Maymuni's witness to the Sahifa so-called

The Pakistani scholar Muhammad Hamidullah published a document under the name "Sahifah of Hammam ibn Munabbih" in the 1960s, and continued to revise his treatment of it for over a decade. The document in turn purported to be the report which this Hammam took of accounts of the Prophet Muhammad, mainly via Abu Hurayra.

I heard about the Sahifa from Islamic-Awareness, in the early 2000s. I did not and do not trust that site, and I trust Hamidullah less. Harald Motzki didn't trust any of this either. Not finding Hamidullah's Sahifa elsewhere I went to Berkeley in October 2005.

Then in Menlo Park from 13 October 2005 I draughted some "notes". I polished that project Wednesday 19 October 6:20 PM at home in Houston - and posted it to my SBCGlobal site. That page's argument was, like many arguments I came up with before 2009ish, not a good argument. So when SBCGlobal killed our web pages, this page was one I left to die - although I still harboured that page's prejudices.

I am here this evening to rethink its premises, enlighten'd by Ugi Suharto back in 2002 at the university Putra Malaysia (pdf) pp. 153f with expansions and updates, based on Mizzi especially. I did not have access to Suharto at that time. So, on to my Second Take:

Hamidullah's text is a critical edition of two manuscripts as contain a common collection of Arab traditions ("hadith"), all with the chain of transmitters (Arabic "isnad"): 'Abd al-Razzâq from Ma'mar from Hammam thence mainly from Abu Hurayra. Hamidullah prefaced this with an argument that the documents witness to a primary source of Abu Hurayra's eyewitness accounts.

Elsewhere it turns out that 'Abd al-Razzâq transmitted a whole book of Ma'mar: the Jâmi'. This presently exists as part of his own legal compendium, Musannaf. That (per Motzki) is 90% transmitted through Dabari; the appendices comprise a book on "the people of the two books" through "Hudhâqî", lastly the Jâmi' of Ma'mar which disproportionately (but not totally!) concerns us here. One al-Hasan bin Yahyâ further transmitted 'Abd al-Razzâq's tafsir containing much Ma'mar content; Tabari would use a recension of that. This Jâmi', especially, overlaps extensively the purported Sahifa. Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, another student of 'Abd al-Razzâq, overlaps a lot of this as well in that Musnad his grandson transmitted.

Ibn Hajar knew of a series of traditions that Ma'mar had transcribed from Hammam; all these have but one single chain (Hamidullah pp. 63-4, from Tahdhib XI 67 #106, I 574). I find this in al-Mizzî, 30.298-9 #6600, on what Abu'l-Hasan ['Abd al-Malik ibn 'Abd al-Hamid, d. 274/888] al-Maymuni had from Ahmad Ibn Hanbal. As I translate what Ahmad told him:

His brother Wahb relayed from him. He used to go out on campaign, where he'd acquire books for his brother Wahb. [In those days] Abu Hurayra held court in al-Madina, so Hammam would listen to him. [When Ma'mar knew him] Hammam was old, his eyebrows shaded his eyes, so his vision grew dark. [The sahifa] is about 140 ahadiths with a single chain of transmission. Its [content] is divided in the [Hadith] books; and among them are things that are not in the hadiths.

Maymuni here gives out that in his time a Ma'mar < Hammam < Abu Hurayra bundle was being disseminated as a separate and canonical collection - not entirely overlapping with excerpts in Ibn Hanbal, that Jami', and others. As Suharto notes, we may also look at Ibn Sa'd's fifth volume, which thanks to Aisha Bewley is in English translation now.

The manuscripts witness that such sheets were in circulation from Maymuni's time to ours. Hamidullah told the truth for once.