Collection of hadîth : al-Jâmi’ al-Sahîh

We owe the first collection of hadīth, al-Jāmi’ al-Sahīh to al-Bukhārī, the eminent ninth-century traditionist. It took him sixteen years to compile this collection of traditions comprising 97 books, 3450 chapters, and 7397 traditions, organized into subject areas. The traditions, or hadīth (literally translated as ‘sayings’), are the acts and sayings of the Prophet, as reported by his companions and those who followed them. Each of them includes a isnād (a chain of authority) that retraces the name of each person who transmitted a contribution and  verifies their veracity. The Sahīh also contains biographical data and commentaries on the Qur’an, as well as details of religious practice, law, and commerce. This work is the largest of six collections of the hadīth that act as an authority and retrace the sunna (customs), and, after the Qur’an, it is the second source of the sharī‘a (Muslim religious law).

The appearance of the paper in the Muslim world in the eighth century did not bring an end of the use of the more solid and precious parchment that could be reused once it was scraped and washed[1]. This surface was used for luxurious and (very) often religious works, for example, for copies of the Qur’an and collections of hadīth[2]. This manuscript is an example of this application, with the almost square format that was characteristic of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Maghrebian Qur’ans. The text of the two volumes is written in brown ink in maghribī[3] cursive script, with diacritic points[4] and orthoepic symbols[5]. The book’s format is relatively modest, with a wide range of colours whose tones are complemented by the extensive use of gold.

Despite the conservatism that influences everything religious, this copy of Jāmi’ al-Sahīh takes a novel approach to geometric compositions and the use of vegetal elements in the spandrels, which are typical of Hispano-Maghrebian illuminations: the two first pages of volumes V and VII are adorned with a large rectangular illumination prolonged by a medallion in the margins, forming what are known as ‘carpet pages’. Bordered with a double row of twisted, golden, and blue designs, the interior decorations are a geometric composition organised in braids treated in reserve in complex knotwork. In the polygons bordered by the interlacing, fleurons lie on a red and black ground with small orange fleurons and floral designs and vegetal motifs with blue and red centres. The medallion in the margin is ornamented with gilded palmettes that are surrounded and contrasted in red and blue. These types of geometric compositions, often used on manuscripts (book bindings, frontispieces[6]) were often applied to other surfaces like ceramic mosaics, door-leafs, and panels on coffers and minbars, decorated in wood and ivory marquetry; they flourished particularly well under the Mamluks (1250–1517) and the Ottomans (1281–1924). A fragment of panel from the cenotaph produced in Egypt in 1211[7] attests to the links that exist, on the decorative level, between different materials and techniques. Today, we can still admire pieces with similar designs, as seen on a Moroccan plate from the beginning of the nineteenth century (the Dar Batha Museum of Arts and Traditions, Fez, inventory No. 45.872).

[2] The interest in the art of calligraphy in Morocco continued under the Wattasids, the inheritors of the Marinids. Hence, in 1540, the sultan Abū al-‘Abbas Ahmad, the famous calligrapher, sent a copy of the Qur’an—that he himself had created—to Medina.

[3] Tenth-century Maghribī calligraphy is different from that of the Near East. Typically, its base writing line is extremely readable and the alif is extended under the writing line, whose origins lie in ancient oriental forms. The aesthetic quality of the maghribī script is often based on the repetition of semi-circular shapes of letters in their upper or lower parts.

[4] Points that facilitate the distinction of different letters.

[5] Orthoepic symbols are used for noting different phonetic particularities: the wasla, for example, marks the elision of a vowel, and the shadda indicates the doubling of a consonant.

[6] A Qur’an held at the French National Library (Arab 385, No. 296), produced in Spain in 1304, shows the same kind of geometric composition on a double page.

[7] Assembled and carved wood panel, discovered in the mausoleum of the imam Shāfi‘ī, held at the Cairo Museum of Islamic Art (inventory Nos. 408 and 409).