 4 Sufi Contributions to Hadith Commentary Samer Dajani 5 Ibn Rajab’s Commentary on al-Nawawī’s Forty Hadith: Innovation and Audience in the Jāmiʿ al-ʿulūm wa-l-ḥikam Mohammad Gharaibeh 6 The Words of the Imām beyond Philosophy and Tradition: Shīʿī Hadith Commentaries in the Ṣafavid Period Sajjad Rizvi Part II Modern Recollections and Reimaginings 7 Contesting Ḥanaf ī Thought in a Twentieth-century Turkish Hadith Commentary Susan Gunasti 8 Debating Authority and Authenticity in Modern South Asian Hadith Commentaries: Muḥammad Zakariyyā Kāndhalawī’ Awjaz al-masālik Ali Altaf Mian 9 ʿAllāma Ṭabāṭabāʾī and Exegetical Hadiths in al-Mῑzān: A Contemporary Imāmī Commentary on Hadith? Shadi Nafisi 10 Studying Hadith Commentaries in the Digital Age Maroussia Bednarkiewicz, Aslisho Qurboniev and Gowaart Van Den Bossche Afterword: More Comments, Further Questions Joel Blecher Index

Reviews

The papers in this volume span the pre-modern and the modern, address Sunni, Shii and Sufi writings, cover different geographical settings, as well as highlight digital methods. Altogether, this is a superb and much-needed contribution that attests to the importance of a discourse that has been undervalued in the secondary sources. -- Andrew J. Newman, University of Edinburgh Engaging and informative, this impressive book explores the rich genre of commentary literature that developed around the interpretation of the Hadith. With its broad coverage and analysis, the work should serve as a valuable reference source for the academic study of the Prophetic hadiths. -- Mustafa Shah, SOAS, University of London The contributions brought together in this volume demonstrate both continuity and change across centuries and regions in the history, culture, and tradition of hadith commentary—stretching from ninth-century Khurasan until twentieth-century Turkey—and open up entirely new perspectives in which to explore and analyse this important genre. -- Sabine Schmidtke, Institute for Advanced Study

Author Information

Joel Blecher is Associate Professor of History at the George Washington University in Washington, DC, the author of Said the Prophet of God: Hadith Commentary Across a Millennium (University of California Press, 2018), and co-translator of Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī’s Merits of the Plague (Penguin Classics, 2023). His other writings have appeared in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Islamic Law & Society, Oriens, and several edited volumes. His work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Library of Congress, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Stefanie Brinkmann is Research Fellow at the “Bibliotheca Arabica Project” at the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig. Trained in Arabic, Persian, and Roman Studies, she had acting professorships at the universities of Freiburg and Hamburg, and was member and principal investigator of a number of manuscript projects. She has published in the fields of manuscript studies, especially on hadith manuscripts, material culture in hadith, and classical Arabic poetry.

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