Sunan Ibn Mājah is one of the six major Sunni hadith collections (Kutub al-Sittah). The Sunan was authored by Ibn Mājah (born 824 CE, died 887CE).

Description

It contains 4,341 ahadith in 32 books (kutub) divided into 1,500 chapters (abwāb). Some 1,329 hadith are only found in it, and not in the other five canonical works. About 20 of the traditions it contains were later declared to be forged; such as those dealing with the merits of individuals, tribes or towns, including Ibn Mājah's home town of Qazvin.

Views

Sunni Muslims regard this collection as sixth in terms of authenticity of their six major hadith collections. Although Ibn Mājah related hadith from scholars across the eastern Islamic world, neither he nor his Sunan were well known outside of his native region of northwestern Iran until the 5th/11th century. Muḥammad ibn Ṭāhir al-Maqdisī (died 507/1113) remarked that while Ibn Mājah's Sunan was well regarded in Ray, Iran, it was not widely known among the broader community of Muslim jurists outside of Iran. It was also Muḥammad b. Ṭāhir who first proposed a six-book canon of the most authentic Sunni hadith collections in his Shurūṭ al-aʾimma al-sitta, which included Ibn Mājah's Sunan alongside Sahih Bukhari, Sahih Muslim, Sunan Abu Dawud, Sunan Nasai, and Jami al-Tirmidhi. Nonetheless, consensus among Sunni scholars concerning this six-book canon, which included Ibn Mājah's Sunan, did not occur until the 7th/13th century, and even then this consensus was largely contained to the Sunni scholarly community in the eastern Islamic world. Scholars such as al-Nawawi (died 676/1277) and Ibn Khaldun (died 808/1405) excluded Sunan Ibn Mājah from their lists of canonical Sunni hadith collections, while others replaced it with either the Muwatta Imam Malik or with the Sunan al-Darimi. It was not until Ibn al-Qaisarani's formal standardization of the Sunni hadith cannon into six books in the 11th century that Ibn Majah's collection was regarded the esteem granted to the five other books.

Contents

Editor, Muhammad Fu'ād 'Abd al-Bāqī's 1952–53 Cairo publication, in 2 volumes, provides the standard topical classification of the hadith Arabic text. The book is divided into 37 volumes. • # the book of purification and its sunnah • # the book of the prayer • # the book of the adhan (the call to prayer) and the sunnah regarding it • # the book on the mosques and the congregations • # establishing the prayer and the sunnah regarding them • # chapters regarding funerals • # fasting • # the chapters regarding zakat • # the chapters on marriage • # the chapters on divorce • # the chapters on expiation • # the chapters on business transactions • # the chapters on rulings • # the chapters on gifts • # the chapters on charity • # the chapters on pawning • # the chapters on shufa (preemption) • # the chapters on lost property • # the chapters on manumission (of slaves) • # the chapters on legal punishments • # the chapters on blood money • # the chapters on wills • # chapters on shares of inheritance • # the chapters on jihad • # chapters on hajj rituals • # chapters on sacrifices • # chapters on slaughtering • # chapters on hunting • # chapters on food • # chapters on drinks • # chapters on medicine • # chapters on dress • # etiquette • # supplication • # interpretation of dreams • # tribulations • # zuhd