تعليقات القاري على ثلاثيات البخاري

Ta'liqat al-Qari 'ala Thulathiyyat al-Bukhari

A specialised Ḥadīth commentary by the eminent Ḥanafī scholar and muḥaddith Mullā ʿAlī al-Qārī al-Harawī al-Makkī (d. 1014 AH), devoted to the celebrated thulāthiyyāt of Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī—those narrations in which only three transmitters stand between Imām al-Bukhārī and the Prophet ﷺ. These traditions possess particular importance in the science of isnād because they represent the shortest and highest chains (ʿulūw al-isnād) occurring in al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ. The work is also known in manuscript catalogues as Sharḥ Thulāthiyyāt al-Bukhārī.

The work covers the twenty-two three-link narrations of Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī: seventeen transmitted through Salamah ibn al-Akwaʿ, four through Anas ibn Mālik, and one through Busr ibn Saʿīd. Al-Qārī's purpose, however, is not simply to gather these narrations. He comments upon their chains and texts, explains difficult expressions, discusses the narrators and draws attention to the legal and interpretative benefits contained in the aḥādīth. The result combines the disciplines of riwāyah—the transmission and analysis of isnāds—with dirāyah, the understanding and interpretation of the Prophetic text.

Al-Qārī himself explains that the closeness of an isnād to the Prophet ﷺ carries particular scholarly value, and that this consideration prompted him to explain difficult points occurring in these elevated chains and their narrations. His discussion therefore gives considerable attention to the men of the isnād, their names and identities, and the peculiarities of the chains, alongside linguistic explanation and the extraction of meanings and rulings from the matn. The work provides an excellent compact example of al-Qārī's wider approach to Ḥadīth commentary.

The text also possesses considerable manuscript value. A particularly important copy preserved in Istanbul's Süleymaniye Library is recorded as being in Mullā ʿAlī al-Qārī's own hand, completed in Makkah in Dhū al-Qaʿdah 1010 AH, only four years before his death. This autograph provides an especially strong textual foundation for establishing the work.

The Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyyah edition has been critically prepared by Shaykh Muḥammad ibn Nāṣir al-ʿAjamī. Of additional interest, the editor precedes al-Qārī's text with his own work al-Sayr al-Ḥanīf fī al-Ittiṣāl bi-Thulāthiyyāt Amīr al-Muʾminīn fī al-Ḥadīth, relating to transmission and connection with al-Bukhārī's Thulāthiyyāt. The edition therefore combines the classical commentary with useful material concerning the transmission of these particularly elevated isnāds.

The current second edition from Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyyah was issued in 2025 as a single large hardback volume of 382 pages, printed in two colours on cream paper and measuring 17 × 24 cm. The publisher records the original publication year as 2010. IS