101 Hadith Qudsi by pImam ibn Arabi

hadith and ibn ¡arabi
According to one well-known ¢ad¨th, the Prophet is reported to have said:
“I have left two things among you. You will not go astray as long as you hold
on to them: the Book of God and my Sunna.” Nonetheless, the initiative to
establish a de¥nitive record of ¢ad¨th did not come to fruition until well over
a hundred years after the death of Muhammad, and the six major collections
which are regarded as the most authoritative by the Sunni community 4 were
set down during the third century AH.
In the process of taking evidence from countless people who recounted
what had come down to them from and about the Prophet, the men who
made such collections (mu¢addith¬n) developed a system of principles for
assessing the trustworthiness of such accounts. The authenticity of a ¢ad¨th
is assessed by the reliability of its reporters (råw¨) and the continuity of the
links between them. Consequently the isnåd, or list of the names of people
who passed a ¢ad¨th on from one to another, forms an important part of a
¢ad¨th in its full form, as well as the actual text (matn) itself. For a number
of reasons, the accounts which make up the Sunna are not all equally reliable,
and a critical methodology has been developed to evaluate their relative
authenticity, described in terms of strength or weakness. It is thus universally
acknowledged that there is need for discretion in the case of ¢ad¨th, despite
their importance, because of the way they have come down to us. However,
the reader is fortunate that Mu¢y¨dd¨n Ibn ¡Arab¨ is a guide of perfect taste
and discernment, and a consummate mu¢addith.
±ad¨th quds¨ do not form a separate group within the major books of tradition.
It appears to have been nearly ¥ve hundred years after the Prophet
before the ¥rst collection was made solely of ¢ad¨th quds¨. At least, the earliest
work cited by William Graham 5 is the Kitåb al-a¢ådith al-ilåhiyya by Ûåhir
b. Êåhir al-Shahhåm¨ al-Naysåb¬r¨ (d.|533/1138), half a century before Ibn
¡Arab¨ was born. Nonetheless, Ibn ¡Arab¨’s Mishkåt al-anwår is the second
oldest text of this kind mentioned by Graham, being completed in the year
599/1203. It is unusual in that it is not just drawn from the books of tradition,
but also contains one section of forty ¢ad¨th quds¨ with a full isnåd for
each, which begins from the people who transmitted the ¢ad¨th to Ibn ¡Arab¨.
Other collections were made later by other authors from existing texts,
4. The six most authoritative Sunni collections are the two Ía¢¨¢s compiled by al-
Bukhår¨ (d.|870) and Muslim ibn al-±ajjåj (d.|875), followed by the Sunan works of Ab¬
D夬d al-Sijistån¨ (d.|888), Ab¬ ¡Ôså al-Tirmidh¨ (d.|892), Ab¬ ¡Abd al-Ra¢mån al-Nas夨
(d.|915), and Ibn Måja al-Qazw¨n¨ (d.|887). Some people, Ibn ¡Arab¨ included, seem to
have preferred Målik’s Muwa††a¤ to the Sunan of Ibn Måja.
5. See Graham, Divine Word, Appendix I, for a chronological list of ¥fteen collections
of Divine Sayings that exist in manuscript or printed form.
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