İbn Esir'in Cami'ul-Usûl isimli eserinde hadis ilmi ve ıstılahları

Ibn al-Athīr is considered to be amongst the leading scholars in the science of hadīth (prophetic narrations) and its accepted convention. In fact he has written a plethora of wondrous scientific works in this area. Amongst the works which he wrote is entitled, "Jāmi' al-Uṣūl fī Aḥādīth al-Rasūl". This book is well known by the like of scholars of aḥādīth and others especially due to its great virtues and benefits. Ibn al-Athīr certainly presented in this work an extremely beneficial introduction in the terminology of ḥadīth and its sciences. Thus is mentioned in it what is required by a student of knowledge in the field of hadīth and what is needed in order to understand aḥādīth and the process of the establishment of the chain of narrations (isnād) by the scholars based on this foundation (al-uṣūl) during the determination whether a ḥadīth is authentic (ṣaḥīh) or weak (ḍa`īf). Even if this introduction does not contain a newly invented science or an opinion which had never been stated before, in the least he establishes a unified collection containing those scattered scholarly works pertinent to the genre of the sciences of ḥadīth and its accepted convention, regardless if these works are dispersed within the books of the sciences of ḥadīth itself or those in the field of al-uṣūl. He performed this by receiving the information from those who preceded these authors, whether by way of direct explicit transfer of information or indirectly, transfering only what is necessarily to be mentioned. Hence he made this introduction as a preface to this science, providing the student of knowledge with sufficient basis in his or her early scholarship by which he or her can imagine a scientific reasoning connected to this arena and enabling him or her to understand the sayings of the scholars in terms of the rulings pertaining to a hadīth.