al-Fādānī

Meccan hadith scholar and teacher of a West Sumatran family, known as ‘musnid of the age’, whose record of his chains of transmission lists an unusually full training in logic.

Life

Al-Fādānī was born in Mecca in 1916 to a family from Padang in West Sumatra, hence the nisba al-Fādānī. According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi he learned the Qurʾān from his father, Muḥammad ʿĪsā, and his uncle Maḥmūd, both teachers, and studied at al-Madrasa al-Ṣawlatiyya (1927–34) and then at the Dār al-ʿUlūm al-Dīniyya, whose students were mostly Malays and Indonesians (1934–37). He also attended many teachers in the Ḥaram and met scholars from Yemen, Syria, Tunisia, Egypt, India and the Malay world; among his teachers the TDV names ʿUmar Ḥamdān al-Maḥrasī, Muḥammad ʿAlī b. Ḥusayn al-Mālikī, ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī, Anwar Shāh Kashmīrī and Ashraf ʿAlī Thānawī. Fanani and Widigdo add Indonesian teachers in Mecca such as Kiai Baqir Nur al-Jugjawi and Kiai ʿAbd al-Muḥīṭ al-Sidoarji.

He taught at Dār al-ʿUlūm from 1937, became its deputy director and from 1964 its director until his death, and for decades taught hadith in the Ḥaram, especially to students from Indonesia and Malaysia. In 1943 he founded the first girls’ school in Mecca. Because of his authority in chains of transmission he was called musnid al-dunyā and musnid al-ʿaṣr, and Indonesian pesantren circles regarded him as a defender of Sunni tradition in the Ḥaramayn. He died in Mecca on 21 July 1990 and was buried in the Maʿlā cemetery.

Most of his books are thabats, records of his teachers and his chains for books and subjects. In one of them, al-Musnad al-jalī, a section is devoted to logic. Ahwan Fanani and Mohammad Syifa Amin Widigdo list the works for which he records chains there: al-Kātibī’s Shamsiyya with the commentaries of Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī and al-Taftāzānī and al-Jurjānī’s glosses, Ibn Sīnā’s Ishārāt with the commentaries of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī and Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, al-Bayḍāwī’s Ṭawāliʿ al-anwār, al-Ghazālī’s Miʿyār al-ʿilm, Maqāṣid al-falāsifa and Tahāfut, and the commentaries of al-Damanhūrī and al-Mallawī on the Sullam. His chain for the Ishārāt runs back through al-Jurjānī, Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī and Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī to al-Ṭūsī. Fanani and Widigdo contrast this with the record of the Javanese scholar Maḥfūẓ al-Tarmasī, which lists no logic at all, and take al-Fādānī’s as evidence of the logic works that Indonesian students in the Ḥaramayn could reach, from the most basic to the most advanced; they note that none of his chains in logic passes through his Indonesian teachers.

Works

• al-Musnad al-jalī المُسْنَدُ الجَلِيُّRecord of his chains of transmission, with a section on logic (Surabaya: Dār al-Saqqāf, n.d., pp. 73–74, as cited by Fanani and Widigdo).werk
• Bughyat al-murīd min ʿulūm al-asānīd بُغْيَةُ المُرِيدِ مِنْ عُلُومِ الأَسَانِيدِHis own thabat, 4 vols., Mecca, n.d. (TDV).werk
• Itḥāf al-mustafīd bi-ghurar al-asānīd إِتْحَافُ المُسْتَفِيدِ بِغُرَرِ الأَسَانِيدِLicence and thabat written for his student Muḥammad Ṭāhā al-Fādānī, with his chains in hadith, exegesis, law, astronomy and grammar (Jakarta 1370/1951; Damascus 1403/1983) (TDV).werk
• al-ʿUjāla fī l-aḥādīth al-musalsalaDamascus 1405/1984 (TDV).werk

Reception

The TDV names among his students Muḥammad b. ʿAlawī al-Mālikī, Muḥammad ʿAlī al-Ṣābūnī and ʿAlī Jumʿa, later muftī of Egypt, and leading Indonesian and Malaysian scholars.