What is your opinion of *al-Jami' al-Saghir*?
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
The questioner : What is your opinion, Shaykh, of *al-Jami' al-Saghir*?
The Shaykh : What is my opinion of what?
The questioner : *Al-Jami' al-Saghir* by al-Suyuti.
The Shaykh : What is this question? I have not read the introduction to *Sahih al-Jami'* and *Da'if al-Jami'*.
The questioner : No, I have not read it. I have read al-Suyuti, and I know that you have books on it, but I have not read them.
The Shaykh : Ah, al-Suyuti in *al-Jami' al-Saghir*. Unfortunately, I say it plainly: it is a collection that gathers the authentic, the good, the weak, and the fabricated. Even though the introduction states that he protected it from what a liar or fabricator uniquely narrated.
Had he been able to fulfill this condition, it would have been a very useful book, unique in its field. But unfortunately, he was not able to do so. In his book *al-Lala' al-Masnu'ah* on fabricated hadiths, he agrees with Ibn al-Jawzi on his ruling that some hadiths are fabricated, yet he narrated or mentioned them in *al-Jami' al-Saghir*.
In fact, he appended a supplement to Ibn al-Jawzi's book *al-Mawdu'at*, which he called *Dhail al-Ahadith al-Mawdu'ah*. It is printed in India. In it, he cites hadiths and rules them to be fabricated, not following others, but through his own independent reasoning. And yet, he included them in *al-Jami' al-Saghir*. And so on.
Then, his symbols for authenticity, goodness, and weakness are never to be trusted, for two reasons:
One finds a fundamental discrepancy and contradiction between his symbols for authenticity, sometimes, and his symbols in the tracing of sources. For example, he says in the tracing: "Narrated by so-and-so, authentic, refer to so-and-so," meaning one of the four books. You find it narrated through Ibn Lahi'ah, or through another man, such as 'Ali ibn Zayd ibn Jad'an, and you find it weak.
And sometimes he mentions the hadith and marks it as being in the two Sahihs with the letter Qaf, and then you find next to it the letter Dad, meaning weak. This is impossible, like combining two opposites. That is the end of it.
The Shaykh : What is my opinion of what?
The questioner : *Al-Jami' al-Saghir* by al-Suyuti.
The Shaykh : What is this question? I have not read the introduction to *Sahih al-Jami'* and *Da'if al-Jami'*.
The questioner : No, I have not read it. I have read al-Suyuti, and I know that you have books on it, but I have not read them.
The Shaykh : Ah, al-Suyuti in *al-Jami' al-Saghir*. Unfortunately, I say it plainly: it is a collection that gathers the authentic, the good, the weak, and the fabricated. Even though the introduction states that he protected it from what a liar or fabricator uniquely narrated.
Had he been able to fulfill this condition, it would have been a very useful book, unique in its field. But unfortunately, he was not able to do so. In his book *al-Lala' al-Masnu'ah* on fabricated hadiths, he agrees with Ibn al-Jawzi on his ruling that some hadiths are fabricated, yet he narrated or mentioned them in *al-Jami' al-Saghir*.
In fact, he appended a supplement to Ibn al-Jawzi's book *al-Mawdu'at*, which he called *Dhail al-Ahadith al-Mawdu'ah*. It is printed in India. In it, he cites hadiths and rules them to be fabricated, not following others, but through his own independent reasoning. And yet, he included them in *al-Jami' al-Saghir*. And so on.
Then, his symbols for authenticity, goodness, and weakness are never to be trusted, for two reasons:
One finds a fundamental discrepancy and contradiction between his symbols for authenticity, sometimes, and his symbols in the tracing of sources. For example, he says in the tracing: "Narrated by so-and-so, authentic, refer to so-and-so," meaning one of the four books. You find it narrated through Ibn Lahi'ah, or through another man, such as 'Ali ibn Zayd ibn Jad'an, and you find it weak.
And sometimes he mentions the hadith and marks it as being in the two Sahihs with the letter Qaf, and then you find next to it the letter Dad, meaning weak. This is impossible, like combining two opposites. That is the end of it.