Nukhbat al-Fikr

Course Overview

This two-day intensive seminar on Nukhbat al-Fikr covers the principles of prophetic traditions as penned in the small primer of Ibn Hajr. Students will apply the terminology, classification methods, and tools of authenticity to analyse the veracity of specific hadith narrations. In addition, the biographies of major hadith narrators will be evaluated as well as the relative strengths and weaknesses of the collective communities of hadith scholars in the early generations of Islam.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this module students should be able to:

• apply the principles of hadith classification to assess prophetic traditions
• research the biographies of hadith narrators
• recognise common chains of narration in the six sahih hadith collections
• demonstrate familiarity with the biographies of the earlier narrators
• critically analyse the text (matn) and chain (isnad) of different hadith narrations