Musannaf of Abd al-Razzaq


The Musannaf of Abd al-Razzaq or 'Musannaf Abd Al-Razzaq' is a very early book of Hadith that was collected by ‘Abd ar-Razzaq as-San‘ani. It not only contains a huge number of hadith attributed directly to Muhammad, but also from the Sahaba and early Muslim scholars. The title roughly means "The Categorized", which suggests the nature of this hadith collection, as it is arranged according to categories of Fiqh.

Description

It contains almost twenty thousand Hadiths according to Maktaba Shamila. Besides Prophet Hadiths, it contains narrations of Sahaba and early Muslim Scholars.

History behind this Book

The book of Hafiz Al-San'ani, Musannaf of Abd al-Razzaq was lost and mixed up with other books, and could not be differentiated for almost 1100 years until it was arranged and edited by the South Asian Scholar Maulana Habib al-Rahman al-Azmi. Maulana Habib al-Rahman who has worked on numerous books of Ahadith was famous for his vast knowledge of the hadith. It took him almost 20 years to complete this historical work and it was published in Beirut.

Reliability

An article by Harald Motzki appeared in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies that mentioned the Musannaf of `Abd al-Razzaq al-San`ani as a source of authentic ahadith of the first century AH. The conclusion of the author was, "While studying the Musannaf of `Abd al-Razzaq, I came to the conclusion that the theory championed by Goldziher, Schacht, and in their footsteps, many others – myself included – which in general, reject hadith literature as a historically reliable sources for the first century AH, deprives the historical study of early Islam of an important and a useful type of source."