"مسالك العلماء في التعامل مع اختلاف النسخ في رموز "الجامع الصغير

Abstract

The book ‘al-Jami as-Saghier’ of Al-Suyuti has become the major source for scholars, jurists, and preachers regarding the Prophet’s narrations. The reason for that is the easy access to the narration in it, with the addition of Al-Suyuti's classifications, and followed by the sources of the narration. But unfortunately, there occurred some differences in the manuscript copies regarding Al-Suyuti’s symbols, whether for sources or for strength and weakness of the narrations, which distracts the reader of this book. And caused the scholars to differ about these symbols and giving them lack trust. That is why this study came with the aim of choosing a scientific methodology to reach the rulings of Al-Suyuti, relying on the inductive approach in collecting texts. And it was found that the differences were caused by omission and misspelling, as well as the additions of some scholars such as Ibn Maghlabai and Sharif. And accordingly, the scholars’ approach towards these symbols differed: some of them removed them, like Al-Albani and Al-Nabhani. And others took the path of probability and likelihood, such as Al-Manawi and Al-San’ani, using correspondence between copies and the author’s handwriting, but their results are different. Therefore, I took what Al-Alqami mentioned as my main source, but since his explanation did not cover the whole book, we also relied on the copy of Testarbiti, due to its closeness to the author’s era and his acknowledgement of the copier. However, it contains blur and blanks, and a similarity between the two symbols of strength and weaknessص, ض) ) which affects the knowledge of the symbol. If Al-Alqami did not transmit anything, and we found an obliteration in the copy of Testarbiti, and the copies differed, then what Al-Manawi and Al-San’ani agreed upon is chosen. And even in the occasion one of them made a unique choice, because they took care of the book regarding their explanation and in comparing the copies. If Al-San’ani and Al-Manawi differ, or one of them is unique in contrast to the rest of the copies, as well as when there is a fear that a correction may occur in a copy of Testarbiti, then what agrees with the rule mentioned by Al-Suyuti in Al-Jami’ Al-Kabeer is given preference regarding the degree of the narration above the symbol of its correctors, or by Al-Suyuti’s statement in his other books as Al-Alqami used to do when giving preference.