Prophetic Veneration in the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada through the Creation and Transmission of Ḥadīth Musalsal Works (7th-9th H./13th-15th C.E.)

1. The Literature of Prophetic Veneration and the Musalsalāt ¹The present work has been carried out through the Research Project “In the footsteps of Abu ʿAlī al-Ṣadafī: tradition and devotion in al-Andalus and North Africa (11th to 13th centuries)” (FFI2013-43172-P) and the research project (CSIC_201810E19).

Due to political events that have shaken the West in recent years, the subject of the veneration of the prophet Muhammad has gone from being a marginal issue about which few scholarly studies were written, to being now, sadly, a hot issue.²Since September 2005 when the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten published cartoons of the prophet Muḥammad, one of which showed him with a turban shaped like a bomb, there have been several violent events related to what Islamist groups consider a grave offense towards the figure of the prophet Muḥammad. On the representation of prophet, see Grabar and Natif, “The story of the portraits”. The academic world is not free from prejudice and fashion tendencies and, during the nineties, those of us who are dedicated to the study of works on prophetic veneration that are written and transmitted by ḥadīth experts - the traditionists (muḥaddithūn) -, often heard that our research lacked the interest of other studies on more central issues.³See the review by Dominique Urvoy on the book Ibn Bashkuwāl, Kitāb al-qurba, in Bulletin Critique des Annales Islamologiques, 14 (1998), pp. 39-40. At that time, almost no one cared about how and why the vision that the Islamic world had of Muhammad had evolved from the time of his death onwards and undergone a significant transformation, starting in the 4^th/10^th century, first in the East and later in the West, a change that had acquired great relevance both in the way the religion is practiced by many Muslims as well as in the creation of religious literature.

Despite this belated interest and decades long disregard on the part of the academic world, only mended in part by some exceptional but very highly qualified studies,⁴Among these, see Andrae, Die Person Muḥammads; Schimmel, And Muhammad is His Messenger;Khalidi, Images of Muhammad; Nagel, Allahs Liebling; and two special issues dedicated to the devotion to the prohet: Amri, Chih, and Gril (eds.), “La dévotion au Prophète de l’islam, une histoire qui reste à faire”; Chiabotti and Vimercati Sanseverino (eds.), “Der Phophet des Islam im Blickwechsel”. Some of these works deals also with the prophetic veneration among Muslim mystics, a topic that is beyond the scope of this article. it can be said that the literature about the prophet Muḥammad is one of the most interesting forms of devotion of the Muslim religion for various reasons: the significant number of works that have been produced throughout the Islamic world to this day; the rather large number of literary variants or subgenres to which it has given rise; and, the relevance it acquires in identifying the faith of the believer who devotes his attention to this literature, becoming an evident sign of the way someone practices the religion as opposed to other ways. It is also of great interest because it has been controversial since the beginning; even today Muslims argue among themselves regarding the different ways of approaching devotion to Muḥammad, while adhering to very different positions, sometimes radically opposed, ranging from the Sufis, devout practitioners of the ṭarīqa muḥammadiyya (the path that follows the steps of the prophet),⁵ Hoffman, “Annihilation in the Messenger of God”, pp. 352-354. to the position of some Islamist groups that emphasize the humanity of the prophet and harshly persecute any religious expression that goes beyond the mere admiration of a virtuous human being. Just like there is no one single Islam, a single perception of the prophet does not and has never existed in the Islamic community.

On the other hand, this heterogeneity of criteria does not prevent us from stating emphatically that the perception that the Muslims have of Muḥammad has been undergoing a diachronic change and that a phenomenon of growing admiration took place which even led to the veneration of his personality. From his death onwards, his figure was idealized but not venerated. Veneration began centuries later, and then, not by the entire Islamic community. Despite the Qurʾan’s insistence on the humanity of the prophet Muhammad, it can be affirmed that the idealization of his figure and of the period of time he lived in is almost an inherent part of the Muslim religion. There was a consensus among the believers from the beginning to accept the belief that there had been a golden age during which the community of the faithful had been governed by the precepts of Islam and that those who had had the good luck to have known the prophet or to have lived at a time close to the time he lived in -ahl al-nabī (his family), ṣaḥāba (companions), salaf (close descendants) - had the privilege of having the knowledge of the true interpretation of the Revelation. Although the turbulent historical events of the period, which include the murder of three of the four orthodox caliphs, belie this idyllic portrayal, it has been a sentimental issue that has not only influenced the beliefs of the Muslims from the beginning, but it also had, and still has, an enormous influence on the composition and compilation of Islamic religious and legal texts.⁶On the transformation of the figure of the prophet in the eyes of Muslims after his death, see Nagel, Mohammed, pp. 719-737 (6. Legenden und Geschichte). Since very early, the sayings and deeds of Muḥammad - sunna - became the main source of Islamic jurisprudence;⁷ Nagel, Allahs Liebling, pp. 59-84 (“Zur Herkunft des ḥadit”). the ulema, however, took a little longer to focus their interest on his charismatic and exemplary personality and to direct attention in their works to his life and his role as teacher and example for the community, sometimes even above, the content of his transmissions.

The success and repercussion in al-Andalus and in the North of Africa of the religious literature of prophetic veneration have not yet been studied in depth except in very specific periods and aspects. This is the case even though they have had enormous consequences in Muslim religious observation over the centuries.⁸An extensive study on prophetic veneration in al-Andalus in Almoravid and Almohad times can be seen in Ibn Bashkuwāl, Kitāb al-qurba, De la Puente (study), pp. 35-175. There are biographies of the prophet - sīra -, works dedicated to his military exploits -maghāzī -, to the features of his prophecy or the prodigies he performed -shamāʾil al-nabī and dalāʾil al-nubuwwa-, to the miracles he performed - muʿjizāt -, to his ascent to heaven - miʿrāj - to praying for the prophet - al-ṣalāt ʿalā l-nabī -, to the commemoration of his birth - mawlid al-nabī -, there are works on the visions the prophet had in dreams - kutūb ruʾyat al-nabī - etc.⁹Regarding the introduction of these genres in al-Andalus and the production of the first Andalusian works, see Ibn Bashkuwāl, in Kitāb al-qurba, De la Puente (study), pp. 77-86. On the celebration of the mawlid in al-Andalus and the Maghreb, see also De la Granja, “Fiestas cristianas en al-Andalus; Ferhat, “Le culte du Prophète au Maroc au XIIIe siècle”; and Boloix Gallardo, “Las primeras celebraciones del mawlid en al-Andalus y Ceuta”. We must bear in mind that these texts have a varied content and that, even though they require separate specialized studies, they must always be viewed within their literary and religious context. We are faced with religious phenomena that must be addressed as a whole, interelating the works and their authors and carrying out exhaustive studies of the networks used for their transmission, always within the framework of the use made in the Islamic Sunni world of teaching and prophetic traditions. Between subgenres the themes overlap, they bear relation to each other and are sometimes repeated. Besides that, very rarely do the authors or transmitters of these works devote their attention to a single subgenre; they are interested in several subgenres at the same time and tend to be prolific transmitters of works of ḥadīth in general, because, with the passage of time, the idea spread among the ulema that the transmission of the sunna is in itself an obvious form of great respect towards the prophet. All these authors are traditionists - muḥaddithūn - although sometimes they combine this task with others. Along with the variety and extent of subgenres of prophetic veneration, the scholar dedicated to its study has the advantage of dealing with one of the forms of Muslim devotion whose ‘construction’ is easier to track since it is very well documented. This is mainly due to the fact that it is a late religious manifestation and also, as has been pointed out, to the controversy that has surrounded many of its facets from its very origin.

Consequently, it would be necessary to address future studies on the veneration of the prophet Muḥammad from two fundamental perspectives: on the one hand, the creation and transmission of works belonging to different genres but which have as a common denominator their being dedicated to the exaltation of the figure of Muḥammad; and on the other hand, the study of religious observation in different periods and societies through the knowledge of the devotional practices obtained from the Arabic sources. Likewise, it is just as important that, alongside with the study of the content of the works, scholars become familiar with the authors and transmitters. The veneration of the prophet is a form of devotion that is not exclusive to mystics or to the Sufis, although in some periods it was so prominent among them that the tendency was to think that it was so.¹⁰ Addas, “Entre musalsal et silsila”, p. 19, where the author shows her surprise that the transmitters of musalsal are not mostly full-time mystics. On the transmission of texts about the prophet Muḥammad among the Andalusian ʿulamāʾ see Ibn Bashkuwāl, K. al-qurba, De la Puente (study) pp. 113-128, and De la Puente, “La transmisión del hadiz”, pp. 269-275. The creation of these texts was common, it started in the East in the 4^th/10^th century and in the West in the 5^th/11^th and belongs, without any doubt, to Sunni Islam, where they were promoted by the most prestigious ulema, considered “official” or “central”, in the political, cultural and intellectual strata. Some of the authors of these works were Sufis or Sufi sympathizers, but they were not the majority, and their number cannot even be considered significant. Arabic philology is behind other philologies, for example Classical studies in which a large majority of the extant texts have already been edited, whereas in some Arabic genres such as ḥadīth literature, basic studies have still not been carried out. Work progresses at the pace marked by philological studies that bring to light and project the importance of the writings of the past. This does not take place in a systematic, or even orderly, way which can sometimes cast a distorted view of the encompassing reality of a literary genre during a given period. The well-deserved attention that some Sufi mystics and brotherhoods have received has made us forget that the roots of some themes have to be sought among ḥadīth transmitters, whether they had mystical inclinations or not; they were the first guardians of the word of the prophet and they have evolved as a group over the centuries, both in their writings and in the way they receive and teach their transmissions.

Finally, to the interest placed on the contents of the works and their authors and transmitters, a third aspect must be added, the study of the way in which the transmissions and teachings take place. As I have repeatedly stated in previous works, the transmission of some forms of prophetic traditions and the veneration of Muḥammad, both with respect to the content of these texts and to the rites that accompany the traditions, are a distinctive feature of certain traditionist circles, who consciously, through their dedication and work, want to set themselves apart from other groups of ulema and other forms of contemporary religious practice.¹¹ De la Puente, “The Prayer upon the Prophet”, pp. 121-129; Abid, “La veneration du Prophète”, pp. 151-176. We are not merely dealing with the capricious construction of new religious and literary genres or a common erudite interest on the part of the ulema that has arisen spontaneously, but the construction of the identity of a religious group that acquires, as opposed to others, distinctive forms of enormous ascetic, social and political meaning. They are indeed authors of religious works, but they also consider themselves to be participating in structuring a new way of life, in which the figure of Muḥammad becomes an example for believers to follow and a model for specific ways of behaving, for example the conservation and transmission of the prophet´s relics or the imitation of his tastes in questions of hygiene or food.¹² El-Hibry, “The Abbasids and the Relics of the Prophet”, pp. 62-96. Among these forms of behavior, it may be worth mentioning a Muslim’s willingness to go to war for the faith or jihād, as shown, for the first time, by Maher Jarrar in his interesting and exhaustive study of Muḥammad’s biography in al-Andalus.¹³ Jarrar, Die Prophetenbiographie; De la Puente, “Guerra y religión en al-Andalus”. As Jarrar demonstrates, the success and diffusion of these texts, the adoption of the way of life they encourage, has to be explained as being the result not only of religious concerns, but taking into consideration political and social reasons as well, in which al-Andalus’ military weakness against the Christians, among other factors, played a transcendental role. It can be affirmed without any doubt that in the West the success of these genres is linked to the increase in the authors’ feelings of being under threat, who see their territories progressively endangered, and as a result their religion too. They felt under the siege of the infidels just as the prophet had felt in his days.

The research on specific themes cited above shows how we are still lacking global studies regarding both the East and the West. There can be many reasons for this and they all belong to the field of speculation. I can think of several, and they would certainly not be the only ones: the first is the lack of partial studies that would allow for other more encompassing studies. Although with some important exceptions,¹⁴See above note 4. academics in the Islamic world have devoted little attention to topics such as asceticism or prophetic veneration among sunni ulema in recent decades, which contrasts with the amount of works of these genres sold in the street stalls of the Arab world where they are very popular; furthermore, a phenomenon that may have produced a distortion in recent historiography has been the fact that the success, or greater diffusion, of one of the works belonging to the genre of prophetic veneration has made whoever approaches the subject forget the circumstances in which that work was produced, meaning, the wider context of religious and literary production that conditioned its creation and to which it owed much of its form and content. Thus, in the case of the Maghreb, the unquestionable and enormous centuries-long success of Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s Kitāb al-Shifāʾ ¹⁵ Serrano Ruano, “ʿIyāḍ, Abū l-Faḍl”, vol. 6, pp. 404-434 (no. 1479); about this work pp. 425-430 (no. 23). See also Vimercati Sanseverino, “Transmission, Ethos and Authority in Hadith Scholarship”, pp. 35-80, an interesting reflection on the Shifāʾ in the context of the transmission of ḥadīth, although the author omits important previous secondary literature on the subject. has caused scholars to be fundamentally and exclusively interested in the work itself and to forget that it was a complex and transcendental religious event which should be considered in a wider context, like a puzzle, in which each of the pieces needs the others to complete the picture. Additionally, this work has been translated into English, which permits people who do not have access to other similar sources that have not yet been translated to work with it, thus widening its readership. Al-Shifāʾ is a magnificent synthesis of the literature that circulated in the North of Africa and al-Andalus in the 6^th /12^th century, the highpoint of these writings if you wish, and hence its enormous success, however, it does not represent the genesis of prophetic veneration in the West nor is it an intellectual or literary island, which can be approached individually.

This article will focus on some of the aspects described above through a very specific sub-genre of ḥadīth literature that is, in turn, a subgenre of the works on prophetic veneration, the so-called ḥadīth musalsal or chained prophetic transmission.¹⁶ Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, Maʿrifat anwāʿ ʿilm al-ḥadīth, pp. 378-380; and al-Ayyubī, Manāhil, p. 182. Addas, “Entre musalsal et silsila” deals with two types of chained ḥadīth-s, called muṣāfaḥa (transmission with a handshake) and mushābaka (transmission with the interlocking of fingers). On muṣāfaḥa see also Davidson, Carrying on the Tradition, pp. 46-47. That is the name given to the ḥadīth-s that in each of the links in the chain of transmission repeat identical expressions or sayings.¹⁷ Al-Ṣāliḥ, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth, p. 249. Often, these expressions refer to a certain ritual or gesture that goes together with the delivery of the saying to the prophet. We are therefore dealing with a ritualized transmission in which the fundamental point is how that ḥadīth is transmitted and who transmits it. We even find cases where the chain of transmission is mentioned together with the process through which it is carried out but the ḥadīth transmitted is not mentioned.¹⁸ See an example in al-Marrākushī, Dhayl, pp. 4, 87. We likewise find frequently among the musalsalāt transmissions whose chains of transmission go back to the archangel Gabriel or to God Himself, which makes them also qudsī, the term used for this type of transmissions.¹⁹See two examples in Ibn Bashkuwāl, Kitāb al-qurba, Arabic text, pp. 16-17, nos. 11 and 12.

The chronological framework I have chosen is that of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, even though this study must be a continuation of the work on prophetic veneration during the Almoravid and Almohad periods, the time of the introduction and consolidation of this genre in the Iberian Peninsula and the N. Africa.²⁰ Ibn Bashkuwāl, Kitāb al-qurba, De la Puente (study), pp. 62-66. In essence, we want to study what happened with this literary sub-genre in the following centuries, to examine how some of the texts and writings that circulated in the Peninsula during the 6^th/12^th century passed on to Nasrid Granada during the 7^th/13^th century, who were its transmitters and authors, and what other works of prophetic veneration were created and transmitted by these traditionists interested in the ḥadīth musalsal. This work will begin in 642/1244, the date of the death of an author who lived during the last decades of the Almohad period in al-Andalus, al-Qāsim b. Muhammad Ibn al-Ṭaylasān,²¹ Ávila, “Ibn al-Ṭaylasān, al-Qāsim”, Biblioteca de al-Andalus, vol. 5, pp. 491-496. whose works were amply transmitted and disseminated later on, and will end with the Christian conquest of the Kingdom. The initial chronological cut-off date is necessary, but it inevitably leaves out, in addition to the aforementioned Ibn al-Ṭaylasān, other very interesting authors who lived in the last years of the Almohad period and whose texts would have been of enormous interest for the present work because of their chronological proximity. ²²For example, key predecessors of what will seen in this study are Ibn Sālim al-Kalāʿī (d. 634/1236), an important author of the maghāzī genre, or Muḥammad b. ʿAtīq al-Lāridī (d. 637/1239), who wrote two works on the virtues of the Prophet, see Ibn Bashkuwāl, Kitāb al-qurba, De la Puente (study) pp. 106-107; or the aforementioned al-Qāsim b. Muhammad Ibn al-Ṭaylasān (d. 642/1244), Cordovan author and transmitter of works of veneration, see Ramos, “Materials”, p. 38.

The results of the research have been collected in a table (Table 1) where we have registered the names of the ulema, the dates of their birth and death, whether they were transmitters of ḥadīth musalsal or if they composed a work of this genre and, finally, whether they were authors or transmitters of other works of prophetic veneration. The conclusions arrived at are extremely interesting and will be the main subject of this article, although some important issues have been excluded for reasons of space that have made it impossible to address them on this occasion; they will however lead to future work for example, a detailed study, based on the analysis of their content, of the chained ḥadīth-s from this period that have come down to us.²³In this article we will only study the transmitters and their treaties, but unfortunately there is no space to make a detailed study of the different kinds of musalsalāt, which is left for a future work. Readers can find an excellent example of the different chained ḥadīth-s in the work of the Egyptian scholar al-Suyūṭī, Jiyād al-musalsalāt, index pp. 327-328, which is contemporary with some of the Nasrid authors mentioned.

The compilation of Table 1, in which we wanted to be as thorough as possible, has been carried out mainly through the information obtained from some biographical dictionaries and bibliographic manuals (fahāris/barāmij),²⁴ Davidson, Carrying on the Tradition, pp. 209-220. as well as travel books, that refer to this historical period; these are mainly the works by al-ʿAbdarī (d. after 668/1289)ʿAbdarī, Muḥammad b. Muḥammad (d. after 668/1289), Al-Riḥla al-maghribiyya, Muḥammad al-Fāsī (ed.), Rabat, Jāmiʿat Muḥammad al-Khāmis, 1968., Ibn Rushayd (d. 721/1321)Ibn Rushayd (d. 721/1321), Milʾ al-ʿayba bi-mā jumiʿa bi-ṭūl al-gayba fī l-wajha al-wajīha ilā l-ḥaramayn Makka wa-Ṭayba, Muḥammad al-Ḥabīb Ibn al-Khūja (ed.), Tunis, al-Dār al-Tūnisiyya li-l-Nashr, 1402/1982, vols. 2-3., al-Tujībī (d. 730 /1329-30)Al-Tujībī (d. 730/1329), Barnāmaj, ʿAlī Ḥasan Manṣūr (ed.), Libya-Tunis: Dār al-ʿarabiyya li-l-kitāb, 1981.Al-Tujībī (d. 730/1329), Mustafād al-riḥla wa-l-ightirāb, ʿAbd al-Ḥāfiẓ Manṣūr (ed.), Libya-Tunis, Dār al-ʿarabiyya li-l-kitāb, 1395/1975., Ibn Jābir al-Wādī Āshī (d. 749-1348-9)Al-Wādī Āshī (d. 749/1348), Barnāmaj, Muḥammad al-Ḥabīb al-Hīla (ed.), Tunis, Jāmiʿat Umm al-Qurā, 1401/1981., Ibn al-Khaṭīb (d. 776/1374)Ibn al-Khaṭīb (d. 776/1374), Al-Iḥāṭa fī akhbār Garnāṭa, Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh ʿInān (ed.), Cairo, Dār al-Maʿārif, 1973-1977, 4 vols; and Al-Iḥāṭa fī akhbār Gharnāṭa: nuṣūṣ jadīda lam tunshar, ʿAbd al-Salām Shaqqūr (ed.), Tetouan, Etei Nord, 1988. , Al-Raṣṣāʿ (m 894/1489)Al-Raṣṣāʿ, Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad al-Anṣārī (d. 894/1489), Fihrist/Fahrasa, Muḥammad al-ʿAnnābī (ed.), Tunis, Al-Maktaba al-ʿatīqa, 1967., Ibn Ghāzī (d. 919/1513)Ibn Ghāzī (d. 919/1513), Fihris, Muḥammad al-Zāhī (ed.), Casablanca, Dār al-Maghrib, 1399/1979., al-Maqqarī (d. 1041/1632)Al-Maqqarī (d. 1041/1632), Azhār al-riyāḍ fī akhbār ʿIyāḍ, Muṣṭafā al-Saqqā, Ibrāhīm al-Abyārī and ʿAbd al-Ḥafīẓ al-Shilbī (eds.), Cairo, Maṭbaʿat lajnat al-taʾlīf wa-l-tarjama wa-l-nashr, 1939, reprinted in Rabat, Ṣundūq iḥyāʾ al-turāth al-islāmī al-mushtarak bayna al-Mamlaka al-Maghribiyya wa-dawlat al-Imārāt al-ʿArabiyya al-Muttaḥida, 1978, 5 vols.: vols. 1-3; ʿAbd al-Salām al-Ḥarrās and Saʿīd Aḥmad Aʿrab (eds.), Rabat, Wizārat al-awqāf wa-l-shu’ūn al-islamiyya, 1980, vols. 4-5.Al-Maqqarī (d. 1041/1632), Nafḥ al-ṭīb min ghuṣn al-Andalus al-raṭīb, Iḥsān ʿAbbās (ed.), Beirut, Dār Ṣādir, 1388/1968, 8 vols. and al-Rawdānī (d. 1094/1683)Al-Rawdānī (d. 1094/1683), Barnāmaj, Muḥammad Ḥājjī (ed.), “Ṣilat al-khalaf bi-mawṣūl al-salaf li-l- Rawdānī”, RIMA (Kuwait), 26 (1982), pp. 337-394, 27 (1983), pp. 385-454, 28 (1984), pp. 9-98 y 337-388, 29 (1985), pp. 9-65, 433-556..

Attention should also be drawn to the fact that Arab authors do not distinguish a general genre of works dedicated to the prophet and that, therefore, the works described are classified in different sections, for example either among the works of prophetic traditions (kutub al-ḥadīth), among the ascetic texts (zuhd) and, even, among the mystic writings (taṣawwuf). Vizcaíno had already draw attention to the fact that in bibliographic books some works were classified under different genres and even repeated in a number of sections.²⁵ Vizcaíno, “Las obras de zuhd”, pp. 417-418.

2. Introduction and Transmission of Ḥadīth Musalsal in Al-Andalus. Brief Mention of the Almoravid and Almohad Periods

As I have said, the subgenre, transmission of ḥadīth musalsal is part of a tradition of writings dedicated to the exaltation of the prophet. This tradition came to al-Andalus from the East in the last decades of the 5^th/11^th century and has since then been very popular among Sunni ulema, ascetics and Sufis.²⁶At present, I will only outline some general features that serve as an introduction to the study of the musalsalāt during the Nasrid period, which is the true subject of this study; on the prophetic veneration and religious observation in the 6th/12th century, in addition to the aforementioned study of Ibn Bashkuwāl, Kitāb al-qurba, see De la Puente, “La transmisión de hadiz”. This transmission is neither a new phenomenon nor is it characteristic of the Nasrid period and its origin has to be looked for in the previous centuries. It can be affirmed that in al-Andalus from the 5^th/11^th century until the Christian conquest in 897/1492 the creation and transmission of these prophetic traditions, and works on the worship of Muḥammad in general, goes on uninterruptedly; its content is also widely present in many different religious texts written in the midst of the Muslim population of Spain.²⁷For example, Consuelo López Morillas (trans. And study), Textos aljamiados sobre la vida de Mahoma: el Profeta de los Moriscos, Madrid, CSIC (Fuentes Arábico-Hispanas 16), 1994. Among its transmitters we find highly considered ulema who were important authors of works dedicated above all to the biographical and bibliographic genres. The authors of the sources that provide information on these ḥadīth-s are, at the same time, the transmitters of the ḥadīth-s; the presence of these authors is easily documented in the chains of transmission of the musalsalāt. This is logical, since the writing of ṭabaqāt, fahāris or barāmij has as its objective prolonging in time the influence of the experts in religious sciences and that of their works and teachings, recording the documentation of their intellectual production, as well as noting the relations that existed between them through the learning institutions or kinship. Briefly stated, these authors are ulema interested not only in the perpetuation of the Andalusian religious intellectual heritage, but also in prolonging in time the importance to their society of those who, like them, had dedicated their lives to religious texts.

Broadly speaking, since the main subject of this paper is the Nasrid period,²⁸An article on the transmission and creation of ḥadīth musalsal works in this period is currently being written. Here I will outline only the main features that make it possible to understand production during the Nasrid era which is the main objective of this work, it should be noted that the ḥadīth musalsal was introduced to al-Andalus by authors who died in the last quarter of the 5^th/11^th century, such as Abū Marwān al-Ṭubnī (d. 457/1065)²⁹ Navarro i Ortiz and Lirola Delgado, “Al-Ṭubnī, Abū Marwān”, Biblioteca de al-Andalus, vol. 7, pp. 474-476. or Abū l-ʿAbbās al-ʿUdhrī (d. 478/1085).³⁰ Lirola Delgado, “al-ʿUdhrī, Abū l-ʿAbbās”, Biblioteca de al-Andalus, vol. 7, pp. 559-570. The first oriental work transmitted into the Peninsula was al-’Azīz b. Bundār al-Shīrāzī’s³¹ Ibn Khayr, Fahrasa, p. 176.al-Aḥādith al-Musalsalāt and the first Andalusian author of a specific work belonging to this genre was the traditionist Abū ʿAlī al-Ṣadafī (d. 514/1120),³² De la Puente, “La transmisión de hadiz”, p. 123; “Vivre et mourir pour Dieu, œuvre et héritage d’Abū ʿAlī al-S̟adafī”, pp. 77-102; and “Obras transmitidas en al-Andalus por Abu ʿAlī al-S̟adafī, pp. 195-200. Addas mentions that Abū Bakr b. al-ʿArabī was the first transmitter of al-muṣāfaḥa in the West (“Entre musalsal et silsila”, p. 21), but other categories of musalsalāt are documented one century before. who wrote a book titled al-Musalsalāt,³³ Ibn al-Abbār, Muʿjam, p. 151; De la Puente, “Al-Ṣadafī, Abū ʿAlī”, Biblioteca del al-Andalus, vol. 7, pp. 231-238 (no. 4). which continued to be transmitted through the following centuries without interruption. This central figure is key to understanding not only the way the religion is practiced in al-Andalus in the 6^th/12^th century, but also that of the following centuries. Although he did not write many books, he was known for the transmission of texts that he himself had studied and brought from the East to al-Andalus and for the large number of disciples who benefited from his teaching. Three specific books were devoted to the compilation of the biographies of the teachers and disciples of Abū ʿAlī al-Ṣadafī. Only one of the three is extant, but the prestige of the authors and his influence on the literature of prophetic veneration during later centuries allows us to measure the great impact that his personality and teachings had in the West.³⁴ De la Puente, “Vivre et mourir”, pp. 78-79. The first of the two works that have unfortunately been lost was written by Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, who in 508/1114 went to Murcia to study with Abū ʿAlī al-Ṣadafī. According to an existing description of the book, it seems to have been a biographical dictionary of his teachers entitled Mashyakhāt Abī ʿAlī. The second was written by Ibn al-Dabbāgh of Onda (d. 546/1151), another one of his disciples, who also compiled the biographies of his teachers and their transmissions.³⁵ Biblioteca de al-Andalus, vol. 3, pp. 40-42 (no. 422) [Consejo de Redacción]. This author also transmitted ḥadīth musalsal, according to Ibn al-Abbār, Takmila, Codera (ed.), p. 159 (no. 558); Ibn al-Abbār, Takmila, al-Ḥusaynī (ed.), p. 425 (no. 1209). Both texts would have been very useful for us to get to know, at first hand and in a complete and orderly manner, which were the oriental texts that were introduced by him into the Peninsula. The third book is Muʿjam fī aṣḥāb al-qāḍī al-imām al-Ṣadafī by Ibn al-Abbār (d. 658/1260)Ibn al-Abbār (d. 658/1260), al-Muʿjam fī aṣḥāb al-qāḍī l-imām Abī ʿAli al-Ṣadafī, Francisco Codera (ed.), Madrid, Apud Josephum de Rojas, 1886, Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana, 4.Ibn al-Abbār (d. 658/1260), al-Takmila li-Kitāb al-ṣila, Francisco Codera (ed.), Madrid, Apud Michaelem Romero, 1887-1889, 2 vols, Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana, 5-6.Ibn al-Abbār (d. 658/1260), al-Takmila li-Kitāb al-ṣila, ʿIzzat al-ʿAṭṭār al-Ḥusaynī (ed.), Cairo, Maktabat al-Khānjī, 1375/1955-1956, 2 vols. , a biographical dictionary that contains more than a hundred biographies of Abū ʿAlī al-Ṣadafī ´s disciples. This author is the primary source to obtain information, among other things, about the transmission of ḥadīth musalsal in Almoravid and Almohad times, both through the work cited above and through his well-known biographical dictionary Takmila. Ibn al-Abbār himself was the author of a lost book, entitled al-Mawrid al-salsal fī ḥadīth al-raḥma al-musalsal³⁶ Lirola Delgado, “Ibn al-Abbār, Abū ʿAbd Allāh”, Biblioteca de al-Andalus, vol 1, p. 551 (no. 21). and was the transmitter of a work in this genre.³⁷Al-musalsalāt Abī Bakr b. al-ʿArabī (Ibn Rushayd, Milʾ, vol. 2, p. 186). I have intentionally started the count of authors and transmitters of the Nasrid period with Ibn al-Abbār because I consider that his figure and work represent, in a very graphic way, the transition between the two historical periods. Ibn al-Abbār lived through a turbulent period, one of political discord and armed conflicts, yet his work is a magnificent contribution to the intellectual continuity that took place between the Almohad Caliphate and the Nasrid Kingdom. On another matter, it is worth mentioning that Ibn al-Abbār was forced to emigrate to Tunisia where he suffered a dramatic death. Ulema migration, as will be seen later, was a very frequent event during the Nasrid Kingdom and, besides testifying to the instability of the period, promoted the extensive spread of the Andalusian teachings through the North of Africa, where they enjoyed great prestige.

To conclude this brief reference to the transmitters and authors of ḥadīth musalsal in the 6^th/12^th century, I have to mention two more authors because of the great influence they had later on: Al-Fihrī al-Shāṭibī (d. 530/1135)³⁸ Uzquiza and Lucini, Las ciencias islámicas en Xàtiva, p. 55; De la Puente, “La transmisión de hadiz”, p. 234. and the reputed traditionist Abū Bakr b. al-ʿArabī (d. 543/1148).³⁹ Cano, Ávila, García Sanjuán and Tawfiq, “Ibn al-ʿArabī, Abū Bakr”, Biblioteca de al-Andalus, vol. 2, pp. 129-158; De la Puente, “La transmisión de hadiz”, pp. 232, 242, 272. Both appear repeatedly in the chains of transmission of these ḥadīth-s. The first is a prolific transmitter specialized in this genre and the second is the author of a Kitāb al-musalsalāt, which will continue to be transmitted in the Peninsula until the 8^th/14^th century.

As for the content of the transmissions, it is possible to affirm that the last quarter of the 5^th/11^th century and the first half of the 6^th/12^th are the period of gestation of a type of religious observation that will continue to be practiced for quite some time. There is continuity in the transmission of works by certain authors, as mentioned above, but also in the ḥadīth-s chosen to be taught and transmitted. Without any doubt, the most successful one during this period among the musalsalāt is one called Aḥādīth al-musalsal bi-akhdh bi-l-yad (a chained ḥadīth about shaking hands), which will also be transmitted in Nasrid times. Sometimes the sources also call it Ḥadīth al-Barāʾ al-musalsal bi-akhdh bi-l-yad because it was al-Barāʾ b. ʿĀzib, the prophet’s companion, the one who learned it from him.⁴⁰ Ibn al-Abbār, Takmila, Codera (ed.), p. 573. It is a transmission in which at each link of the chain a ulema shakes the hand of the next ulema while he teaches him the text of the prophetic tradition. In addition to repeating this ritual along all each one of the links in the chain, the content of this tradition has the additional benefit of explaining the religious motive for shaking hands.

Likewise, and as has been mentioned above, it is during the Almoravid period that the composition of musalsalāt works begins; these are compilations of these traditions which will be transmitted together with loose traditions gathered from other related genres. For the authors, these last ones merited a reference in the biographical dictionaries and bibliographic manuals due to their religious relevance, although there could be an additional reason which is that said reference indicated the type religious observation practiced by the transmitter, and consequently, to what type of traditionist ulema group he belonged to.⁴²Thibon has traced the evolution of the Muhammadan model, in Sufism which goes hand in hand with that of the place occupied by the transmission of ḥadīth, see “Transmission du hadith”, pp. 71-87. It is possible to imagine that the readers of these works, as happens today, became familiar quickly with the names of the traditionists who had wanted to stand out for their devotion to the prophet and the conservation of his teachings as well as for their religious practice. In addition, the authors of these treatises often complete their reference with the complete transcription of the ḥadīth, leaving a record of its chain of transmission and of the corpus of the prophetic tradition (isnād + matn), thus becoming our source of information about many of these ḥadīth-s since most musalsalāt collections have not reached our days. Research, therefore, has to be based on bibliographic manuals, biographical dictionaries and works on prophetic veneration of a more general nature where some of these transmissions appear, sometimes in isolation, among others that are not “chained”.

Another question that arises is what could have been the reason for collecting these traditions and turning them into small treatises. First, we must bear in mind that this custom is part of a general predisposition to compose small religious works, mostly collections on prophetic traditions dedicated to one specific theme of devotion and religious practice. The musalsalāt therefore belong to a more general genre of pious works (zuhd). It should be noted that the compilation of musalsalāt, sometimes in the very widespread form of treatises composed of forty ḥadīth-s, must have been due to their use as easy-to-copy and transport prayer books. In this case it was the form of the transmission what forged the unity of the collection while in others it was the theme of the transmissions: the goodness of the month of Ramadan, prayer for the prophet, etc. The predilection for these types of treatises, as can be seen in Table 1, goes together in almost all cases by a broad interest in other religious and pious texts, whose common denominator is the ubiquitous presence of the prophet Muḥammad.

3. Musalsalāt in the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada

Even though, as has been pointed out repeatedly, there is a continuity in the transmission of these ḥadīth-s from the 6^th/13^th to the 7^th/13^th centuries, this does not mean, that the musalsalāt did not evolve through time and that they enjoyed their own characteristics in the last centuries of the history of al-Andalus.⁴³All the information is systematized in Table 1; in the text, only the most important conclusions will be drawn and the reader is asked to refer to the Table for further questions.

In the first place, it should be noted that the references to musalsalāt between the 7^th/13^th and 9^th/15^th centuries, although numerous, are fewer than those found during the Almoravid and Almohad periods. The ulema who devoted their attention to this genre during these periods doubled in number those who did so during the Nasrid era, even though the period of time was shorter. It should also be noted that in this article the Nasrid Kingdom has been considered mainly from a chronological point of view because most of the authors or transmitters emigrated, taught and lived out their lives outside the Iberian Peninsula. Of the 28 ulema listed in Table 1, almost two thirds (16) belong to this group, Tunisia being the place where the majority settled and died - that being the case for 9 out of the 16. However, almost all of them were born in al-Andalus, lived the first years of their life, studied and acquired their theological formation there and considered themselves Andalusian ulema. We know that they used to introduce themselves as such to their counterparts.

On another matter, it is interesting to observe how the sources that allow us to trace the transmission of these religious treatises are not outside or foreign to the transmission process itself. As can be seen in the table (Table 1), the ulema of this period who provide information regarding their own works on the transmission of musalsalāt in their biobibliographies were themselves in turn traditionists - experts dedicated to the prophetic tradition (sunna) - they are all counted among the transmitters of chained traditions, for example Ibn al-Abbār, al-Wādī Āshī, al-Tujībī or Ibn Rushayd transmitted a number of works; some even arranged compilations. As we have seen in relation to the previous period, the narrators are interested in recording both, what others and what they themselves have written, because they are keen on ensuring that their own traditions are perpetuated. These authors want to record in their manuals and dictionaries what the religious science of their time is, but, above all, what “their own” science is, the one they know and the one to which they contribute with their writing and teaching.

Along with the objectives stated above, there is another obvious purpose to their writing, to increase their own social and religious prestige. We must bear in mind that prestige gives access to spaces that are closed to those who do not have it and places them within a group of people who consider themselves to have been chosen due to their abilities, a merit recognized by the rest of society. Additionally, in politically convulsive times, such as those lived in during the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, religious prestige can function as life insurance, since the persecution or violent death of an ulema could have turned into social scandal. Who would ever dare attack those who safeguard the word of the prophet, those, who through their knowledge and actions are closest to him in the scale of pious human beings? The ḥadīth-s that they transmit repeat endlessly that whoever prays for the prophet, whoever performs the rituals correctly, those that the prophet himself taught, will be achieve salvation and obtain divine forgiveness. Sometimes under the form of a prophetic tradition, others by means of an oneiric vision, frequently through a brief story or anecdote - khabar - the reader of these prayer books is made aware of the concept that God clears the sins of those who pay devout attention to his prophet. The sins committed during a lifetime do not matter if that life is dedicated to the imitation of the exemplary conduct of Muḥammad and, especially, to spreading publicly word of his extraordinary merits. This turns the authors of works of prophetic veneration, according to their own words, into beings that can receive divine favor either during their lifetime or on the Day of Judgment. They did not state it as such, but this became an implicit threat against those who dared confront them.⁴⁴Addas emphasizes that the musalsal hadith itself becomes the object of veneration because its transmitters are considered to have a closer relationship with the prophet, “Entre musalsal et silsila”, p. 22.

4. Conclusions

Starting at a given historical moment, a trend develops among a significant number of Sunni traditionists, experts in religious sciences, to dedicate their lives to the creation and transmission of works dedicated to the exaltation of the figure of Muḥammad. Among these, as we have seen in the previous pages, were the famous experts in ḥadīth knowledge during each period. They were neither marginal nor exceptional figures, nor did they necessarily form part of mystic groups. In al-Andalus, this dedication will be carried on uninterruptedly from the end of the 5^th/11^th century to the end of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada and even after that its traces will be felt among the Muslim population of Spain (Moriscos).

These experts in ḥadīth are themselves the primary source we have to get to know what their intellectual production in this genre was. Many of them left detailed descriptions in their biographical dictionaries and bibliographic manuals of their knowledge in this field: which were the texts that they either received or brought themselves from the Orient; which were the Andalusian texts that they received and transmitted to the future generations; and, which were the new texts that were composed in al-Andalus. They even transcribed whole fragments of some of their books.

One way of integrating their intellectual work - the teaching of ḥadīth - to the movement of prophetic veneration was to promote the concept that prophetic traditions were in themselves a great form of devotion to Muḥammad, the best way of delivering his lessons, make known his exemplary life and to convey to their contemporaries the message that the prophet’s followers would, thanks to imitating his lifestyle, sooner or later, be rewarded with success. The success could refer to a varied range of circumstances, although it always had an important religious element: military victory against the infidel, salvation in the world to come, belonging to the most highly considered religious elites, etc. It must be borne in mind that although the production of works of prophetic veneration and their transmission belongs to a select and restricted group of ulema, it is not limited to specific milieus^.62 Chodkiewicz, “Das am Propheten orientierte Modell der Heiligkeit”, p. 6 (16). The various forms of devotion became very popular, and rituals and festivities related to the charismatic figure of Muhammad in all times had and still have enormous success. Among them, the transmission of musalsal ḥadīth and the compilation of these traditions have never stopped.⁶³Some collections of musalsalāt are included in the final bibliography, although they belong to periods much later than the one studied in this article, see al-Kattānī, al-Sanūsī and al-ʿUmrānī. See as an example of how alive it is, <https://www.ihsaninstitute.co.uk/articles/the-musalsalat-in-hadith-linking-the-present-to-the-past>, online December 23, 2020.

In my opinion, the ḥadīth musalsal is a good example of how some traditionists integrated, not only their writings, but also their lives, to the popular movement among religious writers of devotion to the prophet. As I have shown above, its creators and transmitters worked on the production of texts in different subgenres, and their contribution to the chained transmissions is only another characteristic of their devotion.

The ritualization of the process of transmission that accompanies the musalsalāt constitutes in itself an act of prophetic veneration, since the isnād stops being only the testimony of those who transmit the ḥadīth as it acquires new meanings. In the first place, the participants in the ritual belong to a specific group of ulema who have a distinct way of acting and the readers are able to classify, consciously or unconsciously, those traditionists as belonging to one group or another. Furthermore, with the repetition of verses and gestures, the ritual of transmission becomes poetic and musical, sometimes resembling a prayer. Making those gestures, even if nothing is said explicitly, becomes a way of praying, of worshiping God through being devoted to the teachings of his last prophet.

Finally, we cannot conclude without pointing out that the information obtained from Arab sources, despite the difficulties that may arise when writing the history of the last years of the Kingdom of Granada, is very rich regarding the (wide) readership of religious texts. The data gathered allows us to reconstruct, be it only intuitively, what religious observation was like during different periods, even if we do not have texts that expressly describe religious practice or that have left testimony of what religious life was like in the day-to-day.