Ibn Rajab’s Commentary on al-Nawawī’s Forty Hadith: Innovation and Audience in the Jāmiʿ al-ʿulūm wa-l-ḥikam

The Forty Hadith (ArbaÊ¿Å«n ḥadÄ«than) of YahyÄ b. Sharaf al-NawawÄ« (d. 676/1277) is one of the most popular collections of the forty hadith genre in the Muslim world. It has been the object of numerous commentaries since its circulation in the seventh/thirteenth century. One of these commentaries written in Mamluk Damascus is the JÄmiÊ¿ al-Ê¿ulÅ«m wa-ḥikam fÄ« sharḥ khamsÄ«n ḥadÄ«than min jawÄmiÊ¿ al-kalim by the ḤanbalÄ« scholar Zayn al-DÄ«n Ibn Rajab (d. 795/1393). In this commentary Ibn Rajab does not only explain and interpret the hadiths, but he also alters the structure of the original collection by adding further hadiths. The article analyses the commentary to answer two main questions: Why did he choose al-Nawawī’s collection to comment upon in the first place, rather than compiling an independent work on his own? And how did his intellectual orientation (ḤanbalÄ« from Baghdad) and his social context (Mamluk Damascus) influence the content and style of the commentary?