Hadith scholarship in Mongol Baghdad: al-Qazwīnī’s transmission of al-Baghawī’s Maṣābīḥ al-sunna

This article presents Baghdad as a site of Sunni hadith scholarship, and demonstrates its con-tinuity under Mongol-Ilkhanid rule, both in known institutions such as the Mustanṣiriyya madrasa or the Caliphal Mosque, as well as in private homes. This ongoing hadith scholar-ship is exemplified by the muḥaddith Sirāj al-Dīn ʿUmar b. ʿAlī al-Qazwīnī (d. 750 AH/1349 CE in Baghdad) and his transmission and teaching of al-Baghawī’s (d. 516/1122) post- canonical hadith collection Maṣābīḥ al-sunna. To this end, the article analyses and compares two sources: first, al-Qazwīnī’s Mashyakha, i.e., his personal collection of books studied and the authoritative lines of transmission (riwāyāt) for them; and second, audition and reading certificates (samāʿāt, qirāʾāt) preserved in two Mongol-era manuscripts with the Maṣābīḥ al-sunna as the main text. Both sources illustrate al-Qazwīnī’s networks within Baghdad, but also with scholars from Mamluk Damascus, a network that included mainly Shāfiʿī and Ḥanbalī scholars, and provides evidence for the central role of the two Sufi figures ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Suhrawardī (d. 563/1168) and his nephew ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī (d. 632/1234) for the transmission of al-Baghawī’s works from Khurasan to Baghdad. While both sources provide references to the networks, the audition and reading certificates bring to life hadith sessions in which two people recite the Maṣābīḥ al-sunna with the aforementioned manu-scripts in front of al-Qazwīnī while he compares the text with his own private manuscript, thus allowing us to experience the teaching of hadith in Mongol Baghdad.