Shahristani's Method of Using Hadith in Mafatih al-Asrar

Abstract

Shahristani, who is one of the leading scholars and administrators of his time, has written works in many fields. Despite this, he did not gain fame with his identity of Tafsir and Hadith as much as he gained fame with his identity of Kalam and the History of Sects. This is due to the fact that his identity as a mufassir and muhaddis is not mentioned much in classical literature. Scholars who work in many fields, especially mufassirs, benefit from the science of hadith, Islam's second main source. While the mufassir explains the verses, the jurist makes istinbat, the theologians explain the principles of belief, and the linguist brings examples of the rules of language and makes use of the hadiths. Mufassirs are aware of the importance of referring to hadiths when explaining verses. As a matter of fact, almost all tafsir books, regardless of their type, contain hadith narrations. In this respect, like every commentator, Shahristani tries to include the narrations that help explain the verses in his Tafsir. When his works are examined, it is seen that he did not write any work on the sciences of hadith and hadith. This is because he concentrates his ideas and thoughts on the issues of kalam, philosophy, history of religions and sects. Despite this, his tafsir called Mafatih al-Asrar has many aspects that concern the field of hadith along with other Islamic sciences. Shahristani, who combines many features of the narration, insight, and israri tafsir method in his work, follows a unique method in his book. While explaining the verses, he explains the deep dimensions of the verses under the headings of Esrar, after conveying opinions by using the sources available in the century he lived in, the reason for the revelation, the relationship between the verses, parable, fiqh, recitation, syntax, lexicon and meaning. He explains verses and hadiths in a bidirectional way such as faith-infidelity, believer-infidel, zahir-batin. In addition to the verses and hadiths, he also benefits from the opinions of many scholars. Sometimes he gives the names of the people whose opinion he cites, and sometimes uses expressions such as a group of companions, people of the Qur'an, scholars of the ummah, and some scholars said so. In addition to the sahih hadiths that serve his thought, he also cites many Hasen, weak hadiths, and hadiths whose sources cannot be identified. However, he does not make any evaluations about the authenticity of the hadiths he uses, and he rarely cites the source. He also includes narrations in unknown forms such as hukiye and ruviye without specifying any source. When the academic studies on Shahristani and his works are examined, it is seen that almost no studies is conducted to emphasize his hadithist identity. Therefore, the fact that no study has been done on Shahristani's method of using hadith in Mafatih al-Asrar makes it necessary to deal with the subject in a fundamental way. Because the epistemological value of the hadiths he uses to justify his views affects the validity of his views. In this context, the main question of the study is, How is the method of Shahristani in using and interpreting hadiths in Mafatih al-Asrar?, since each interpreter follows a unique method while processing the hadiths in his book. To reveal this, it is tried to find answers to questions such as What are the main sources of the hadiths used in the work? and How are the hadiths used by Shahristani in terms of authenticity? After determining the sources of the hadiths, he used, the method of using and interpreting the hadith, accompanied by examples from his work in question, and the authenticity of the hadiths used are mentioned. As a result of these, the interest and knowledge of the mufassir on hadith, the method of using hadith, and the strengths, and weaknesses of his work in terms of the hadith science are revealed with a general evaluation and efforts are made to make some proposals to the reader on the subject. In the final analysis, it is possible to say that Shahristani is in the category of lax Transmitter in the hadith, based on Mafatih al-Asrar.