Ṭuruq Ḥadīth

“Man Kadhaba ʿAlayya Mutaʿammidan”

A Review of al-Ḥāfiẓ Abū al-Qāsim Sulaymān ibn Aḥmad al-Ṭabarānī’s

Work on the Chains of Transmission of a Foundational Prophetic Warning

Edited by ʿAlī Ḥasan ʿAlī ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd and Hishām ibn Ismāʿīl al-Saqqā

Published by al-Maktab al-Islāmī / Dār ʿAmmār

 

The Hadith

 

مَنْ كَذَبَ عَلَيَّ مُتَعَمِّدًا فَلْيَتَبَوَّأْ مَقْعَدَهُ مِنَ النَّارِ

“Whoever lies against me deliberately, let him take his seat in the Fire.”

 

Introduction

Among the most well-known of all Prophetic traditions is this solemn warning. It occupies a unique place in Islamic scholarship, standing at the intersection of authenticity, legal theory, and the Prophet’s ﷺ own concern for the integrity of his legacy. Al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Ṭabarānī’s dedicated work traces the many independent chains of this narration, demonstrating that it reaches the level of tawātur — a degree of corroboration so widespread and independent that fabrication becomes inconceivable. Edited and verified in this modern edition by ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd and al-Saqqā, the book remains an important resource in the hadith sciences.

 

About the Author

Al-Ḥāfiẓ Abū al-Qāsim Sulaymān ibn Aḥmad al-Ṭabarānī (260–360 AH) was born in Tiberias and died in Isfahan after a century of unrelenting scholarly activity. He spent thirty years travelling the Islamic world — through Syria, Egypt, the Hijaz, Iraq, and Persia — sitting with hundreds of teachers and accumulating one of the largest collections of prophetic traditions in history. His three muʿjam compilations — the Kabīr, Awsaṭ, and Ṣaghīr — remain indispensable references in hadith scholarship to this day. This shorter treatise reflects the same precision and documentary rigour that characterises his larger works.

 

What the Book Is About and Its Contents

The entire work is devoted to a single hadith, tracing its chains through sixty Companions of the Prophet ﷺ — a breadth of transmission that forms the foundation of its tawātur argument. The narrations are organised by Companion, the most prominent being:

• Anas ibn Mālik — 25 narrations
• ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib — 15 narrations
• ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd — 14 narrations
• Ibn ʿUmar — 5 narrations
• Ibn ʿAbbās — 3 narrations
• Ibn al-Zubayr — 1 narration

Several notable details emerge within the chains. Imām Abū Ḥanīfa appears in an isnād on page 91, and Imām Mālik on page 97 — a reminder that both great jurists were also transmitters of the prophetic tradition. A narration from Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī (p. 150) is cited as evidence supporting Abū Ḥanīfa’s legal position on a related question, while the hadith of Salmān al-Fārsī (p. 150) demonstrates that truthful transmission is itself validated by the same logic. Fittingly, the curse against fabrication serves as the collection’s final hadith — a powerful literary and theological close.

 

Methodology, Key Insights, and Strengths

Al-Ṭabarānī’s approach is characteristically focused: he presents chain after chain, allowing cumulative documentation to make the argument for tawātur without extended commentary. The method is descriptive and documentary rather than polemical — he demonstrates rather than argues.

The book’s most compelling insight is its self-authenticating quality: the hadith warning against fabrication is itself one of the most rigorously verified reports in the entire corpus. Its tawātur status means it cannot plausibly be a fabrication — too many independent witnesses across too many generations attest to it. The sixty Companions who narrate it span the Prophet’s ﷺ closest family members, senior Companions, household servants, and later converts — making coordinated invention at the Companion level essentially impossible.

The modern editorial work of ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd and al-Saqqā strengthens the text’s reliability, and the organisation by Companion makes navigation straightforward for the specialist reader.

 

Who Should Read It and Conclusion

This work is best suited to students and researchers in the hadith sciences, Islamic legal theory, and the intellectual history of early Islam. Some familiarity with isnād terminology is assumed, making it most rewarding for those with a foundation in the field.

Ṭuruq Ḥadīth “Man Kadhaba” is a compact but significant achievement. Through it, al-Ṭabarānī demonstrates with documentary precision that the Prophet’s ﷺ most solemn warning against fabrication is itself beyond all reasonable doubt — preserved through sixty Companions and verified across fourteen centuries of scholarship. It is, in the end, a work about the integrity of transmission itself, and it makes that case convincingly.

 

Highly recommended for the serious student of the Islamic scholarly tradition.

Review completed: Friday, 6th June 2026