There is a quote attributed to Mawlānā Muḥammad ʿĀshiq Ilāhī al-Mīrathī, one of the close associates of Mawlānā Khalīl Aḥmad al-Muhājir al-Madanī, the author of the monumental Sunan Abī Dāwūd commentary Badhl al-Majhūd, in the Tadhkirat al-Khalīl, p. 278 (which my mentor, Mawlānā ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Chishtī Ṣāḥib had helped to edit and arrange) that struck me because it related directly to a discussion that I had with a group of scholars in an Advanced Readings in Hadith Studies class (private class taught online). The remark struck me as particularly interesting in that it captured something essential about what serious hadith scholarship actually looks like. Mawlānā ʿĀshiq Ilāhī states that whenever a meaning occurred to the Ḥaḍrat Shaykh Saharanpūrī’s mind, he would not commit it to paper until he had found support for it in the words of earlier scholars (mutaqaddimīn). And Shaykh would often say: “What confidence do we have in our own knowledge?”
Mawlana Khalīl Ṣāhib’s disposition, of reluctance to trust one’s own understanding until it has been verified against the stored wisdom of those who came before, can be misunderstood as false modesty. In reality, however, it is a methodological commitment, and it runs through every page of Badhl al-Majhūd and then subsequently in the works of his prize student, Shaykh al-Ḥadith Mawlānā Muḥammad Zakariyyā (may Allah have mercy on them both).
Mawlānā ʿĀshiq Ilāhī al-Mīrathī enumerates seven specific scholarly commitments (iltizāmāt) that Mawlānā Khalīl Aḥmad undertook in composing Badhl al-Majhūd.
1. Presenting the positions of all four schools:
The author attempted to present the positions of the four madhāhib as accurately as possible and to lay out the legal reasoning by which they are evaluated against one another. In this way, the work is not a partisan Ḥanafī presentation of legal evidence and can be considered a work of comparative jurisprudence.
2. Rigorous articulation and defence of the Ḥanafī position:
After presenting the landscape of legal positions fairly, Mawlānā Sahāranpūrī carefully articulates the Ḥanafī position and establishes it with strong proofs, after which he answers the evidences of the other schools with multiple well-constructed responses. The sequence seems obvious, but is often missing from partisan presentations that characterize many of today’s non-conformists’ and literalists’ works. First understand, then defend.
3. Full critical evaluation of every narrator
The transmitters in the chains of the work are subjected to a thorough investigation of their standing in the science of rijāl when needed. For those unfortunate and misinformed souls who claim a void in the subcontinental hadith scholarship’s proficiencies in jarḥ and taʿdīl, I would invite them to read the comments in the Badhl and Shaykh al-Ḥadīth’s Awjaz al-Masālīk carefully and thoroughly and observe the authors’ ability to navigate the works of masters like Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, Ibn Ḥajar, and so on.
4. Reconciling narrations that appear to conflict with the chapter heading:
Where a narration did not appear to align with the heading under which Imām Abū Dāwūd placed it, the author undertook to explain the harmony between them. This is one of the great skills of ḥadīth commentary.
5. Supplying connected isnāds for suspended narrations:
Where Imām Abū Dāwūd cites narrations in a suspended form (muʿallaq), without a complete chain back to the Prophet ﷺ, the author supplies fully connected chains of transmission from other source works. For those who have attempted this for even a few reports, they can appreciate how painstaking this type of archival scholarship can be.
6. Locating expanded versions of abbreviated narrations:
Where a report appears in the Sunan in an abridged form, the author identifies where a fuller, more detailed version of the same report could be found in other books and documented those references.
7. Unveiling the deeper meaning and beauty of the Prophet’s ﷺ words
The final and perhaps most remarkable commitment of Ḥaḍrat Sahāranpūrī was to illuminate what the words of the Prophet ﷺ actually mean and to draw out the subtleties, the jurisprudential wisdom, and the spiritual realities embedded in them. Mawlānā Mīrathī says plainly that what the Shaykh uncovered here is something that could only be perceived by one who had a deep passion for the science of ḥadīth and a genuine intimacy with its subject, the Prophet ﷺ himself.
That last point is worth sitting with. Hadīth scholarship can be presented simply as a critical science, as a matter of chains, narrators, and textual variants. All of that is real and necessary, no doubt. But the words being transmitted are the words of the Prophet ﷺ. The scholar who handles them well, which is rarer than one might imagine, is not only technically proficient but, in some meaningful sense, close to their source.
See Tadhkirat al-Khalīl, p. 278, as recorded by Mawlānā Muḥammad ʿĀshiq Ilāhī al-Mīrathī (raḥimahullāh) regarding Mawlānā Khalīl Aḥmad al-Muhājir al-Madanī (raḥimahullāh). The original quote in Urdu is produced below.
✦ ✦ ✦
سات امور، جن کا بذل المجہود من التزام کیا گیا ہے
مولانا محمد عاشق الہٰی میرٹھی رحمۃ اللّٰه علیہ لکھتے ہیں: بذل میں یہ ایک عجیب کمال ہے کہ جو مضمون، حضرت (مولانا خلیل احمد مہاجر مدنی رحمۃ اللّٰه علیہ) کے ذہن میں آیا، جب تک متقدمین کے کلام میں اس کی تائید نہ مل گئی، حضرت نے اس کو قلم و قرطاس کے حوالہ نہیں کیا اور ہمیشہ یہ فرمایا کہ بھئی، اپنے علم پر کیا اعتماد ہے؟
۱ـ بایں التزام، ہر مسئلہ میں مذاہبِ ائمہ اربعہ کی تشریح اور باہم محاکمہ کیا گیا ہے۔
۲۔ مذہبِ حنفیہ کی تحقیق اور کافی دلائل کے بعد دوسرے مذاہب کے دلائل کے بہترین اور متعدد جوابات دیے گئے ہیں۔
۳۔ ہر راوی کے متعلق پوری جرح و تعدیل کی گئی۔
۴۔ جو روایات، ترجمۃ الباب کے موافق نہ تھیں، ان کی توجیہ و موافقت ظاہر فرمائی ہے۔
۵۔ مصنف نے جن روایات کو تعلیقًا بیان کیا ہے، دوسری کتابوں سے ان کی سندِ اتصال لکھی گئی ہے۔
٦۔ جو روایات مختصر آئی ہیں، دوسری کتابوں کا، جہاں وہ مفصل ہے، حوالہ دیا ہے۔
٧۔ اور کلام الرسول کا منشا ظاہر کرکے وہ محاسن و حقائق بیان فرمائے ہیں، جن کا حظ وہی اٹھا سکتا ہے، جس کو فنِ حدیث سے مناسبت اور صاحبِ حدیث سے انس و محبت ہو۔
[تذکرۃ الخلیل, صفحہ: ٢٧٨]
Ṭaḥāwī 