Sahifat Hammam ibn Munabbih

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Ṣaḥīfat Hammām ibn Munabbih, The Book of Hammam ibn Munabbih, is an early hadith collection by the Yemeni scholar Hammam ibn Munabbih (died around 719–750 CE). It is one of the oldest surviving hadith books and exists in three slightly different versions, one of which is in Ahmad ibn Hanbal’s Musnad. The original manuscript is lost, but the text survives in later copies. Muhammad Hamidullah first published it in the 20th century by comparing two copies from Damascus and Berlin. The collection contains 138 hadith and is said to be based on narrations from Abu Hurairah, Hammam’s teacher. There is debate about whether Hammam could have learned from Abu Hurairah given their ages, but most scholars accept that Hammam died around 749–750 CE, which would allow the transmission. Scholar R. Marston Speight studied how the wording varies between this sahifa and other major collections, including Ahmad ibn Hanbal’s Musnad and Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim.