Title: Treatise on the sciences of Hadith

"The name 'ulûm al-hadîth (sciences of hadîth), designates the theory and method of successive operations to which any hadîth must be subjected before, determined as to its value, its scope, its exact meaning, it can be used to the development of the hukm shar'î (legal precept).

The author of the present work, namely at-Taqrîb, is none other than Imam an-Nawawî (d. 676h.) who is a master in the knowledge of the sciences of hadîth, and who left us the best commentary on the Sahih of Muslim.

The Taqrîb is the abridgement of another of his works, the Irshâd al-Hadîth, itself an abridgement of the ma'rifat anwâ' 'ulûm al-hadîth of ibn as-Salâh (d. 643h.). Dating from 1900, the translation of the Taqrîb by W. Marçais is hardly accessible to non-specialists. What's more, Marçais' annotations reflect views that are very personal to him, symptomatic of the orientalist spirit which then reigned supreme over "Muslim studies".

Furthermore, the last branches of the Taqrîb have been incompletely translated, and the methodological vocabulary used is now outdated. This is why we propose in this book: to rid the explanatory notes which accompany the text of the preconceived ideas which are regularly found there, and to give only a faithful representation of what is said in the commentaries of the Scholars; to fully translate the Taqrîb; to refresh the methodological vocabulary used by Marçais, by stripping it of its various rusts and giving it the shine of something new."

Author: Imam An-Nawawî

Editions: Maison d’Ennour