Pearls and Coral as agreed upon by the two Sheikhs

Al-Lulu Wa Almarjan

Author's name: Muhammad Fuad Abd al-Baqi

The Book of Pearls and Coral on What the Two Sheikhs Agreed Upon by Muhammad Fuad Abdul Baqi is one of the books of Hadith that collects the hadiths agreed upon in Sahih. The book is 700 pages long and was printed in three parts, then collected into one volume.

This is a book of Hadith in which the author has collected the agreed upon Hadiths in the Sahihs of Bukhari and Muslim, which total 2006 Hadiths (some sources mention 1906, but the author states 2006 in the introduction). He has selected his texts from Sahih Bukhari and from the narrations whose wording is closest to the text in Sahih Muslim. After listing each Hadith, its location in Sahih Bukhari is indicated by the title of the book, the chapter title, and its number. The book is arranged according to the arrangement of Sahih Muslim, taking the names of its books, which number fifty-four, the first of which is the Book of Faith and the last of which is the Book of Interpretation. Each book is divided into chapters, as is the case in Sahih Muslim, where the number of these chapters is 1293. The commitment to the text of Bukhari was at the request of Muhammad al-Halabi, as stated in the introduction of Abd al-Baqi after he praised God and sent prayers upon his Messenger: Now then, this is the book “Al-Lu’lu’ wal-Marjan, ma ma Affaqala ‘alayhi al-Shaykhun” by the two imams of hadith: Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Ismail ibn Ibrahim ibn al-Mughira ibn Bardizbah al-Bukhari al-Ju’fi, born in 194 AH and died in 256 AH; and Abu al-Husayn Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj ibn Muslim al-Qushayri al-Naysaburi, born in 204 AH and died in 261 AH. Its compilation was recommended by the publisher and printer: Mr. Muhammad al-Halabi, director of Dar Ihya’ al-Kutub al-Arabiyya. He required me to mention the text of the hadith of Bukhari, which is the text that most closely matches the text of the hadith in which Muslim agreed with him. This obligation on his part, and the commitment on my part, was more difficult and arduous than any other. It is sufficient for me to indicate the difficulty of carrying out this obligation that no one who wrote, or said, that this hadith is agreed upon, ever adhered to such a restriction. This is because Al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar, the world’s master of hadith, decided among what he decided, that what is meant by Muslim’s agreement with Al-Bukhari is his agreement with the attribution of the original hadith from his companions, even if some disagreement occurred in some contexts. And this Imam Al-Nawawi, the commentator on Sahih Muslim, when he wrote the book “The Forty Hadiths of An-Nawawi” and began it with the hadith of actions according to intention, and indicated that it was among what the two sheikhs agreed upon, he did not mention the closest text of Al-Bukhari to the text of Muslim, but rather mentioned the first text that Al-Bukhari included in his Sahih, and between it and the hadith that Muslim included there is some disagreement in the context… This difficulty that confronts me, and almost stands as a barrier preventing this obligation, has been eased by my two books: Jami’ Masaneed Sahih Al-Bukhari and Qurat Al-Aynayn fi Atraf Al-Sahihain. From the second book I was guided to the agreed upon hadiths with their enumeration and limitation, and from the beginning I stopped at the text that the publisher obligated me to, and I committed myself to it

Then Abd al-Baqi mentioned the importance of the book, relying on what Ibn al-Salah mentioned when mentioning the categories of Sahih, and that the highest of them is what al-Bukhari and Muslim agreed upon, “about which the people of hadith often say: Sahih agreed upon. They say that and mean by it the agreement of al-Bukhari and Muslim, not the agreement of the nation on it. However, the agreement of the nation on it is necessary from that and is obtained with it, because the nation agreed to accept what they agreed upon.”

The three sources of the book: The book practically relied on three sources: the text from Bukhari, the arrangement from Sahih Muslim, and the chapters are what Al-Nawawi included in his commentary on Sahih Muslim. Abdul Mohsen Al-Abbad commented on the author Abdul Baqi, saying, “He is not a man of knowledge, but he is a man of organization, meaning he is organized and pays attention to indexing, and he has patience in this field. He took great care with Sahih Muslim and numbered its hadiths with multiple numbers, some based on repetition and some without repetition. It was printed in four volumes with the care of Fouad Abdul Baqi, and he wrote a fifth volume full of indexes that included ten indexes all related to Sahih Muslim, so he served Sahih Muslim with a great and outstanding service.” Likewise, the numbering of the hadiths of Bukhari and the numbering in Fath al-Bari with the Salafi edition are the numbering of Muhammad Fuad Abd al-Baqi. The book Al-Lu’lu’ wal-Marjan was compiled based on the work of three people, so the wording and text in Al-Lu’lu’ wal-Marjan are Al-Bukhari’s words, and the arrangement is that of Muslim. The chapters he included in it are not by Muslim or Al-Bukhari, but by Al-Nawawi in his book Sharh Muslim, as Al-Nawawi divided chapters and included the chapters in the commentary in the footnotes. Muslim, may Allah have mercy on him, did not include chapters in his Sahih, but only wrote books. Abd al-Baqi began the book with narrations of the hadith, “The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said: ‘Do not lie about me, for whoever lies about me, let him enter the Fire.’”